August 2, 2006
By Irene Sege

In the warehouse of the Greater Boston Food Bank, Joshua Rosmarin, recently back from Israel, sorts cereal alongside 30 other American and Israeli teenagers. He’d anticipated a trip to the Jewish homeland since his family started saving in his Milton synagogue’s “Passport to Israel” program eight years ago, but he didn’t expect to become a witness to history.

When Rosmarin left Logan Airport July 5 for a Haifa-Boston exchange, he embarked on a rite of passage meant to enhance a new generation’s connection to both Judaism and Israel. The group was just outside Haifa when Hezbollah rockets first hit the Israeli teens’hometown. The Americans cut short their trip; the Israelis spent much of the next week in bomb shelters before arriving here last Thursday for the US leg of the program.

Now Rosmarin, like many other American Jews, anxiously follows news from the Middle East. “I am more committed,” he says. “You want a more peaceful solution, because the next missile might kill a friend or their brother or sister in the army.”

American Jewish opinion tends to mirror Israeli public opinion, and the widespread support in Israel for strong action against Hezbollah is reflected here -- as is anguish about the reach of Hezbollah’s missiles and destruction in Lebanon. Commitment to Israel’s right to exist is one prong of mainstream American Jewish opinion; an other is support of a Palestinian state created in a way that protects Israel’s security. Yet amid the support for the government’s handling of the Lebanon crisis are voices questioning Israel’s tactics.

More than a third of the United States’5.3 million Jews have visited Israel. The conflict comes just as tourism in Israel has rebounded from the intifadah that began in 2000. In Boston, where thousands of Jews have taken part in a 17-year-old sister- city relationship with Haifa, news of rockets striking that city has added resonance.

Rabbi Ronne Friedman of Boston’s Temple Israel decries “an international community that disingenuously and hypocritically applies a moral double-standard to the Jewish state.

“It is important for each of us to offer support in a way that is consistent with his/her political sensibilities,” Friedman wrote to congregants last week. “We are united, however, in our insistent commitment to Israel’s right to exist.”

In Brookline, Mona Strick, 44, worries about Israel. “It’s very important that Israel is doing what it’s doing,” she says. “I don’t think it had any choice.”

Dov Fogel, 38, a child psychiatrist from Cambridge, checks the news several times daily. “It feels so threatening from Israel’s standpoint. My sister’s moving to Israel. I have friends there and relatives. But from the Lebanese standpoint it’s horrifying,” he says.

“I certainly support the stuff going on in southern Lebanon where the Hezbollah are entrenched. The stuff in Beirut is harder… This feels very high- stakes and precarious for Israel.”

Forty-two-year-old Robyn Barsky of Brookline thinks Israel should take a firmer stance.

“It’s time Israel really uses their firepower to root out these guys once and for all,” she says. “Without the land of Israel the Jewish people can’t survive. Period.”

Before a synagogue-sponsored trip to Israel two years ago, Susan Glazer, 66, past president of Temple Shalom in Newton, felt little attachment to Israel. Now she is “very torn” about the war.

“Maybe what it takes for countries to survive isn’t as pretty as the way American Jews would like to think,” she says. “I remember as a younger person feeling proud that Israel could vanquish its neighbors because so many terrible things had happened to Jews in the second world war that they couldn’t do anything about. Now that we know they can do it we feel more ambivalent.”

Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace based in Chicago, has moved from calling for active US diplomacy to last week pressing for an immediate cease-fire, a position at odds with the Israeli government and the Bush administration.

“Israel is such a part of my life. It tears me apart when what I see as a solution is looked on negatively by the rest of the Jewish community,” says Beth Wasserman of Somerville, 28, a Brit Tzedek spokeswoman. “It’s important that there’s space for all of us.”

“It certainly is not OK for Israel to be attacked, but I think the policy of overwhelming force in response creates more enemies,” says Brit Tzedek supporter David Blocker, 59, a part-time cantor from Sharon.

The New Israel Fund in Washington, which finances human- rights efforts, supports Israel’s “strategy of clear-cut self-defense.” But several members of the Jewish Voice for Peace attended a demonstration, called by the Lebanese-American community in Copley Square, protesting Israel’s actions.

After the Holocaust and Israel’s creation in 1948, American Jews expressed their identity by supporting Israel. As Israel’s economy matured, and intermarriage rates here rose, leaders turned their focus inward -- enhancing educational programs and synagogue life and using trips to Israel to bolster Jewish connections.

The number of Jews surveyed by the American Jewish Committee who agree that “caring about Israel is a very important part of my being a Jew” has fallen nearly 17 percent since 1989, largely, says Hebrew Union College sociologist Steven Cohen, because of the rising number of disengaged Jews.

But the number of Jews participating in religious and communal life is also growing -- and these Jews remain strongly committed to Israel. Newton’s Temple Emanuel is planning a trip to Israel with 200 congregants. Another program, Birthright, has sent 100,000 young adults on free trips to Israel.

In Brookline, 20-year-old Amy Cohen prepares to leave Sunday on a 2 ½ week trip to Israel. “To back out of a program in Israel because of fear of terrorism would be going against my convictions,” she says. Her mother hasn’t slept well in weeks. “We’d love to tell her you can’t go, but we can’t,” says Deborah Cohen, 56. “It’s coloring how I feel, although I honestly feel what Israel is doing is correct.”

In the South Boston warehouse, Barbara Burg, 62, executive assistant to the food bank president, watches the teens sorting cans. When she and her son visited Israel a decade ago, he told her, “Mom, now I know what it is to be a Jew.” Today Burg is fearful.

“I’m sick about it, truthfully,” she says. “They’re handling it the best they can. We have to come out victorious. If we don’t, that’s the end of Israel.”