JTA — When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote in his new memoir that Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential vetting team asked whether he had ever been a “double agent” for Israel, many Jewish leaders heard something painfully familiar.

“These questions were classic antisemitism,” Deborah Lipstadt, the former US special envoy on antisemitism, wrote on X, a view shared by, among others, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s former leader, and Josh Gottheimer, the Democratic congressman from New Jersey.

These critics agreed that the question put to Shapiro echoed the “dual loyalty” charge: that Jews — especially those with visible ties to Israel — have divided allegiances, loyal first to their people and only conditionally to the countries they serve.

Other Jewish commentators insisted that the questions put to Shapiro by the Harris team were routine, similar to those asked of anyone being vetted for top security clearance. “So please,” Shaul Magid, visiting professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, wrote on Facebook. “Can we just calm down and stop looking like hysterical conspiracy theorists.”

But as the reactions rolled in, so did a quieter, more complicated debate — one that goes to the heart of American Jewish identity. Does the normative American Jewish attachment to Israel — Israeli flags in synagogues, Zionist education in day and Hebrew schools, pride in the young American Jews who serve in the Israeli military — invite accusations of dual loyalty? And if so, should Jews do a better job of explaining how their often fierce attachment to Israel does not compromise their loyalty to America? Should they even have to?

Shapiro, 52, has been open about his connections to Israel, which represent a not unusual arc for a day-school-educated Jew of his generation: a high-school volunteer program affiliated with the IDF, a six-month stint working at the Israeli Embassy in Washington after college, and outspoken views during the Gaza war that combined criticism of Israeli government policy with condemnation of some pro-Palestinian protests.

Those ties, Jewish leaders argue, are well within the American Jewish mainstream — and far from evidence of disloyalty. “No one ever accused Irish Americans of dual loyalty for caring deeply about Ireland,” Foxman wrote. “This reflects something very troubling about our political culture.”

In his memoir, “Where We Keep the Light,” Shapiro wonders whether he was singled out as “the only Jewish guy in the running,” and says he told Harris’s team the questions were offensive. After the New York Times reported the exchange this week, Harris’s team sought to control the damage, telling CNN that every finalist was asked whether they had ever acted as an agent of a foreign government — a standard question on federal vetting forms. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was ultimately chosen, was pressed about his multiple trips to China, where he lived for a year after college, these sources told CNN.

“The crux of vetting is asking uncomfortable and even far-fetched questions,” one person close to the process said. “The point isn’t that you believe it — it’s that it’s on the record.”

Related: Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro comes out swinging on antisemitism. But is it good for the Jews?

Jeffrey Salkin, a rabbi and columnist for Religion News........

© The Times of Israel