The Kids Are Alright (?)

Just read this incisive bit of commentary by Jack Shafer on Peter Beinart's New York Times article, essentially poking holes in the whole 'young American Jews today don't care about Israel' trope. By now, it's a well-worn bit of conventional wisdom, that those Jewish kids today simply don't have the same connection as their parents and their parents did, yadda yadda yadda, cue shrying gavult and rending of cloth and saying kaddish over kids today. Then the complaints that it's the fault of the left, the right, the synagogues, the JCCs, Federation, Rock & Roll, Intermarriage, whatever.

But as Shafer points out, citing work by Theodore Sasson and Leonard Saxe, it's not quite that cut and dry:

Moreover, as we pointed out in our published response to the original Cohen-Kelman report, younger Jews have reported lower levels of attachment to Israel in most surveys going back as far as there are data to analyze. Younger Jews were less attached to Israel in the National Jewish Population Surveys of 2000 and 1990. They were less attached in the AJC surveys going back to the mid-1980s. If, in fact, young Jews are always less attached than older Jews, then the differences in age groups are likely related to lifecycle rather than generation. As Jews age, they become more attached to Israel. In other words, the younger Jews who reported a middling level of attachment to Israel in the mid-1980s grew up to become today's over 60 group, which reports a high level of attachment.

(their article can be found here)

So it may be that kids today aren't very connected...but our parents and grandparents are remembering the old days of American Zionism and their involvement through rose-colored (or white-and-blue colored) glasses.

So now let's ask the follow up question: if this is true, what role do Birthright and other such programs play viz. connection to Israelis, if not to Israel?

And after that, the more important question, the question we are almost too afraid to ask: if the young are automatically more detached than their elders from a Jewish state, but that attachment naturally increases with age and experience, rather than thinking of what Israel (or the Diaspora leadership) need to do to woo them back or vice versa, what kind of role should Israel play in their lives?