ISRAEL-DIASPORA RELATIONS: MUTUAL IMAGES, EXPECTATION, FRUSTRATIONS
ISRAEL-DIASPORA RELATIONS: MUTUAL IMAGES, EXPECTATION, FRUSTRATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The essay outlines the main developments and challenges in the developing relations between the State of Israel and the Jewish Diaspora abroad. With a Jewish population of 650,000 with the establishment of Israel in 1948,the Jewish nation, in the wake of the Holocaust, perceived the new state as a symbol of rebirth and continuity, which must have total support of the Diaspora Jewry for the survival of the Jewish state. Six and a half decades later, half of the Jewish population of the World lives in Israel, which with all its problems, is an advanced high-tech society. Today, Israel became a divisive issue in the Diaspora relating to Israeli policies and politics, and the complex definitions of “who is a Jew”. Israel today supports the Diaspora Jews to preserve and foster their Jewish identity in face of rising assimilation,it needs less the economic support of the well to do communities, but it needs the Diaspora as a pro-Israeli lobby. On the one hand it is a mutual need – if not dependence, on the other hand there is a possibility of the two sides –Israel and world Jewry drifting apart into two entities, with different agendas,priorities, differing perceptions on the meaning of being “Jewish”.

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