Israel in the Life of Young Jews—Proximate and Personal, but Not Political

Decades of social scientific research in the UK show that British Jews typically feel strongly disposed towards the State of Israel and its security, even while many experience and express unease about many of its policies. In this chapter, we seek to explain how Israel is a compelling component of Jewish identity for young people even while some are ambivalent about its policies and actions. We explore how connections and commitment to Israel take shape over the adolescent years, and identify the contribution of Jewish schools to what the young people in our study think and feel about Israel, the country and the State. We see the special influence of the Israel trips that schools provide for students prior to the participation of many of the same young people in youth movement Israel tours, a long-standing component of the educational landscape in the UK. Finally, we explore what happens when study participants encounter sharp expressions of anti-Israel sentiment at university. We find how for most of them, their emotional attachment to the Jewish state proves sufficiently robust to resist the corrosive potential of the worst criticisms aimed at Israel. This finding supports our conclusion that Israel’s significance for these young Jews is personal rather than political. Israel inspires them in ways that few other facets of contemporary Jewish life do.