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It has been the horrific attack of 7 October 2023, which deeply affected Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence following the creation of Israel as a nation.

Within Jewish communities the event proved shocking. For Israel as a nation, it was a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist project was founded on the belief that Israel would prevent similar tragedies occurring in the future.

A response seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip, the casualties of tens of thousands non-combatants – constituted a specific policy. And this choice created complexity in how many American Jews understood the attack that precipitated the response, and currently challenges the community's remembrance of that date. How does one mourn and commemorate an atrocity affecting their nation while simultaneously a catastrophe done to other individuals attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Remembrance

The difficulty of mourning exists because of the circumstance where little unity prevails about the significance of these events. In fact, among Jewish Americans, the recent twenty-four months have witnessed the breakdown of a fifty-year unity about the Zionist movement.

The origins of a Zionist consensus within US Jewish communities dates back to writings from 1915 by the lawyer subsequently appointed supreme court justice Justice Brandeis named “The Jewish Question; How to Solve it”. But the consensus became firmly established after the Six-Day War during 1967. Earlier, US Jewish communities maintained a vulnerable but enduring coexistence among different factions that had different opinions concerning the requirement for Israel – pro-Israel advocates, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation continued during the 1950s and 60s, through surviving aspects of Jewish socialism, through the non-aligned Jewish communal organization, among the opposing American Council for Judaism and similar institutions. For Louis Finkelstein, the leader of the Jewish Theological Seminary, pro-Israel ideology was more spiritual rather than political, and he forbade singing Hatikvah, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in the early 1960s. Furthermore, support for Israel the central focus for contemporary Orthodox communities until after the 1967 conflict. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

However following Israel routed adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict that year, occupying territories such as the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish perspective on Israel changed dramatically. The triumphant outcome, coupled with longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, produced a developing perspective about the nation's essential significance to the Jewish people, and created pride regarding its endurance. Discourse about the extraordinary aspect of the success and the reclaiming of land assigned the Zionist project a spiritual, potentially salvific, significance. During that enthusiastic period, much of the remaining ambivalence regarding Zionism dissipated. In the early 1970s, Publication editor Norman Podhoretz stated: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Unity and Restrictions

The Zionist consensus did not include strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained Israel should only be ushered in through traditional interpretation of the Messiah – but united Reform, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The most popular form of the consensus, later termed left-leaning Zionism, was founded on the conviction in Israel as a progressive and liberal – while majority-Jewish – state. Many American Jews considered the administration of local, Syrian and Egyptian lands post-1967 as temporary, assuming that an agreement was imminent that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance within Israel's original borders and regional acceptance of Israel.

Several cohorts of US Jews were thus brought up with support for Israel a fundamental aspect of their Jewish identity. Israel became an important element of Jewish education. Israeli national day became a Jewish holiday. Blue and white banners adorned many temples. Youth programs integrated with Hebrew music and education of the language, with Israeli guests educating American youth national traditions. Travel to Israel expanded and achieved record numbers through Birthright programs by 1999, when a free trip to the country was offered to young American Jews. Israel permeated virtually all areas of Jewish American identity.

Shifting Landscape

Ironically, in these decades following the war, Jewish Americans grew skilled in religious diversity. Acceptance and dialogue across various Jewish groups increased.

Except when it came to support for Israel – there existed tolerance ended. You could be a conservative supporter or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish homeland remained unquestioned, and criticizing that narrative positioned you outside the consensus – outside the community, as Tablet magazine termed it in an essay in 2021.

But now, under the weight of the devastation of Gaza, famine, child casualties and outrage about the rejection of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has broken down. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer