🔗 Share this article

It has been the horrific attack of October 7, 2023, which profoundly impacted Jewish communities worldwide unlike anything else since the founding of the Jewish state.

Among Jewish people it was shocking. For the state of Israel, the situation represented a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist endeavor was founded on the presumption that the Jewish state would prevent similar tragedies from ever happening again.

Military action seemed necessary. But the response that Israel implemented – the widespread destruction of Gaza, the killing and maiming of many thousands non-combatants – was a choice. This particular approach made more difficult the way numerous US Jewish community members processed the initial assault that precipitated the response, and it now complicates the community's commemoration of that date. In what way can people honor and reflect on an atrocity against your people in the midst of devastation being inflicted upon a different population connected to their community?

The Complexity of Mourning

The challenge surrounding remembrance exists because of the circumstance where little unity prevails regarding what any of this means. Actually, within US Jewish circles, the recent twenty-four months have seen the collapse of a fifty-year consensus on Zionism itself.

The origins of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar who would later become Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis called “The Jewish Problem; Addressing the Challenge”. However, the agreement really takes hold after the six-day war during 1967. Before then, American Jewry maintained a fragile but stable cohabitation among different factions which maintained a range of views about the need for Israel – Zionists, non-Zionists and opponents.

Previous Developments

That coexistence persisted throughout the mid-twentieth century, in remnants of socialist Jewish movements, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, within the critical Jewish organization and comparable entities. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Zionism was more spiritual instead of governmental, and he prohibited singing Israel's anthem, the Israeli national anthem, at religious school events during that period. Additionally, support for Israel the central focus within modern Orthodox Judaism before the six-day war. Different Jewish identity models existed alongside.

However following Israel defeated adjacent nations in the six-day war that year, taking control of areas including Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, the Golan and East Jerusalem, US Jewish connection with Israel changed dramatically. Israel’s victory, along with enduring anxieties of a “second Holocaust”, led to a developing perspective regarding Israel's essential significance for Jewish communities, and created pride in its resilience. Rhetoric concerning the extraordinary quality of the victory and the freeing of territory gave Zionism a theological, almost redemptive, meaning. In those heady years, much of the remaining ambivalence regarding Zionism vanished. During the seventies, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Consensus and Its Limits

The Zionist consensus did not include Haredi Jews – who typically thought Israel should only be established through traditional interpretation of redemption – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and most secular Jews. The most popular form of this agreement, what became known as left-leaning Zionism, was established on the conviction regarding Israel as a democratic and free – albeit ethnocentric – state. Many American Jews viewed the occupation of Arab, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as temporary, thinking that a resolution was forthcoming that would guarantee Jewish population majority in Israel proper and neighbor recognition of the state.

Two generations of Jewish Americans were raised with Zionism a fundamental aspect of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part in Jewish learning. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. National symbols were displayed in most synagogues. Seasonal activities integrated with Hebrew music and the study of contemporary Hebrew, with Israeli guests instructing American youth national traditions. Trips to the nation expanded and reached new heights with Birthright Israel during that year, when a free trip to the country was offered to young American Jews. The nation influenced almost the entirety of Jewish American identity.

Evolving Situation

Paradoxically, during this period following the war, US Jewish communities became adept in religious diversity. Acceptance and communication across various Jewish groups grew.

Except when it came to support for Israel – there existed diversity found its boundary. You could be a rightwing Zionist or a progressive supporter, yet backing Israel as a Jewish homeland was assumed, and questioning that perspective placed you beyond accepted boundaries – a non-conformist, as Tablet magazine described it in an essay in 2021.

But now, amid of the devastation within Gaza, starvation, child casualties and frustration regarding the refusal by numerous Jewish individuals who refuse to recognize their responsibility, that unity has collapsed. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer