"Jewish identity"---like all ethnic/racial/religious/class identities--was an is easiest to appreciate and fortify where a group is in the minority, preferably a minority that it subject to prejudice by outsiders. It is easy to keep when there is spatial separation, as with the Amish, or in the shtetls of the Pale in Europe the Lower East Side in New York a century ago.

The problems for retaining identity come for some of the following reasons: the environment turns at least neutral and at best friendly; there is assimilation to the surrounding culture; entrance to and exit from the group is more casual and easier to obtain; where intermarriage diffuses the identity of second and third generations.

All these factors are creating problems for the American Jewish communities. Many Jews do not care much about identity, but those who do work to fortify what is left of group coherence. Here again, there are problems: in "the Old Country" one attracting and defining element was Torah, and with it, regular synagogue attendance, or belief in God. I read widely in the Jewish press and find that these three elements are weakening or not even retrievable. For thousands of Jews, Israel and the modern state of Israel served and, for many, they still do. Every opinion survey one friends will make clear that Israel is "it." Yet, again, critics and editorialists from within note considerable decline in support of Israel among younger Jews and exogamous Jews
Moral ambiguity about Israeli policies in respect to Palestinians also causes some stepping back by many Jews, with resultant agony over identity.

Whether Israel can bear all the wait it has been asked to by American Jews is a tough issue. Devotion to broader Jewish history, scriptures, and the like, might reverse some tides, but the tides still flow strongly.