The Israel connection whose impact on American Jews David Mittelberg examines is thatengendered by a visit to Israel by an American Jew, not that of any special relationship betweenthe nation-state of Israel and of the United States. The book's conclusions, then, are notoffered with an eye toward Israeli or American foreign policy. Instead, they are offered as apossible contribution to those “formulating strategies and allocating resources which willhave an impact on Jewish education and community survival” (p. 2) in the United States.Mittelberg advises those engaged in such activities that the survival of an American Jewishidentity requires not only a religious component, but also an ethnic one based in a Jewishcommunity. Moreover, that community “must choose to exist not mainly for the sake ofphilanthropic, social welfare, and political activities, but as an end unto itself [whose]boundaries include all of Jewish history and Jewish peoplehood” (p. 133).