Dov Waxman, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. x + 316 pp.

This chapter reviews the book Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (2016), by Dov Waxman. Trouble in the Tribe examines the debate over the defection of growing numbers of young Jews from the pro-Israel camp, which Peter Beinart claims is due primarily to their disillusionment with a Jewish state that has betrayed their liberal principles. While many of Beinart’s critics acknowledge that Jewish youth have indeed grown more distant from Israel, they attribute this less to political disillusionment than to a weakening of their Jewish identity. For Waxman, “perhaps the biggest reason why young American Jews tend to be more dovish and critical of Israel is that they are much more likely than older Jews to be the offspring of intermarried couples.”