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Marking two years after the deadly assault of the events of October 7th, which profoundly impacted Jewish communities worldwide unlike anything else following the founding of Israel as a nation.

Among Jewish people it was deeply traumatic. For Israel as a nation, it was a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist endeavor was founded on the assumption which held that the nation would ensure against things like this repeating.

Military action appeared unavoidable. However, the particular response undertaken by Israel – the widespread destruction of Gaza, the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands ordinary people – was a choice. This selected path complicated the way numerous Jewish Americans processed the October 7th events that precipitated the response, and it now complicates their commemoration of the day. How can someone honor and reflect on a tragedy against your people during an atrocity experienced by a different population connected to their community?

The Complexity of Remembrance

The difficulty in grieving lies in the reality that little unity prevails as to the significance of these events. In fact, among Jewish Americans, the last two years have witnessed the breakdown of a half-century-old agreement on Zionism itself.

The origins of a Zionist consensus across American Jewish populations extends as far back as a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar and then future high court jurist Justice Brandeis titled “Jewish Issues; How to Solve it”. Yet the unity really takes hold subsequent to the Six-Day War in 1967. Previously, Jewish Americans maintained a vulnerable but enduring cohabitation between groups that had different opinions regarding the necessity of a Jewish state – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation continued throughout the mid-twentieth century, within remaining elements of socialist Jewish movements, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, within the critical religious group and other organizations. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he prohibited singing Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events during that period. Nor were Zionist ideology the centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy until after that war. Different Jewish identity models remained present.

But after Israel routed adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict in 1967, taking control of areas such as Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish perspective on Israel changed dramatically. The triumphant outcome, combined with persistent concerns regarding repeated persecution, produced a developing perspective in the country’s essential significance within Jewish identity, and a source of pride in its resilience. Language about the remarkable nature of the success and the freeing of land assigned the movement a spiritual, potentially salvific, meaning. In that triumphant era, considerable existing hesitation about Zionism disappeared. In the early 1970s, Writer the commentator declared: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Agreement and Its Boundaries

The Zionist consensus left out strictly Orthodox communities – who largely believed a Jewish state should only be ushered in through traditional interpretation of redemption – however joined Reform, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The common interpretation of the unified position, what became known as liberal Zionism, was established on the conviction about the nation as a liberal and free – albeit ethnocentric – nation. Numerous US Jews saw the control of Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as not permanent, believing that a resolution would soon emerge that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in Israel proper and regional acceptance of the state.

Multiple generations of American Jews were raised with pro-Israel ideology a fundamental aspect of their Jewish identity. The nation became an important element in Jewish learning. Israel’s Independence Day became a Jewish holiday. National symbols were displayed in many temples. Youth programs integrated with Israeli songs and education of modern Hebrew, with visitors from Israel instructing US young people Israeli customs. Travel to Israel expanded and reached new heights through Birthright programs during that year, providing no-cost visits to Israel was offered to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Paradoxically, in these decades after 1967, US Jewish communities developed expertise in religious diversity. Acceptance and communication between Jewish denominations expanded.

However regarding support for Israel – there existed tolerance reached its limit. Individuals might align with a rightwing Zionist or a liberal advocate, however endorsement of the nation as a majority-Jewish country was a given, and challenging that perspective positioned you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as a Jewish periodical termed it in a piece that year.

But now, amid of the devastation in Gaza, starvation, child casualties and anger regarding the refusal of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has collapsed. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer