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Marking two years after that mass murder of 7 October 2023, an event that profoundly impacted world Jewry like no other occurrence following the founding of the Jewish state.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For Israel as a nation, the situation represented a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist movement was founded on the belief which held that the Jewish state would ensure against similar tragedies occurring in the future.

A response appeared unavoidable. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the casualties of numerous ordinary people – constituted a specific policy. This selected path complicated how many US Jewish community members grappled with the initial assault that precipitated the response, and it now complicates the community's observance of the anniversary. How does one mourn and commemorate a tragedy targeting their community during an atrocity experienced by other individuals connected to their community?

The Complexity of Grieving

The challenge in grieving lies in the circumstance where no agreement exists as to what any of this means. Actually, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have witnessed the breakdown of a half-century-old unity regarding Zionism.

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus within US Jewish communities extends as far back as a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar and then future high court jurist Justice Brandeis named “Jewish Issues; Finding Solutions”. However, the agreement really takes hold following the 1967 conflict in 1967. Earlier, Jewish Americans contained a vulnerable but enduring coexistence between groups which maintained diverse perspectives about the requirement for Israel – pro-Israel advocates, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Historical Context

This parallel existence persisted throughout the post-war decades, in remnants of Jewish socialism, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, among the opposing religious group and comparable entities. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he prohibited singing Israel's anthem, the national song, at JTS ordinations in those years. Nor were support for Israel the main element within modern Orthodox Judaism prior to the 1967 conflict. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

Yet after Israel routed adjacent nations in that war that year, seizing land including the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and East Jerusalem, US Jewish relationship to the nation evolved considerably. The military success, along with persistent concerns about another genocide, produced a developing perspective in the country’s essential significance to the Jewish people, and generated admiration in its resilience. Language regarding the remarkable quality of the success and the reclaiming of areas assigned the movement a religious, even messianic, importance. In those heady years, much of existing hesitation about Zionism disappeared. During the seventies, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Unity and Its Boundaries

The pro-Israel agreement did not include Haredi Jews – who typically thought a nation should only emerge through traditional interpretation of the messiah – however joined Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The most popular form of the consensus, identified as progressive Zionism, was founded on a belief regarding Israel as a progressive and free – while majority-Jewish – state. Many American Jews saw the administration of local, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as not permanent, believing that a resolution would soon emerge that would ensure Jewish population majority in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the state.

Two generations of American Jews were thus brought up with pro-Israel ideology a fundamental aspect of their religious identity. The state transformed into a key component of Jewish education. Israeli national day turned into a celebration. Israeli flags decorated many temples. Seasonal activities integrated with national melodies and the study of contemporary Hebrew, with Israelis visiting instructing American teenagers Israeli culture. Trips to the nation grew and peaked through Birthright programs by 1999, providing no-cost visits to the country was offered to US Jewish youth. The state affected almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Paradoxically, in these decades following the war, Jewish Americans grew skilled at religious pluralism. Tolerance and discussion between Jewish denominations grew.

However regarding Zionism and Israel – there existed tolerance found its boundary. One could identify as a right-leaning advocate or a liberal advocate, yet backing Israel as a Jewish homeland remained unquestioned, and questioning that narrative placed you beyond accepted boundaries – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication termed it in an essay recently.

But now, during of the ruin in Gaza, famine, child casualties and outrage about the rejection within Jewish communities who avoid admitting their involvement, that consensus has collapsed. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer