The American Jewish Committee prides itself on being a centrist organization.

As the joke goes,

we are criticized from the right for being too leftist, and from the left for being too rightist, so we
can’t be all wrong. For many of its 102 years, AJC has represented, arguably more so than any
other American Jewish organization, the mainstream of American Jewish political advocacy.

As American politics polarize around issues like the Iraq War, so do American Jewish politics. In
the Jewish community, not only are Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans finding less
ground on which to agree, the trend among affiliated American Jewish youth toward either
“progressive Judaism” or self-defined “Orthodox Judaism” further divides the community along
political lines.

Much has been made of the rate of assimilation among young American Jews (as David Harris
recently noted in his Jerusalem Post blog entry, “A Cri de Coeur from two Jewish generations,”
Jewish leaders identify “attracting and engaging Jewish youth to community ranks” as their top
challenge), and studies have shown that those who do choose to identify as Jewish tend to
gravitate towards two poles:

On the one hand, many liberal American Jews from secular homes engage in Jewish activities
primarily through social justice or Tikkun Olam programs. Sometimes this is done apolitically,
but oftentimes, these organizations dedicated to the noble cause of helping those less fortunate
also espouse perspectives on the Middle East conflict which, shall we say, do not assume that
Israel is without fault. Thus, many of the most active pro-Palestinian activists on college
campuses today are in fact Jewish. A recent survey of ACCESS members found that 42% agreed
with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the
destruction of Israel,” as opposed to 82% of American Jews overall, as cited in the 2007 Annual
Survey of American Jewish Opinion.

On the other hand, although only 9% of American Jews today consider themselves to be
Orthodox, 38% of affiliated American Jews under the age of 18 fall into that category. Conceding
some notable exceptions, the Orthodox community tends to take more conservative views on
issues of domestic policy than non-Orthodox Jews, and a more hawkish approach to the Middle
East conflict.

Where does this leave AJC? A generation from now, with the majority of American Jews
affiliating politically either strongly on the left or strongly on the right, and with divisive issues
such as gay marriage on the agenda, will there be room for a moderate organization like AJC?
Can AJC identify common ground and bring these two sides together, or will AJC be forced to
pick one side and forsake the other in order to maintain its relevance as a leading American
Jewish organization?

I invite you to disagree, but I feel that AJC is uniquely positioned to play a crucial role in
reconciling these two would-be factions of American Jewry. This projected bifurcation of
American Jewry heightens the need for centrist, inclusive organizations like AJC to step forward
and provide a forum in which our community can discuss and act upon issues of mutual concern.
Not all AJC members need agree on every issue, but as the American Jewish population
diminishes as a percentage of the overall population, as it has in other countries around the world,
necessity will impel a cohesiveness of vision, and with it an organization to make that vision a
reality.

Dylan Tatz, May 16, 2008