Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel by Dov Waxman (Princeton University Press)

This is properly subtitled The American Jewish Conflict over Israel. More, it is an exploration of the evolving foci of diaspora Jewry in the U.S. Delving into religious and political interaction, into the generational drift, into intermarriage and denominational reproductive tendencies, it is a scholarly work, inculcating polls, surveys, statistics, and history. Chapter notes alone, in a font that would induce myopia in an ant, are seventy-one pages long. The bibliography, equally small-writ, is another twenty-five.

Above all, the author is thorough and careful in exploring the growing schism between earlier right-or-wrong diaspora supporters of Israel and an emerging social justice generation with far less connection to holocaust immediacy and the fear of anti-Semitism, Trouble leaves no stone unturned.

I said this is a scholarly work — partially because it is a numbingly repetitious read. Everything seems to be repeated about four times, lest a prior phrasing saying the same thing might have missed the target. There are no short sentences. Additionally, each chapter has a Conclusion segment, sometimes approaching ten percent of the length of the chapter text. And the BOOK has a Conclusion segment.

Absolutely necessary on the shelf of any American politician or social anthropologist; tedious, but necessary.