🔗 Share this article

Marking two years after that deadly assault of 7 October 2023, an event that shook global Jewish populations more than any event since the creation of the Jewish state.

For Jews it was deeply traumatic. For Israel as a nation, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist endeavor was founded on the belief that the nation would prevent similar tragedies from ever happening again.

Military action seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course Israel pursued – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the killing and maiming of numerous ordinary people – constituted a specific policy. And this choice created complexity in the way numerous American Jews processed the October 7th events that precipitated the response, and presently makes difficult the community's observance of the day. How can someone mourn and commemorate a horrific event against your people during an atrocity being inflicted upon another people attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Grieving

The challenge in grieving stems from the reality that there is no consensus as to the implications of these developments. Indeed, within US Jewish circles, the recent twenty-four months have seen the collapse of a half-century-old consensus regarding Zionism.

The early development of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry can be traced to a 1915 essay authored by an attorney who would later become high court jurist Louis Brandeis titled “The Jewish Question; How to Solve it”. But the consensus truly solidified subsequent to the Six-Day War in 1967. Previously, Jewish Americans contained a delicate yet functioning coexistence across various segments holding different opinions about the need for a Jewish nation – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Previous Developments

That coexistence endured throughout the post-war decades, through surviving aspects of leftist Jewish organizations, through the non-aligned Jewish communal organization, among the opposing American Council for Judaism and other organizations. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, the Zionist movement was primarily theological than political, and he forbade singing Hatikvah, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations during that period. Additionally, Zionist ideology the main element of Modern Orthodoxy until after that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

But after Israel routed its neighbors in the six-day war in 1967, seizing land including Palestinian territories, Gaza, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish relationship to the country changed dramatically. The military success, coupled with persistent concerns about another genocide, resulted in a growing belief in the country’s essential significance for Jewish communities, and a source of pride in its resilience. Language about the extraordinary quality of the outcome and the reclaiming of territory gave Zionism a religious, potentially salvific, importance. In those heady years, much of existing hesitation toward Israel dissipated. In the early 1970s, Publication editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Unity and Its Boundaries

The unified position did not include Haredi Jews – who generally maintained Israel should only be established via conventional understanding of the Messiah – yet included Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The predominant version of the consensus, later termed left-leaning Zionism, was based on a belief about the nation as a liberal and free – while majority-Jewish – country. Numerous US Jews viewed the administration of Palestinian, Syria's and Egyptian lands after 1967 as temporary, thinking that a solution was imminent that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the nation.

Several cohorts of Jewish Americans were raised with Zionism a fundamental aspect of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part within religious instruction. Yom Ha'atzmaut evolved into a religious observance. National symbols decorated religious institutions. Youth programs became infused with national melodies and education of contemporary Hebrew, with Israelis visiting instructing US young people Israeli customs. Travel to Israel grew and achieved record numbers with Birthright Israel during that year, when a free trip to the country was provided to Jewish young adults. The state affected almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Ironically, throughout these years following the war, American Jewry grew skilled at religious pluralism. Acceptance and dialogue across various Jewish groups grew.

Yet concerning the Israeli situation – that represented pluralism found its boundary. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, yet backing Israel as a Jewish state remained unquestioned, and questioning that perspective categorized you outside mainstream views – outside the community, as Tablet magazine labeled it in writing that year.

Yet presently, during of the ruin in Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration over the denial of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has broken down. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer