What is Really Being Debated in the Debate on the Distancing Hypothesis?

Abstract

“Trends in American Jewish Attachment to Israel” and “Thinking about Distancing from Israel” purportedly represent the two sides of a debate about whether American Jews are becoming more distant from Israel. But the authors are not really debating whether the distance is increasing; they are debating how to investigate that distance. And there are three sides to the debate, not two: the side that limits its conclusions to what carefully collected and analyzed data show, the side that says “it’s not about the data,” and the side that believes we could better understand American Jews if we put our studies in the context of broader theoretical work and investigations of other groups. This article describes how the articles’ approach to data affect their conclusions, and suggests what should be done next in pursuing the question of Jews’ attachment to Israel.