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Two years have passed since the horrific attack of 7 October 2023, an event that profoundly impacted world Jewry more than any event following the establishment of the Jewish state.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For Israel as a nation, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist project was founded on the assumption that Israel would ensure against such atrocities occurring in the future.

Some form of retaliation was inevitable. However, the particular response Israel pursued – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of numerous of civilians – represented a decision. This particular approach made more difficult how many American Jews processed the October 7th events that set it in motion, and it now complicates the community's observance of that date. How can someone grieve and remember an atrocity against your people in the midst of an atrocity done to another people attributed to their identity?

The Challenge of Grieving

The complexity in grieving stems from the reality that little unity prevails about the significance of these events. In fact, for the American Jewish community, the recent twenty-four months have seen the disintegration of a fifty-year unity about the Zionist movement.

The beginnings of Zionist agreement across American Jewish populations extends as far back as a 1915 essay by the lawyer and then future Supreme Court judge Justice Brandeis called “Jewish Issues; Addressing the Challenge”. Yet the unity really takes hold following the Six-Day War during 1967. Earlier, US Jewish communities maintained a vulnerable but enduring cohabitation across various segments that had diverse perspectives about the requirement of a Jewish state – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

This parallel existence continued during the post-war decades, within remaining elements of Jewish socialism, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, within the critical American Council for Judaism and comparable entities. For Louis Finkelstein, the leader of the theological institution, the Zionist movement was primarily theological than political, and he did not permit singing Israel's anthem, the national song, at JTS ordinations during that period. Nor were support for Israel the central focus within modern Orthodox Judaism until after that war. Alternative Jewish perspectives remained present.

Yet after Israel overcame adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict that year, occupying territories such as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with Israel underwent significant transformation. Israel’s victory, coupled with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, resulted in a developing perspective in the country’s critical importance for Jewish communities, and created pride in its resilience. Discourse about the “miraculous” quality of the outcome and the “liberation” of territory gave Zionism a theological, almost redemptive, significance. During that enthusiastic period, much of previous uncertainty about Zionism disappeared. In that decade, Writer Norman Podhoretz stated: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Consensus and Its Limits

The unified position left out strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained a nation should only be ushered in via conventional understanding of the Messiah – yet included Reform, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and most secular Jews. The predominant version of this agreement, what became known as liberal Zionism, was established on the conviction about the nation as a democratic and democratic – while majority-Jewish – state. Numerous US Jews considered the occupation of Arab, Syria's and Egyptian lands after 1967 as not permanent, believing that a resolution would soon emerge that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and Middle Eastern approval of the state.

Two generations of US Jews were thus brought up with Zionism an essential component of their Jewish identity. The nation became a central part of Jewish education. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. National symbols decorated many temples. Youth programs were permeated with Hebrew music and education of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting educating American youth national traditions. Travel to Israel expanded and peaked with Birthright Israel by 1999, when a free trip to the nation was provided to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated nearly every aspect of Jewish American identity.

Changing Dynamics

Interestingly, throughout these years post-1967, Jewish Americans developed expertise regarding denominational coexistence. Tolerance and communication across various Jewish groups expanded.

Except when it came to Zionism and Israel – that represented diversity reached its limit. One could identify as a right-leaning advocate or a liberal advocate, yet backing Israel as a Jewish homeland was a given, and criticizing that position categorized you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication described it in writing recently.

However currently, under the weight of the ruin in Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and outrage over the denial of many fellow Jews who refuse to recognize their involvement, that unity has disintegrated. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer