You have to wait a while — 3,000 words, in fact — to get from the ominous title of a recent article in the Economist to its sort-of-hopeful conclusion.

The article, “Second Thoughts about the Promised Land,” appears in the Jan. 11 edition of the British newsweekly. It suggests that ambivalence toward Israel is growing among Diaspora Jews, saying they no longer put pro-Israel activism or philanthropy at the center of their Jewish identities. Some of this is the function of a secure and self-confident Diaspora, which seems to belie early Zionist warnings that only in a state of their own could Jews determine their own destinies. Some of this is religious and cultural, with a gap growing between Israel’s severely bifurcated religious-secular culture and the more diverse Jewish communities of North America.

And then there’s politics. The article suggests that Israel’s behavior in the territories and Lebanon has proved a turnoff for young Jews, who fear such actions “give grist to anti-Semites.”

But perhaps the greatest cause of this growing disaffection involves the chicken-and-egg of assimilation in a multicultural world. Is the bond between Israel and the Diaspora growing frayed because of the erosion of Jewish identity outside of Israel, or has “Israelism” failed to create strong Jewish identities, as many Jewish philanthropists and educators had hoped it would?

This is hardly stop-the-presses stuff. It is no secret that Israel is no longer the engine for philanthropy that it once was, or that young Jews without a firsthand memory of the Six-Day War are less likely to react viscerally to the needs of Israel. The “Who is a Jew” crisis first rocked the foundation of the Israel-Diaspora relationship more than 15 years ago, and has never really gone away.

Where the Economist explores new territory is in acknowledging not just the decline of a Jewish corporate identity (what sociologist Steven M. Cohen, quoted liberally in the article, calls “peoplehood”), but a concurrent, even contradictory, Jewish cultural and religious revival in the Diaspora. This includes, weirdly enough, Jewish communities in Germany and Russia that are staying put and even flourishing despite those countries’ awful Jewish histories.

Indeed, for all of its ominous talk of disaffection and assimilation, of a Jewish world polarized between a troubled Israel and schizophrenic Diaspora, the article ends on that oddly hopeful note. “[I]ncreasingly,” it concludes, “today’s young Jews see the future not as a choice between Zion and exile, but as a fruitful fusion of both.”

I have no idea if this is true, and I have my doubts. But to quote Hemingway, it’s “pretty to think so.” The idea of a “fruitful fusion” between Zion and exile is an intriguing vision for Jewish education. By contrast, too many educators are struggling with how to reassert Israel’s primacy in their curricula and in their students’ consciousness. On Monday I attended a seminar on “Teaching Modern Israel” at the Bergen County Y, led by Kenneth Stein of Atlanta’s Emory University. Stein made headlines this month after splitting with Jimmy Carter’s think tank over the former president’s Israel book. At the seminar, however, he wore his hat as founder of Emory’s Institute for the Study of Modern Israel. “Israel,” Stein said in his opening session, “is the only item on a massive Jewish agenda that still acts as a nucleus to our identity. It is the only common denominator that unites” the Jews in all their definitions and denominations.

That was undeniably true from about 1967 to 1989. Is it still true today? Should it be?

Imagine an alternative. Imagine programs that dispense with a hierarchy that puts Israel at the top of the scale of contemporary Jewish expressions, but presents it and the Diaspora as two compelling Jewish choices. Considering how few North American Jews make aliya, wouldn’t that be a more honest approach? Imagine programs that not only send young American Jews on free trips to Israel, but that send young Israelis to observe how American synagogues and communities deal with religious and cultural diversity. Imagine a March of the Living where kids visit not only Europe’s charnel houses but its living and breathing Jewish communities, before they head to Israel.

Of course, we should continue to inculcate kids with a deep appreciation for the historical, religious, and contemporary miracle that is Israel. We shouldn’t retreat one inch on our commitments to support the Jewish state financially and politically. But let’s adjust the balance slightly, adding to the discussion an appreciation for Jewish life as it is lived throughout the world, including our own backyards. Israel has enough tsuris, without adding to it the responsibility for solving the Diaspora’s problems with continuity and pluralism.