Opinion
Jewish life in the Diaspora: a Black Hole for Israeli Media
from MichaelFreund.org (via JPost):
Does Israel care about the Diaspora?
Given the breathless and often frenzied pace of events in the Middle East, it is no surprise that Israel’s media is one of the most vibrant and energetic around. Hardly an hour seems to go by without a crisis somewhere coming to the fore, be it in the diplomatic, security or political spheres. Social tensions, the religious-secular divide and even the level of water in the Kinneret provide journalists with plenty of fodder with which to fill the airwaves. Indeed, the idea of a “quiet news cycle” in our part of the world sounds more like a Messianic longing than a candid journalist’s lament.
But for all of their extensive coverage of a wide variety of topics, there is one key subject matter that the Israeli media systematically and consistently overlook: Jewish life in the Diaspora.
Leafing through the daily Hebrew newspapers or watching the evening news, it is easy to forget that there is a big, wide Jewish world out there.
Virtually nothing is written about Jewish life abroad, despite the fact that more than half of the world’s Jews live overseas.
There is no coverage of the challenges that Jews face, their triumphs and setbacks, nor of the rich Jewish intellectual and cultural life that exists.
On the rare occasions when the Diaspora does get a few column inches or a minute or two of airtime, it often revolves around anti-Semitism or scandal, as though that is the sum total of the contemporary Jewish experience.