Home Opinion The worst time for Jews to abandon Europe

A fascinating argument over the future of European Jews is raging throughout the Jewish world. Jeffrey Goldberg posed the provocative question in the pages of The Atlantic: Has the time come for Jews to leave Europe? European-Jewish intellectuals aligned against him, including Antony Lerman, Diana Pinto and others, and gently asked that he stop butting in. As expected, only a very small number of these discussions made their way into Israeli public discourse.

Over the last half century, much weight has been lifted off Europe’s shoulders. The United States has assumed responsibility for peace in the world and the West. Industrial revolutions and commerce have made their way into new, far-flung markets. Europe, free of the burdens it once bore, is now even more important, though in different ways, and Jews have a more central role to play than ever before in this new Europe.

Roughly 80 percent of world Jewry lives in Israel and the United States, and it seems that European Jews have become prey to ideology. I do not share the sincere concern that Israelis or Americans feel for the Jews of Europe. On the contrary. American Jews are stuck in the past, trying to make up for their greatest failure – their helplessness during the Holocaust. And Israelis? How can one believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s calls to Jews to leave a unified Europe with a Muslim population of less than 5 percent (most of whom are peaceful) in order to move to Israel, where 20 percent of the population is discriminated against due to their heritage, and 50 percent of the people under Israeli rule — between the Jordan River and the sea — are Muslim?http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.650104