Barnett starts his book with a story of two banners: one day, as he was driving up to his temple, he noticed that the “Support Israel” banner above the entrance was replaced by a new “Save Darfur” banner. He interprets this new banner as an indication of a growing popularity of tikkun olam activities within the larger American Jewish community. While he attributes this trend in part to a more general wave of voluntarism and humanitarianism across American society, Barnett argues that it is also indicative of changes in how American Jews view their relationship with Israel. The main questions Barnett presents in his book thus concern the relationship between tikkun olam and Israel: Is the greater status of tikkun olam part of a growing “distancing” and ambivalence of American Jews towards Israel? And does Israel become an acceptable outlet only for those looking to accentuate their particularism, but a dead end for those wanting to express their universalism?

Barnett tackles these questions through his use of the concept of “Jewish Foreign Policy.” The history of American Jewry, according to Barnett, reflects the Jews’ changing understandings of how they should best protect their interests and promote their values in the world: Should they see their security as bound up with a culture of cosmopolitanism and liberalism that was the basis of their acceptance into American society, or should they give more emphasis to tribalism and to the need to protect themselves against external and internal threats to Jewish survival? Analyzing the history of the foreign policies of American Jews through this lens, he wonders how intertwined cosmopolitanism and tribalism are and how the internal balance between them changes over time. In a most fascinating and original portrayal of American Jewish history, starting from the mid-nineteenth century, Barnett recounts a story of five periods, distinguished from each other by a changing balance between cosmopolitanism and tribalism. Within this larger historical narrative, the post-1967 era's exhibit of Jewish tribalism is depicted as a temporary aberration. The more general trend, both during the Holocaust and post-1948, was an almost instinctive embracement of liberalism and pluralism, in the spirit of prophetic Judaism, as the best means to maintain Jewish security. During most of their history, the political theology of prophetic Judaism allowed American Jews to maintain their group identity in a manner that created a virtuous, friction-retardant cycle between the particular and the universal.

It was only during the two decades after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War that the balance between universalism and particularism was perceived as dependent upon a vigilant struggle against external and internal threats to Jewish survival and not upon liberalism and pluralism. According to Barnett, “An American Jewry that once saw security as bound up with a culture of acceptance, now found greater reassurance in the threat and use of force” (18). This particularistic trend led American Jewish identity to become increasingly defined by the twin experiences of victimization (the Holocaust) and redemption (Israel). Love for Israel seemed to come at the expense of cosmopolitan sentiments among American Jews.

However, according to Barnett, since the late twentieth century there are growing signs that American Jewry's tribalism is tapering off and cosmopolitanism with explicit references to the prophetic tradition is experiencing a revival. It is in this historical framework that one must understand the growing inner-Jewish debate concerning whether or not American Jews are becoming increasingly “distant” from Israel. American Jews, Barnett suggests, might simply be returning to where they have always been most comfortable. One should thus speak about an inherent state of contradiction: American Jews remain pro-Israel but they also exhibit a growing ambivalence towards Israel's ethnonational character and policies. This inner tension is most conspicuous among American Jews who want to act as Jews in the support of universal causes. Barnett observes that Israel doesn't feature prominently in discussions about justice among Jewish social justice organizations. They prefer to detach from Israel because it is a polarizing issue that leaves little room for nuance. At the same time, American Jewish tikkun olam organizations want to keep their distance from human rights discourse. Their suspicion of human rights distinguishes them from other, non-Jewish agencies in the relief and development sector, which have mainstreamed rights since the end of the Cold War. The first worry of the American Jewish organizations is that if they adopt the language of rights, they would be forced to address the uncomfortable question of human rights in Israel. In cases where they do adopt the human rights framework, they often feel compelled to ensure their constituents that they do not cooperate with organizations that want to single out or focus excessively on Israel. Consequently, rather than adopting the language of human rights, American Jewish tikkun olam organizations express their commitment to universal values through depoliticized discourses of humanitarianism.

According to Barnett, this ambivalence does not necessarily reflect growing estrangement. American Jews and Israel will remain committed to each other. “Divorce is not an option,” he explains, “they will stay together for the sake of the children and because a separation would be too painful and too destructive to each partner's sense of self” (259). The tension between particularism and universalism is unresolved, and consequently ambivalence will continue to define the relations between the two communities. The question then is not about distancing, but rather whether American and Israeli Jews could become closer. Barnett believes that for this to happen both communities must achieve much closer scores on the particularism/universalism continuum. With this new question and answer he offers a useful reframing of the ongoing heated and sometimes exhausted debate over American Jews’ estrangement from Israel.