🔗 Share this article

Marking two years after that horrific attack of October 7, 2023, an event that shook world Jewry unlike anything else since the founding of the state of Israel.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist endeavor rested on the belief which held that the Jewish state would prevent similar tragedies repeating.

A response appeared unavoidable. But the response that Israel implemented – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands non-combatants – represented a decision. And this choice created complexity in how many Jewish Americans processed the attack that triggered it, and presently makes difficult the community's observance of the anniversary. In what way can people grieve and remember a horrific event affecting their nation while simultaneously devastation done to a different population connected to their community?

The Complexity of Mourning

The difficulty surrounding remembrance lies in the circumstance where little unity prevails as to what any of this means. Actually, for the American Jewish community, the recent twenty-four months have experienced the breakdown of a decades-long unity regarding Zionism.

The origins of Zionist agreement across American Jewish populations dates back to an early twentieth-century publication written by a legal scholar and then future supreme court justice Justice Brandeis named “The Jewish Problem; How to Solve it”. However, the agreement really takes hold subsequent to the six-day war in 1967. Previously, US Jewish communities maintained a delicate yet functioning cohabitation between groups holding diverse perspectives about the necessity for a Jewish nation – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Previous Developments

That coexistence persisted during the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of socialist Jewish movements, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, in the anti-Zionist Jewish organization and other organizations. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the leader at JTS, pro-Israel ideology was primarily theological rather than political, and he did not permit singing the Israeli national anthem, the national song, at religious school events in those years. Nor were support for Israel the main element for contemporary Orthodox communities until after that war. Alternative Jewish perspectives remained present.

But after Israel defeated adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict in 1967, seizing land comprising the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish relationship to Israel underwent significant transformation. The triumphant outcome, coupled with enduring anxieties of a “second Holocaust”, produced a developing perspective in the country’s vital role within Jewish identity, and generated admiration regarding its endurance. Language about the remarkable nature of the outcome and the reclaiming of areas assigned the movement a spiritual, potentially salvific, significance. In those heady years, considerable existing hesitation regarding Zionism dissipated. In the early 1970s, Writer Podhoretz declared: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Agreement and Restrictions

The pro-Israel agreement left out strictly Orthodox communities – who typically thought a nation should only emerge through traditional interpretation of redemption – but united Reform, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and most secular Jews. The predominant version of the consensus, later termed liberal Zionism, was founded on the conviction in Israel as a liberal and free – albeit ethnocentric – country. Countless Jewish Americans considered the occupation of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands post-1967 as not permanent, thinking that an agreement would soon emerge that would guarantee Jewish population majority within Israel's original borders and neighbor recognition of the nation.

Two generations of US Jews were thus brought up with support for Israel an essential component of their religious identity. The nation became a central part within religious instruction. Israel’s Independence Day evolved into a religious observance. National symbols adorned religious institutions. Summer camps became infused with Hebrew music and learning of the language, with Israelis visiting and teaching American teenagers Israeli culture. Travel to Israel increased and peaked through Birthright programs during that year, providing no-cost visits to the nation became available to young American Jews. The state affected nearly every aspect of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Interestingly, in these decades following the war, American Jewry developed expertise in religious diversity. Tolerance and dialogue among different Jewish movements grew.

Except when it came to support for Israel – there existed diversity reached its limit. You could be a right-leaning advocate or a leftwing Zionist, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish homeland was a given, and criticizing that narrative positioned you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as a Jewish periodical termed it in writing recently.

But now, under the weight of the devastation of Gaza, food shortages, dead and orphaned children and outrage regarding the refusal within Jewish communities who refuse to recognize their complicity, that unity has disintegrated. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer