ABSTRACT
America often loves Jews to death in its enveloping embrace; the Gentiles love us so much they want to marry us—and we them. Jews have embraced all the opportunity open to them, regardless of the cost to Jewish distinctiveness. Not only in America, but even in Israel, the desire to be part of modern Western civilization and popular culture is perhaps stronger among most Jews than the desire to remain attached to ancient traditions and parochial Jewish identities. This is a time when American Jewish physical safety is unparalleled in history but Jewish cultural integrity seems more precarious than ever before. This is a time when American Jews can and do marvel at the accomplishments of a Jewish state in Israel, but when less than half of them have ever visited it and practically none of them would even entertain the thought of living there.
