The growing rift between liberal American Jews and the Israeli government was exacerbated last week when the newly appointed Minister of Religious Affairs, David Azoulay, referred to Reform Judaism as "a catastrophe for the people of Israel." 

The liberal Reform movement is important in the United States, but relatively insignificant in Israel, where the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinate is a branch of the government. Most Israeli Jews are either Orthodox or completely non-observant. But the majority of American Jews identify with the liberal Conservative and Reform movements, and this fact has become enormously divisive--particularly as the Rabbinate becomes ever more radically right-wing in its religious rulings and political pronouncements. [...]

While there are some adherents of the Reform and Conservative movement in Israel, the vast majority are immigrants from the United States. For decades, identifying with Israel was important for Reform and Conservative Jews in the diaspora. But the hostility of the Orthodox rabbinate, coupled with the indifference of the politicians, threaten to undermine that once-axiomatic support, which was once an intrinsic part of American Jewish identity. Gary Rosenblatt, the editor and publisher of the New York Jewish Week, wrote in an editorial published last month that the growing rift between U.S. Jews and Israel had "reached crisis proportions."