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Marking two years after the mass murder of the events of October 7th, which shook Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence following the establishment of the state of Israel.

For Jews it was deeply traumatic. For Israel as a nation, it was deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist project had been established on the presumption that Israel would ensure against such atrocities from ever happening again.

A response seemed necessary. However, the particular response Israel pursued – the widespread destruction of Gaza, the casualties of numerous non-combatants – was a choice. This selected path made more difficult how many US Jewish community members understood the initial assault that triggered it, and presently makes difficult the community's commemoration of that date. In what way can people grieve and remember an atrocity affecting their nation in the midst of devastation done to a different population attributed to their identity?

The Challenge of Remembrance

The difficulty in grieving stems from the reality that there is no consensus regarding the implications of these developments. In fact, for the American Jewish community, the recent twenty-four months have witnessed the collapse of a fifty-year agreement about the Zionist movement.

The early development of Zionist agreement across American Jewish populations extends as far back as a 1915 essay authored by an attorney subsequently appointed supreme court justice Justice Brandeis titled “The Jewish Question; Finding Solutions”. But the consensus became firmly established following the 1967 conflict in 1967. Before then, US Jewish communities housed a vulnerable but enduring cohabitation among different factions that had different opinions regarding the need of a Jewish state – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Historical Context

Such cohabitation persisted through the 1950s and 60s, through surviving aspects of socialist Jewish movements, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, among the opposing Jewish organization and other organizations. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the leader of the theological institution, the Zionist movement was primarily theological instead of governmental, and he prohibited singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, during seminary ceremonies in those years. Additionally, support for Israel the centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy prior to that war. Different Jewish identity models remained present.

Yet after Israel overcame adjacent nations in that war during that period, seizing land comprising Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with the nation evolved considerably. The military success, coupled with enduring anxieties about another genocide, led to a growing belief in the country’s critical importance for Jewish communities, and generated admiration for its strength. Rhetoric concerning the “miraculous” quality of the outcome and the reclaiming of land provided the Zionist project a theological, even messianic, significance. In those heady years, considerable the remaining ambivalence about Zionism dissipated. In that decade, Writer Norman Podhoretz declared: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Consensus and Its Boundaries

The unified position left out the ultra-Orthodox – who largely believed a nation should only emerge through traditional interpretation of the messiah – yet included Reform Judaism, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of secular Jews. The common interpretation of the consensus, later termed progressive Zionism, was founded on the idea in Israel as a democratic and democratic – albeit ethnocentric – country. Many American Jews considered the administration of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands following the war as provisional, assuming that an agreement would soon emerge that would maintain Jewish demographic dominance within Israel's original borders and regional acceptance of the state.

Several cohorts of Jewish Americans grew up with pro-Israel ideology a core part of their identity as Jews. The nation became a central part of Jewish education. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. Israeli flags decorated many temples. Summer camps were permeated with national melodies and learning of modern Hebrew, with visitors from Israel instructing American youth Israeli customs. Trips to the nation grew and reached new heights with Birthright Israel in 1999, offering complimentary travel to the nation was provided to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated virtually all areas of US Jewish life.

Changing Dynamics

Ironically, throughout these years post-1967, Jewish Americans became adept at religious pluralism. Open-mindedness and dialogue between Jewish denominations grew.

However regarding support for Israel – that’s where tolerance ended. You could be a right-leaning advocate or a leftwing Zionist, yet backing Israel as a Jewish homeland was a given, and questioning that perspective placed you outside the consensus – outside the community, as one publication labeled it in an essay in 2021.

Yet presently, amid of the ruin within Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration over the denial within Jewish communities who refuse to recognize their involvement, that agreement has collapsed. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer