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It has been that horrific attack of 7 October 2023, an event that shook Jewish communities worldwide unlike anything else following the creation of the state of Israel.

Within Jewish communities the event proved shocking. For the state of Israel, the situation represented a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist endeavor was founded on the belief which held that the nation would ensure against such atrocities occurring in the future.

Military action appeared unavoidable. But the response undertaken by Israel – the obliteration of Gaza, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands ordinary people – was a choice. And this choice complicated the perspective of many Jewish Americans processed the October 7th events that set it in motion, and it now complicates their remembrance of the day. How does one grieve and remember a horrific event targeting their community in the midst of an atrocity experienced by other individuals in your name?

The Challenge of Grieving

The challenge in grieving lies in the reality that no agreement exists about the implications of these developments. Indeed, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have experienced the collapse of a fifty-year agreement about the Zionist movement.

The origins of pro-Israel unity within US Jewish communities extends as far back as writings from 1915 by the lawyer and then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis titled “The Jewish Question; Finding Solutions”. Yet the unity really takes hold after the six-day war in 1967. Before then, US Jewish communities contained a vulnerable but enduring coexistence across various segments holding diverse perspectives about the need for Israel – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation continued during the post-war decades, in remnants of leftist Jewish organizations, within the neutral US Jewish group, in the anti-Zionist religious group and similar institutions. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the chancellor at JTS, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he did not permit performance of Hatikvah, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in the early 1960s. Additionally, Zionist ideology the main element for contemporary Orthodox communities prior to the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives existed alongside.

However following Israel defeated adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict during that period, taking control of areas such as Palestinian territories, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with the country changed dramatically. The military success, coupled with longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in a developing perspective about the nation's critical importance within Jewish identity, and a source of pride regarding its endurance. Rhetoric concerning the “miraculous” aspect of the victory and the “liberation” of areas provided the Zionist project a theological, potentially salvific, meaning. In those heady years, much of existing hesitation toward Israel disappeared. In that decade, Writer Norman Podhoretz stated: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Unity and Its Limits

The pro-Israel agreement excluded strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained a nation should only be ushered in through traditional interpretation of the messiah – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and most secular Jews. The common interpretation of this agreement, identified as left-leaning Zionism, was established on the conviction about the nation as a liberal and free – though Jewish-centered – country. Many American Jews considered the control of Palestinian, Syria's and Egyptian lands following the war as not permanent, assuming that an agreement was forthcoming that would maintain Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of American Jews were thus brought up with Zionism an essential component of their identity as Jews. The state transformed into an important element within religious instruction. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. Blue and white banners decorated many temples. Summer camps became infused with Hebrew music and education of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting and teaching American teenagers national traditions. Travel to Israel grew and reached new heights with Birthright Israel during that year, when a free trip to the nation became available to young American Jews. The state affected virtually all areas of Jewish American identity.

Shifting Landscape

Interestingly, in these decades post-1967, Jewish Americans became adept in religious diversity. Open-mindedness and communication between Jewish denominations increased.

However regarding support for Israel – that represented tolerance ended. You could be a rightwing Zionist or a leftwing Zionist, yet backing Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and challenging that perspective positioned you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication termed it in an essay in 2021.

Yet presently, under the weight of the devastation of Gaza, famine, child casualties and anger about the rejection within Jewish communities who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that agreement has disintegrated. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer