🔗 Share this article

It has been the deadly assault of the events of October 7th, which deeply affected world Jewry like no other occurrence since the creation of Israel as a nation.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For Israel as a nation, it was a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist project rested on the presumption that Israel could stop things like this repeating.

Military action seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the casualties of numerous ordinary people – was a choice. This selected path complicated the perspective of many US Jewish community members grappled with the October 7th events that precipitated the response, and it now complicates their commemoration of the anniversary. How does one grieve and remember a horrific event against your people while simultaneously a catastrophe being inflicted upon other individuals attributed to their identity?

The Challenge of Remembrance

The difficulty in grieving exists because of the circumstance where there is no consensus regarding the significance of these events. Actually, within US Jewish circles, the last two years have witnessed the collapse of a decades-long consensus on Zionism itself.

The early development of pro-Israel unity within US Jewish communities extends as far back as an early twentieth-century publication by the lawyer and then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis called “The Jewish Problem; How to Solve it”. But the consensus really takes hold subsequent to the six-day war that year. Previously, Jewish Americans maintained a fragile but stable cohabitation between groups holding different opinions about the need for a Jewish nation – pro-Israel advocates, neutral parties and opponents.

Historical Context

This parallel existence continued throughout the 1950s and 60s, within remaining elements of socialist Jewish movements, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, in the anti-Zionist Jewish organization and other organizations. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head at JTS, Zionism had greater religious significance than political, and he forbade the singing of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events in the early 1960s. Additionally, Zionist ideology the main element of Modern Orthodoxy before that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

Yet after Israel defeated neighboring countries in the six-day war during that period, taking control of areas including Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish perspective on the country underwent significant transformation. The military success, combined with persistent concerns about another genocide, produced a developing perspective in the country’s vital role to the Jewish people, and created pride for its strength. Rhetoric about the “miraculous” nature of the victory and the “liberation” of territory assigned the movement a religious, potentially salvific, meaning. During that enthusiastic period, a significant portion of previous uncertainty about Zionism disappeared. In the early 1970s, Publication editor Podhoretz declared: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Unity and Its Limits

The unified position left out the ultra-Orthodox – who generally maintained a Jewish state should only emerge by a traditional rendering of the messiah – however joined Reform Judaism, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of unaffiliated individuals. The predominant version of this agreement, later termed progressive Zionism, was based on the idea in Israel as a liberal and free – though Jewish-centered – nation. Many American Jews saw the administration of Palestinian, Syria's and Egypt's territories following the war as not permanent, assuming that a solution would soon emerge that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance within Israel's original borders and Middle Eastern approval of the state.

Several cohorts of Jewish Americans were thus brought up with support for Israel a core part of their religious identity. Israel became a central part of Jewish education. Israeli national day turned into a celebration. Blue and white banners adorned religious institutions. Summer camps became infused with Israeli songs and learning of the language, with visitors from Israel instructing American teenagers Israeli culture. Trips to the nation expanded and reached new heights through Birthright programs in 1999, offering complimentary travel to the nation was offered to Jewish young adults. Israel permeated almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Changing Dynamics

Interestingly, in these decades post-1967, US Jewish communities developed expertise in religious diversity. Acceptance and communication among different Jewish movements expanded.

However regarding the Israeli situation – there existed tolerance found its boundary. One could identify as a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, but support for Israel as a majority-Jewish country was a given, and criticizing that position positioned you outside mainstream views – a non-conformist, as a Jewish periodical termed it in an essay in 2021.

However currently, amid of the ruin of Gaza, food shortages, child casualties and outrage regarding the refusal by numerous Jewish individuals who refuse to recognize their responsibility, that agreement has broken down. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer