The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has been conducting surveys of American Jewish opinion for over thirty years. In June 2018, the American Jewish Committee held its first-ever AJC Global Forum in Israel, and released its annual survey of American Jewish opinion along with an innovative, first-time ever companion survey capturing the views of Israeli Jews.
AJC noted: "The two surveys shed light on the perspectives of American and Israeli Jews on a range of important topics touching on the relationship between the Jewish state and the Diaspora, support for a two-state solution, attitudes toward President Trump and his decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and much more."
These comparative surveys of Israeli and American Jews exponentially expanded the value of the already enormously valuable AJC polls of American Jewish opinion, and will probably be replicated for at least a few more years.
In his analysis of the two surveys (which had many identically worded questions), Laurence Grossman, Director of Publications for AJC summarized the fascinating comparative results - illuminating an Israeli-American Jewish divide:
"Forty years ago, in 1978, historian Melvin Urofsky called his classic book on the relations between American Jews and Israel We Are One! At the time, the title – exclamation point included – drew little objection. Today, any such declaration of Jewish unity would come up against the hard facts detailed in a new American Jewish Committee survey of both American and Israeli Jews. The divide it reveals between the world’s two largest Jewish communities raises serious questions about the future viability of the relationship and challenges Jewish leaders to devise ways to keep the communities from drifting even further apart."
Grossman noted that when asked their opinion of the non-Orthodox streams [Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Secular Humanist, etc.], 43% of American Jews said their growth in Israel could improve the quality of Jewish life there. Just 26% of the Israelis agreed, while a 30% plurality of Israeli Jews called those non-Orthodox streams irrelevant to Israel.
Similarly, four out of five American Jews favor Israel granting non-Orthodox rabbis the power to perform life-cycle events and conversions, a position espoused by [only] 49% of Israelis.
Eighty-one percent of American Jews compared to 55% of Israelis favor the introduction of civil marriage and divorce in Israel, and 73% of Americans, as compared to 42% of Israelis, favor a mixed-prayer area adjacent to the Western Wall."
Grossman noted that the views of Israeli and American Jews are strongly shaped by religious denominational identification.
"For example, the 40% figure for American Jews who said that being Jewish is “very important” in their lives obscures wide variations among the denominations: This response was given by 99% of haredim, 93% of the Modern Orthodox, 61% of Conservative Jews, 33% of Reform Jews, and 13% of the secular."
Similarly;
While ..."39% of the total Israeli sample say Israel should be willing to dismantle all or some of the settlements in a peace deal... the figures for the religious subgroups [in Israel] show deep differences: 59% of the secular (exactly matching the percentage of the whole American sample), 39% of the not-that-religious traditional, 29% of the religious-traditional, 14% of the religious Zionists, and 12% of the haredim would dismantle settlements."
Grossman concluded his analysis in somber terms after noting that when "Asked to choose a familial metaphor to describe how close they feel to each other, 31% of the Americans and 22% of the Israelis went so far as to respond: 'not part of my family' about the other. Only 28% of the Israelis consider American Jews 'siblings' – and that was more than twice as high as the 12% of American Jews who viewed their Israeli counterparts that way. Pluralities of about 40% in both groups responded, 'extended family.'”
"The message of the AJC survey is clear. If the concept of a global Jewish community – am ehad – is to retain any meaning, each of its two major components must develop a greater appreciation for the priorities and needs of the other. If not, the next AJC survey will find even more American and Israeli Jews writing off those in the other country as 'not part of my family.'” [bold type added]by the DataBank