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Marking two years after that deadly assault of October 7, 2023, which deeply affected global Jewish populations like no other occurrence since the establishment of the Jewish state.

Among Jewish people the event proved profoundly disturbing. For Israel as a nation, it was a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist movement was founded on the assumption that the Jewish state would prevent similar tragedies occurring in the future.

Military action was inevitable. However, the particular response Israel pursued – the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip, the casualties of numerous ordinary people – represented a decision. And this choice created complexity in the way numerous US Jewish community members grappled with the initial assault that set it in motion, and presently makes difficult their observance of the day. How can someone grieve and remember an atrocity affecting their nation in the midst of a catastrophe done to a different population attributed to their identity?

The Difficulty of Grieving

The difficulty of mourning exists because of the circumstance where there is no consensus about what any of this means. Actually, within US Jewish circles, this two-year period have seen the disintegration of a fifty-year consensus on Zionism itself.

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus across American Jewish populations can be traced to an early twentieth-century publication authored by an attorney subsequently appointed high court jurist Louis Brandeis named “The Jewish Question; Addressing the Challenge”. However, the agreement really takes hold subsequent to the six-day war in 1967. Before then, American Jewry housed a vulnerable but enduring parallel existence among different factions that had different opinions regarding the need of a Jewish state – Zionists, neutral parties and opponents.

Previous Developments

This parallel existence persisted during the mid-twentieth century, in remnants of leftist Jewish organizations, through the non-aligned US Jewish group, among the opposing American Council for Judaism and comparable entities. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the leader of the theological institution, the Zionist movement had greater religious significance than political, and he did not permit performance of Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in the early 1960s. Nor were Zionism and pro-Israelism the main element within modern Orthodox Judaism until after the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

However following Israel routed its neighbors during the 1967 conflict that year, occupying territories including the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish perspective on the nation evolved considerably. The military success, combined with persistent concerns of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in a growing belief in the country’s critical importance to the Jewish people, and generated admiration in its resilience. Language about the remarkable aspect of the victory and the “liberation” of land provided the Zionist project a religious, potentially salvific, significance. In that triumphant era, considerable existing hesitation toward Israel dissipated. In that decade, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Agreement and Its Boundaries

The unified position left out Haredi Jews – who generally maintained Israel should only emerge by a traditional rendering of redemption – however joined Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox and most secular Jews. The predominant version of the consensus, identified as liberal Zionism, was founded on the idea regarding Israel as a liberal and democratic – though Jewish-centered – nation. Numerous US Jews saw the control of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands post-1967 as not permanent, thinking that a resolution was forthcoming that would maintain a Jewish majority in pre-1967 Israel and neighbor recognition of the nation.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans were raised with support for Israel a fundamental aspect of their Jewish identity. The nation became a key component within religious instruction. Israeli national day evolved into a religious observance. National symbols decorated most synagogues. Youth programs were permeated with national melodies and education of modern Hebrew, with Israeli guests instructing US young people Israeli culture. Visits to Israel increased and reached new heights via educational trips by 1999, providing no-cost visits to Israel became available to young American Jews. The nation influenced virtually all areas of US Jewish life.

Evolving Situation

Ironically, in these decades post-1967, Jewish Americans became adept in religious diversity. Tolerance and dialogue between Jewish denominations grew.

However regarding Zionism and Israel – that represented tolerance reached its limit. You could be a right-leaning advocate or a progressive supporter, yet backing Israel as a Jewish state remained unquestioned, and questioning that perspective placed you beyond accepted boundaries – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication described it in writing recently.

But now, under the weight of the devastation in Gaza, starvation, young victims and outrage regarding the refusal of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their responsibility, that agreement has disintegrated. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer