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Marking two years after the deadly assault of 7 October 2023, which shook global Jewish populations like no other occurrence since the creation of Israel as a nation.

Among Jewish people the event proved profoundly disturbing. For Israel as a nation, it was a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist endeavor rested on the belief which held that the Jewish state would ensure against similar tragedies from ever happening again.

Military action appeared unavoidable. But the response Israel pursued – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of civilians – was a choice. And this choice made more difficult the way numerous Jewish Americans processed the initial assault that precipitated the response, and it now complicates the community's commemoration of that date. In what way can people honor and reflect on a horrific event against your people in the midst of an atrocity experienced by a different population in your name?

The Difficulty of Remembrance

The challenge of mourning exists because of the reality that little unity prevails regarding what any of this means. Indeed, for the American Jewish community, this two-year period have experienced the breakdown of a fifty-year consensus about the Zionist movement.

The early development of a Zionist consensus across American Jewish populations dates back to a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar subsequently appointed Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis called “Jewish Issues; Finding Solutions”. But the consensus really takes hold following the Six-Day War during 1967. Previously, American Jewry maintained a fragile but stable parallel existence between groups holding diverse perspectives concerning the necessity for a Jewish nation – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

That coexistence endured during the post-war decades, through surviving aspects of Jewish socialism, within the neutral American Jewish Committee, within the critical religious group and similar institutions. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the leader of the theological institution, Zionism was more spiritual than political, and he did not permit performance of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in those years. Additionally, Zionism and pro-Israelism the centerpiece within modern Orthodox Judaism before that war. Different Jewish identity models coexisted.

Yet after Israel defeated adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict in 1967, occupying territories comprising Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with Israel changed dramatically. Israel’s victory, along with persistent concerns regarding repeated persecution, led to a developing perspective in the country’s essential significance for Jewish communities, and created pride in its resilience. Rhetoric about the remarkable quality of the outcome and the reclaiming of land provided the movement a spiritual, even messianic, significance. In that triumphant era, much of the remaining ambivalence about Zionism vanished. In that decade, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz declared: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Consensus and Restrictions

The unified position excluded Haredi Jews – who generally maintained a Jewish state should only emerge by a traditional rendering of redemption – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The most popular form of this agreement, identified as left-leaning Zionism, was founded on the conviction regarding Israel as a progressive and free – though Jewish-centered – state. Numerous US Jews saw the control of Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as provisional, thinking that a resolution was imminent that would ensure Jewish demographic dominance in Israel proper and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of US Jews were thus brought up with Zionism a core part of their Jewish identity. The nation became an important element of Jewish education. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. Blue and white banners were displayed in most synagogues. Summer camps were permeated with Hebrew music and the study of contemporary Hebrew, with Israelis visiting instructing American youth Israeli culture. Trips to the nation increased and peaked with Birthright Israel during that year, offering complimentary travel to Israel was provided to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated virtually all areas of US Jewish life.

Evolving Situation

Interestingly, during this period after 1967, American Jewry developed expertise regarding denominational coexistence. Acceptance and communication between Jewish denominations increased.

However regarding support for Israel – that’s where diversity ended. You could be a right-leaning advocate or a liberal advocate, yet backing Israel as a Jewish state was assumed, and questioning that perspective placed you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as Tablet magazine labeled it in an essay that year.

Yet presently, during of the ruin of Gaza, food shortages, young victims and frustration over the denial by numerous Jewish individuals who refuse to recognize their involvement, that agreement has broken down. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer