The Dissolution of a Zionist Consensus Within American Jews: What's Emerging Now.
Marking two years after that mass murder of October 7, 2023, which shook Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence following the creation of the Jewish state.
Among Jewish people the event proved profoundly disturbing. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist movement was founded on the assumption that the Jewish state would ensure against similar tragedies occurring in the future.
Military action was inevitable. Yet the chosen course Israel pursued – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands ordinary people – constituted a specific policy. This particular approach created complexity in the perspective of many Jewish Americans processed the initial assault that triggered it, and presently makes difficult their observance of the anniversary. How can someone grieve and remember an atrocity against your people during a catastrophe being inflicted upon another people connected to their community?
The Difficulty of Grieving
The challenge in grieving exists because of the circumstance where there is no consensus as to the implications of these developments. Actually, for the American Jewish community, the recent twenty-four months have experienced the breakdown of a fifty-year agreement regarding Zionism.
The early development of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as writings from 1915 by the lawyer and then future high court jurist Justice Brandeis titled “The Jewish Question; Finding Solutions”. But the consensus became firmly established after the 1967 conflict in 1967. Previously, US Jewish communities housed a delicate yet functioning parallel existence between groups holding a range of views concerning the necessity for Israel – pro-Israel advocates, non-Zionists and opponents.
Previous Developments
This parallel existence persisted through the post-war decades, within remaining elements of Jewish socialism, through the non-aligned US Jewish group, among the opposing Jewish organization and similar institutions. For Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor at JTS, the Zionist movement was primarily theological than political, and he did not permit the singing of the Israeli national anthem, the Israeli national anthem, during seminary ceremonies during that period. Furthermore, support for Israel the main element of Modern Orthodoxy before that war. Different Jewish identity models coexisted.
But after Israel defeated adjacent nations in the six-day war in 1967, occupying territories comprising the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish perspective on Israel evolved considerably. Israel’s victory, combined with persistent concerns of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in an increasing conviction about the nation's vital role to the Jewish people, and created pride for its strength. Rhetoric concerning the extraordinary nature of the success and the reclaiming of areas provided Zionism a religious, potentially salvific, meaning. During that enthusiastic period, considerable existing hesitation about Zionism vanished. During the seventies, Writer Podhoretz declared: “We are all Zionists now.”
The Agreement and Its Limits
The unified position left out strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained a nation should only be established by a traditional rendering of the Messiah – yet included Reform, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of secular Jews. The most popular form of the unified position, what became known as left-leaning Zionism, was established on the conviction regarding Israel as a liberal and democratic – while majority-Jewish – country. Many American Jews saw the administration of Palestinian, Syria's and Egyptian lands following the war as temporary, assuming that an agreement would soon emerge that would maintain Jewish population majority within Israel's original borders and Middle Eastern approval of the state.
Several cohorts of American Jews grew up with pro-Israel ideology an essential component of their religious identity. The nation became a central part of Jewish education. Israeli national day became a Jewish holiday. National symbols decorated many temples. Summer camps integrated with Hebrew music and learning of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting and teaching US young people Israeli customs. Visits to Israel increased and achieved record numbers through Birthright programs by 1999, when a free trip to the country was offered to young American Jews. The state affected virtually all areas of US Jewish life.
Shifting Landscape
Paradoxically, throughout these years post-1967, Jewish Americans grew skilled at religious pluralism. Open-mindedness and dialogue among different Jewish movements grew.
However regarding support for Israel – that’s where tolerance found its boundary. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish homeland remained unquestioned, and challenging that narrative positioned you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as a Jewish periodical labeled it in an essay in 2021.
But now, under the weight of the destruction within Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration over the denial of many fellow Jews who refuse to recognize their complicity, that consensus has collapsed. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer
