Somebody help me out here. Every time I visit Jewish communities in the United States, I get this weird feeling. It’s like I’m a character in somebody else’s movie. I go from one community to the next, asking all sorts of questions about what life is like for our people across the great American continent. But the curiosity only goes one way. My hosts and their friends, usually very excited about the fact that I’ve “come from Israel,” are not very interested in what it’s actually like to be Israeli. They insist that in addition to speaking about my area of expertise, I also “say something about Israel” to their synagogue. So I name a few topics — the fascinating worlds of Israeli television, nightlife, music, the courtroom scandals or spiritual struggles of our people — and then I get this blank stare. “No,” they say. “Talk about the rockets in Sderot. About this Mofaz guy. About the women on the bus.”
The subjects they want me to speak about were either never that interesting to most Israelis, those that became obviated by events, or those that had their moment in the sun and then were lost to the public eye. But the deeper things, the cutting-edge things, the zeitgeist? No thanks.
Read Full Article »