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It has been the deadly assault of 7 October 2023, an event that deeply affected Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence following the founding of Israel as a nation.

For Jews it was profoundly disturbing. For the state of Israel, it was a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist project rested on the assumption that the nation would prevent things like this from ever happening again.

Military action was inevitable. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of many thousands of civilians – constituted a specific policy. This selected path complicated the perspective of many US Jewish community members processed the initial assault that triggered it, and it now complicates the community's observance of the anniversary. How can someone mourn and commemorate an atrocity affecting their nation in the midst of a catastrophe being inflicted upon other individuals attributed to their identity?

The Difficulty of Remembrance

The complexity of mourning exists because of the fact that little unity prevails about the significance of these events. Indeed, within US Jewish circles, the last two years have seen the disintegration of a decades-long consensus regarding Zionism.

The origins of a Zionist consensus across American Jewish populations can be traced to a 1915 essay authored by an attorney and then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis called “Jewish Issues; How to Solve it”. Yet the unity became firmly established subsequent to the 1967 conflict in 1967. Previously, American Jewry maintained a delicate yet functioning coexistence across various segments that had different opinions concerning the necessity of a Jewish state – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

That coexistence endured throughout the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of Jewish socialism, in the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, among the opposing religious group and other organizations. For Louis Finkelstein, the head at JTS, the Zionist movement had greater religious significance than political, and he prohibited the singing of Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in those years. Additionally, support for Israel the main element for contemporary Orthodox communities until after that war. Different Jewish identity models existed alongside.

But after Israel overcame neighboring countries during the 1967 conflict during that period, taking control of areas such as the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with the country changed dramatically. The military success, combined with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, resulted in a developing perspective about the nation's critical importance for Jewish communities, and a source of pride for its strength. Language about the “miraculous” quality of the victory and the freeing of land assigned the movement a spiritual, even messianic, meaning. In those heady years, considerable the remaining ambivalence toward Israel vanished. During the seventies, Writer Norman Podhoretz stated: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Unity and Its Limits

The unified position did not include the ultra-Orthodox – who typically thought Israel should only be established via conventional understanding of the Messiah – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and nearly all unaffiliated individuals. The most popular form of the unified position, what became known as left-leaning Zionism, was based on the conviction regarding Israel as a liberal and free – albeit ethnocentric – state. Numerous US Jews viewed the control of Palestinian, Syria's and Egyptian lands following the war as provisional, assuming that a solution would soon emerge that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the state.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans were thus brought up with pro-Israel ideology a core part of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part within religious instruction. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. Blue and white banners decorated religious institutions. Youth programs integrated with Hebrew music and the study of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting instructing US young people Israeli customs. Visits to Israel grew and peaked through Birthright programs by 1999, providing no-cost visits to the country was provided to young American Jews. The nation influenced almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Paradoxically, in these decades following the war, American Jewry grew skilled regarding denominational coexistence. Acceptance and communication across various Jewish groups increased.

Except when it came to support for Israel – that’s where pluralism found its boundary. You could be a conservative supporter or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish state was assumed, and criticizing that narrative positioned you beyond accepted boundaries – outside the community, as a Jewish periodical labeled it in an essay that year.

However currently, during of the ruin within Gaza, famine, young victims and anger about the rejection by numerous Jewish individuals who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that agreement has disintegrated. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer