[The tide is shifting? Well, there is a rip current running in the opposite direction that could carry us far out to sea -- e.g., from today's NY Times:]
Unusually Unified in Solidarity With Israel, but Also Unusually Unnerved
By Jodi Wilgoren
CHICAGO, April 21 — Every month, two dozen young professionals trying to learn Hebrew gather for lunch downtown. Usually, they practice with chitchat about vacations and jobs, dates and children. But last week, the hour disappeared in a single topic, one that has consumed American Jews lately: What to do?
Buy Israeli products, one young professional suggested, pointing the others toward the imported hummus at the Jewel supermarket on the city's North Side. Send postcards to Israeli acquaintances, offered another. Call a congressman. Give money.
"Go there," said Rebecca Kahn, 40, a lawyer who just returned from Jerusalem and plans to make aliyah, or immigrate to Israel, in October. "I'm worried there won't be an Israel," she explained afterward. "I feel better when I'm there. I feel part of the Jewish people."
Fueled in part by an incident last fall in which "Jew" was painted on the side of her car, Ms. Kahn's commitment is an extreme example of the transformation under way in the attitudes and actions of American Jews.
With the intensifying conflict in the Middle East and a cluster of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, Jews across the country are feeling squeezed, increasingly worried that their homeland, and their people, are under siege. Public opinion and political statements abroad isolating United States support for Israel have made many here worry whether the tight alliance between the two countries will fray. Not since the wars of 1967 and 1973, perhaps not since Israel's founding in 1948, have American Jews been this united — or this unnerved....
Max Rovner, 34, a lawyer, said the demonstration the previous Friday was the first political rally he had ever attended. He has also written his first letter to the editor, and he spends hours online each day reading The Daily Star of Lebanon and The Jordan Times, as well as editorials from a dozen American newspapers.
But beyond that, Mr. Rovner said he felt a shift in his identity. As a liberal, he used to look at National Review with disdain; now, as a Jew, he sees kinship in its support of Israel.
"I had never felt any connection whatsoever to the Christian right, but here they are, staunchly, 100 percent behind Israel," Mr. Rovner said, echoing comments heard across the country. "Alan Keyes, the folks on the Fox News Channel, Newt Gingrich — I disagree with all of these people constantly. I'm not going to become a conservative because of this, but I have more regard for the lonely fight these guys fight." ...
[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/national/22JEWS.html]
Carl
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