Why has J Street struck such a chord – for some happy and for others cursed – in so many people? Earlier this week, I went to Washington, D.C. to attend part of the 2,000 delegate national convention for the not-quite three-year-old lobby that bills itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” (Check it out at http://www.jstreet.org ).

For the most part, I found people who deeply care for Israel but do so along liberal lines. That is, they voice out loud what many American Jews I know say privately: We love Israel but we surely don’t love its actions of West Bank/East Jerusalem settlement building, policies of demolitions of homes of families of Arab terrorists and even the need to maintain a “united, eternal, undivided Jewish capital of Jerusalem.”

Of course, I know plenty of other Jews who agree with the “we love Israel” part but whose concerns are “If we let down our guard, the Arabs will try to overrun the Jewish state, which, after all, they have repeatedly tried to do and keep saying they want to do.”

Frankly put, the public talk at J Street is anathema at an AIPAC convention, the large and very successful pro-Israel lobbying group (http://www.aipac.org).

Mind you, in my view J Street has not always been its own best friend. In its less than three years, it has done real damage to its public standing with a swathe of American Jewish centrists such as myself. For example, it has: been far too late in condemning the clear Iranian nuclear aspirations; not initially admitted it receives funding from the controversial benefactor George Soros; and supported a U.N. resolution that condemned Israeli settlements but did not mention Palestinian terrorism.

In some groups that would rightly command a change in leadership, but J Street’s board has decided to stick with its very talented head, Jeremy Ben-Ami. That’s their choice and I respect his intellect and his talents.

Also, it’s for those mentioned reasons that the Israeli embassy declined to send any representative to the J Street conference, while noting that it is in a dialogue with J Street officials. That was a huge mistake. When we Jews are at our best, we talk to one another about our differences.

It’s flat out wrong for the Israeli government to not openly meet with American Jews who may have different policy views, but whom express their strong support for a strong, democratic Jewish state – a line that gained robust applause when Ambassador Dennis Ross spoke to the group. After all, the J Street advocates are only saying what, depending on the year, between 45 to 55 percent or so of the Israeli public is saying.

That said, perhaps we in the alleged mainstream of Jewish life should look at J Street with a different eye – that of a vehicle to promote responsible Jewish identity. That’s exactly what I told some representatives of the national office and a local activist when I had lunch with them in Baltimore last spring.

“You guys might not realize it,” I told them, “but you have a deep responsibility toward American Jews. The way I see it, your job is to reach out to Jews on the left and the far-left – where there undeniably are anti-Semites – and give them a Jewish organization to feel comfortable in. You guys can really help someone with their Jewish identity.”

I stand by that even more today. And the good thing is I saw people with good Jewish identities of many ages, particularly young adults. I saw some men and women with kippot, and I saw smiling college students and aging veterans of the Jewish peace movement bantering in the hallways and sessions.

They have, in J Street, found a voice. Now I may not agree (and do not) with all of their general stands, but I have something in common with them. I love being Jewish and I love Israel, and I’m not afraid to discuss all types of versions of what that means in a world of increasingly porous identity boundaries. And the rest of us need to open to that conversation as well.

Re the following:

““You guys might not realize it,” I told them, “but you have a deep responsibility toward American Jews. The way I see it, your job is to reach out to Jews on the left and the far-left – where there undeniably are anti-Semites – and give them a Jewish organization to feel comfortable in. You guys can really help someone with their Jewish identity.”

“I stand by that even more today. And the good thing is I saw people with good Jewish identities of many ages, particularly young adults. I saw some men and women with kippot, and I saw smiling college students and aging veterans of the Jewish peace movement bantering in the hallways and sessions.”

I wonder why there can’t be more organizations on the right like J Street who come out and condemn what needs to be legitimately condemned in Medinat Yisra’el, and also condemns the actions of those like George Soros. As a Messianic Jew and registered Republican, I think that some fellow Jews need to emerge out from the Meir Kahane crowd has monopolized and say, “Hey, not all Zionists are Meir Kahanists, Jewish Supremacists, or meshuga haredim.”