Josephson believes that the anniversary effort simply got caught in the endless web of Israeli politics. “I’m more saddened than angry about the whole thing. A lot of Israelis don’t understand Americans and a lot of Americans don’t understand Israelis. Clearly, we missed out on a great opportunity to bring everyone together.”

Not long ago, there would have been no need to manufacture an event around which Jews from the two countries could come together. American-Israeli unity was a given, as natural as the seasonal rhythms of the festivals that mark the Hebrew calendar. It is accepted wisdom that in the course of modern Jewish history, no ideology, no set of values, and no single occurrence -- not even the Holocaust -- has been as unifying a force for Jews as the existence of the state of Israel.

The human drama of Israel’s creation and the improbability of its survival still leave many Jews breathless. “Stop just for a moment and consider where the Jewish people were after World War II and the Holocaust,” says David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, “stateless, powerless, decimated. Not only does this new Jewish state survive and overcome war, terrorism, economic boycotts, and persistent attempts at diplomatic isolation, but it fulfills this unprecedented notion that it is a home and a haven for the world’s Jews.

“So in addition to this extraordinary story of the will to live and thrive and prosper,” Harris says, “you have a story of return and renewal. The tale of a country the size of New Jersey receiving -- while fighting for its survival against six armies -- Jews from 100 countries who speak 110 different languages. And it successfully manages this Herculean task of integrating Jews from around the world of various historic, religious, political, and social experiences based on one fact -- they all share the same Jewish identity.”

But Harris and his peers at the major Jewish organizations know the American-Israeli relationship faces an uncertain future, one in which there’ll be a desperate search for ways to maintain the synapses that have so effectively carried the impulses back and forth for the first 50 years. Some of the distancing that’s occurred is the natural result of evolution. If two brothers left Russia in the early forties and one went to Palestine and the other came to America, their descendants today would be second cousins. The next generation will be third cousins. So there is an ongoing shift, from a sibling relationship to one of distant relatives.

The change in the dynamic of the relationship is also a measure of how successful each community has been and how differently they have developed. In America, the flip side to the intermarriage-assimilation-indifference hysteria is that Jews have accomplished exactly what they wanted to over the past 50 years. They strove to be fully accepted and to function as equal partners in America, economically, politically, socially, and culturally. And in five decades, they’ve achieved that.

In fact, they’ve achieved more than that. Not only do Jews now think and act like Americans; Americans now think and act like Jews. There’s been a slow Judaizing of America in which it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see where one begins and the other ends. Are Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Billy Crystal Jewish comedians or American comedians? Or both? Which sensibility does their view of the world represent?

The downside to this commingling has been the dilution and in some cases the complete disappearance of a distinctive Jewish culture among mainstream American Jews. As a result, it’s become more difficult to feel Jewish without an institutional connection. And the phenomenon of the completely secular American Zionist whose whole life is Israel -- the story of many Jews over 60 -- is largely a thing of the past. The connective tissue between the two communities is, increasingly, religious commitment.

“So have we stood back and enjoyed this wonderful American success?” asks Gary Tobin at Brandeis. “No. We’ve turned it into the intermarriage crisis. We don’t know how to deal with normality. As American Jews, we should take the next twenty years to get our house in order; that’s the most important aspect of relating to Israel. Because right now, the American Jewish community is behaving in ways that are insecure, confused, backward-looking, and neurotic.”