To the Editor:

Ronald Sanders's article was the first sincere attempt I have encountered to relieve the . . . feelings of guilt and failure of American Jews who are earnestly trying to make a go of it in Israel without much success [“Settling in Israel?” August].

. . . I toured Israel in 1961, convinced that there lay the answers to all my problems of personal worth and salvation. After mulling it over for a long time, torn between a liking for physical comfort and a longing for a sense of purpose, I returned to Israel in 1963 and became a resident. Working as an English teacher in two vocational high schools . . . I was confronted right from the start with physical as well as psychological obstacles: living conditions that taxed my health and my sanity, because of the inadequate salary I was getting; constant mockery of my American accent which persisted—try as I did to master Hebrew fluently; and always, always the pitiful need to defend myself against the distorted image of the American Jew, killing time . . . looking for self-satisfaction in . . . “his home away from home.” After only one year, I ran out of energy, hope, and purpose and, reluctantly, still full of conflicts, I decided unhappily to return to America.

Mr. Sanders has done a great service to this COMMENTARY subscriber in his clear and sympathetic account of the plight of the well-meaning American Jew living in Israel who's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

Deanna Greenstein
Washington, D.C.

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To the Editor:

. . . Living in Israel, I came across attitudes similar to the ones Mr. Sanders describes so well, but I do not agree with him that the “vacillation” of American Jews about aliyah is due to such obvious things as jobs, hot water, or central heating. . . . Neither heat nor hot water nor hostile reactions from a few Israelis . . . caused me to return to America. Primarily, I missed having freedom of choice—to choose whether or not I wanted to travel on the Sabbath; to choose, on the kibbutz, the task most suitable to my abilities and the needs of the group; and, finally, to choose “non-Jewish” values, if I wanted to. . . .

. . . Listening to all those discourses about the courage and fortitude of that little country, I often found myself wondering where a Jew might go to escape enforced . . . conformity, chauvinism, excessive militarism . . . and provinciality. Accepting the imperfect, I chose to sail on the first boat going back to New York. (Both the heat and hot water, I might add, are pretty deficient in my apartment here in New York City.)

Rochelle M. Corson
New York City

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To the Editor:

. . . By stressing the matter of material comforts as the major deterrent to American settlement in Israel, Mr. Sanders perpetuates an Israeli myth, and skirts . . . the realities of the situation. American-Jewish youths have been willing to make greater sacrifices than the ones required to live in Israel; they have gone South to work for civil rights, or joined the Peace Corps and been sent all over the world. But surprisingly few have been willing to make the . . . pilgrimage to Israel.

No doubt, material considerations are a factor . . . both for American Jewry as a community and for individual American Jews. But . . . these are only secondary. . . . The basic problem is not Israel's standard of living, but her way of life. (Indeed, it was my impression that for middle-class professionals and those with technical skills, the physical sacrifice that is entailed in relocation in Israel was on the whole relatively small. . . .)

What surprised me during my stay in Israel, though I had been amply warned about it, was the lack of attraction I felt for Israel's urban life, and I heard the same from old friends who have even chosen to live there. On those occasions when they talked in terms of “sacrifices” or of what had delayed their decision about settling in Israel, their complaints were almost always about cultural and social matters—the coldness and parochialism of the country, for example—rather than about such things as plumbing and automobiles.

Israeli society today is uncertainly balanced between various modes of social life. . . . Some departure from the restrictive mold of the central European ideological universe of the 1920's is necessary . . . but how creative Israel will be in developing new forms is not yet clear. In the interim, the strain is evident in the excessive stratification of the society along religious, political, and ethnic lines, as well as in the coldness of individuals toward one another and the lack of grace in day-to-day relationships. There is yet to emerge some sort of cultural synthesis, and the willingness to accept people of diverse cultural backgrounds for their own sakes. . . . It is a paradox that the lack of just this sort of synthesis is a deterrent to the immigration of Americans who could, in fact, contribute a great deal to its creation.

Samuel Krislov
Department of Political Science
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, Minnesota

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To the Editor:

Having just returned from a summer vacation in Israel under the Patwa-Swip program [Professional and Technical Workers Aliyah—Summer Work in Israel Program] sponsored by the Jewish Agency, I read Ronald Sanders's article eagerly. . . . Was he reading my mind and my emotions when he called Jerusalem the “meeting-point between earth and paradise”? The mesmerizing effect that Israel has on young people, particularly students, is not quite like anything in this world . . . yet I remain both an Israeli and an American. Was the summer a dream? Will I ever go back? Will any of the 57 students on the Patwa program return?

Sheila Wishengrad
Bronx, New York

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To the Editor:

. . . Ronald Sanders quotes an Israeli student's impressions of Americans studying at the Hebrew University as follows: “They come here, these little boys and girls, get fat allowances from their fathers, and live in nice, well-heated rooms. They go around together to all the places Israeli students can't afford . . . and go rushing off at the end of the year to tell everybody back home how disappointed they are in it all.”

. . . Yet in my frequent contacts with Israelis at the Hebrew University I have not encountered any who voiced sentiments of that kind. There are criticisms leveled at the Americans by their Israeli classmates (just as there are criticisms of the Israelis by Americans), but these are about such questions as commitment to Israel, diaspora Judaism, and so on, rather than “fat allowances” or “well-heated rooms.” I don't doubt that Mr. Sanders's quotation is authentic, but it is only fair to point out that it is not typical of most Israeli students . . . and decidedly unfair to American students studying in Israel as well.

Americans at the Hebrew University are by no means “little boys and girls”; they are students in their junior year and upward; last year, for example, there were almost sixty graduate students among them. They live in regular student dormitories . . . or, because of a dire shortage of dormitory space, they take rooms in town similar to those occupied by other students, Israeli and foreign. They tour the country together with Israeli students, staying at youth hostels or outdoors in their sleeping-bags, and enjoying it immensely. Anyone who has talked to the American students in Jerusalem . . . could have told Mr. Sanders that far from being disappointed in it all, they consider the experience unforgettable. So much so, that each year a number of students who come for a year of study in Jerusalem decide to remain for a longer period; others return to Israel to do graduate work, to spend a summer, or even to settle. As a matter of fact, elsewhere in his article Mr. Sanders himself says that, “Typically, the American settler first arrives in Israel either as a tourist or as a student . . .” Quite true, and indicative of the fact that by and large, Americans at the Hebrew University do not fit the picture evoked by Mr. Sanders's quotation. . . .

(Dr.) Yehezkel Cohen
Overseas Student Adviser
The Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel

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Mr. Sanders writes:

The Israeli student's statement quoted by Dr. Cohen was only one of several of that nature that I heard during my stay in Israel. Since my method of inquiry was simply to hang around lecture-halls and other places where students gathered, in no other capacity than that of a private individual, I might have had a better chance to hear off-the-record remarks than Dr. Cohen has had from his official position. The only real question between Dr. Cohen and myself is, how typical are the views expressed in this student's statement? The answer to this question can only be based on personal impressions, and I can only say that, after a year of serious, if informal, investigation into the matter, I find this student's views to be, mutatis mutandis, more widespread than Dr. Cohen feels they are.

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My discussion of the Americans' problems of material comforts in Israel was part of a larger discussion, and, in singling out the former, Miss Corson and Mr. Krislov have attributed to it a larger causative claim than I meant for it to make. I certainly did not say that this “material” problem was “the major deterrent to American settlement in Israel,” as Professor Krislov puts it. Nevertheless, I think both these correspondents are underestimating the extent to which this problem can contribute to deeper-lying maladjustments. Professor Krislov's arguments about civil rights and Peace Corps workers are proof that some idealistic young people are willing to put up with material sacrifices for at least stated periods of time. I don't think this is relevant to the question I dealt with, which was about people—many of them with families—settling down to a permanent way of life.

I thank Miss Greenstein and Miss Wishengrad for their very kind remarks.