The Zionist consensus among US Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging
Two
years after the 7 October massacre and the onset of Israel’s slaughter
in Gaza, American Jewry has been profoundly transformed
It
has been two years since the mass murder on 7 October 2023, an event
that shook world Jewry more than any event since the creation of the
state of Israel.
For
Jews it was shocking. For the state of Israel, it was deeply
humiliating. The entire Zionist project was founded on the presumption
that the Jewish state would prevent things like this from ever happening
again.
A
response was inevitable. But the response Israel pursued – the
obliteration of Gaza, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of
civilians – was a choice. And this choice complicated how many American
Jews processed the attack that set it in motion, and it now complicates
the community’s commemoration of the day. How does one mourn and
commemorate an atrocity against your people in the midst of an atrocity
done to another people in your name?
The
complexity of mourning lies in the fact that there is no consensus as to
what any of this means. In fact, for the American Jewish community, the
last two years have seen the collapse of a half-century-old consensus
on Zionism itself.
Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian
The beginnings of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay
by the lawyer and then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis
titled “The Jewish Problem; How to Solve it”. But the consensus really
takes hold after the six-day war in 1967. Before then, American Jewry
housed a fragile but stable coexistence between groups that had a range
of views about the necessity of a Jewish state – Zionists, non-Zionists
and anti-Zionists.
That coexistence persisted
through the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of Jewish socialism, in the
non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, in the anti-Zionist American
Council for Judaism
and other organizations. For Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the
Jewish Theological Seminary, Zionism was more spiritual than political,
and he did not permit singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, at
JTS ordinations in the early 1960s. Nor were Zionism and pro-Israelism
the centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy until after the six-day war. Jewish
identitarian alternatives coexisted.
But after
Israel routed its neighbors in the six-day war in 1967, occupying
territories including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and East
Jerusalem, the American Jewish relationship to the country changed
dramatically. Israel’s victory, along with longstanding fears of a
“second Holocaust”, resulted in a growing belief in the country’s
critical importance to the Jewish people, and a source of pride in its
resilience. Rhetoric about the “miraculous” nature of the victory and
the “liberation” of land gave the Zionist project a religious, even
messianic, significance. In those heady years, much of the remaining
ambivalence about Zionism disappeared. In the early 1970s, Commentary
magazine editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “We are all
Zionists now.”
Pro-Israel protesters hold up placards and Israeli flags in Lafayette Park near the White House in Washington DC on 8 June 1967. Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images
The
Zionist consensus excluded the ultra-Orthodox – who largely believed a
Jewish state should only be ushered in by a traditional rendering of the
messiah – but united Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox and most
non-affiliated Jews. The most popular form of the consensus, what became
known as liberal Zionism, was founded on a belief in Israel as a
liberal and democratic – albeit ethnocentric – state. Many American Jews
saw the occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967
as temporary, believing that a solution was forthcoming that would
ensure a Jewish majority in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of
the state.
Two generations of American Jews
were thus brought up with Zionism a core part of their Jewish identity.
Israel became a central part of Jewish education. Israel’s Independence
Day became a Jewish holiday. Israeli flags adorned most synagogues.
Summer camps became infused with Israeli songs and the study of modern
Hebrew, with Israelis visiting and teaching American youth Israeli
culture. Visits to Israel increased and reached new heights with
Birthright Israel in 1999, when a free trip to Israel was offered to
young American Jews. Israel permeated almost the entirety of the
American Jewish experience.
Supporters of Israel march in a parade to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of Israel in New York on 7 May 1978. Photograph: Peter Keegan/Keystone/Hulton Archive via Getty Images
Ironically,
in these decades after 1967, American Jewry became adept at religious
pluralism. Tolerance and dialogue between Jewish denominations
increased.
Except when it came to Zionism and
Israel – that’s where pluralism reached its limit. You could be a
rightwing Zionist or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a
Jewish state was a given, and questioning that narrative placed you
outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as Tablet magazine termed it in an essay in 2021.
But
now, under the weight of the destruction of Gaza, famine, dead and
orphaned children, and anger over the denial of many fellow Jews who
refuse to recognize their complicity, that consensus has collapsed. The
liberal Zionist “center” has lost its hegemonic hold on American Jewry.
For
some, that has meant a move to the right; after 7 October many American
Jews defended Israel’s actions as necessary and justifiable. Witnessing
Israel’s response prompted others to move to the left and question the
Zionist project entirely. That is especially true for young American
Jews on the left, for whom anti-Zionism has as much to do with
redefining their own Jewish identity as it does with their critique of
the country.
Recently, Arielle Angel, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents wrote a piece titled: “We need new Jewish institutions”. They have arrived, in many forms: new and growing non- or anti-Zionist congregations and minyanim
(Jewish prayer groups); the precipitous rise in membership in
non-Zionist Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace or
IfNotNow; the founding of at least one non-Zionist Jewish Day School in
Somerville, MA; a revival of interest in Yiddish language and culture;
non-Zionist Jewish student groups (there are three at Harvard where I
teach); the rise in popularity of Jewish Currents; and a new
organization called The Jewish Left out of Boston University. (The
Jewish Left’s 2025 conference had about 800 attenders; in 2024 there
were about 300.) These are just a few examples.
Jews and supporters hold a Passover Seder to protest against the war in Gaza in Brooklyn, New York, on 23 April 2024. Photograph: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Liberal
Zionism remains on the scene in many synagogues and institutional
Jewish life – but increasingly finds itself on the defensive, against
both the right and the left. Its message – that Israel can return to
some sort of “Jewish and democratic” path that arguably never existed –
has become almost inchoate. Meanwhile, Israel becomes more and more
illiberal, a two-state solution seems almost absurdly utopian, and a
one-state reality – where Israel controls all of the territory and
dominion of all its people between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean sea – becomes entrenched.
We
find ourselves at a moment where the compatibility of “liberalism” and
“Zionism” feels increasingly untenable. How can a state that privileges
its Jewish citizens while so egregiously devaluing the lives of the
Palestinians under its control ever be called liberal? Basic principles
of liberalism that include equality and the protection of individual
rights for all do not cohere with present-day Israel even on a generous
reading. The permanent occupation, to say nothing of the destruction of
Gaza, has undermined any plausible claim to Israel as a “liberal”
country.
This rift has caused significant
damage in American Jewry. It has spurred family feuds, broken
friendships, attempts to ostracize those who oppose Israel, and even
cases of people being denied or fired from jobs in Jewish communal life.
Over
the last two years, I have heard liberal Zionists say that this
disaffection is likely temporary, assuming young Jews will return to the
fold when the war ends. I think that is a mistake. For many of these
talented and energetic young Jews, the liberal Zionist narrative is in
their rearview mirror. They are building a new Jewish future and new
institutions where Israel may or may not play a role – but it will not
be at the center.
Is this schism good for
American Jewry? Not only do I think it is, I think it is essential to
the health of Jewish life. Hannah Arendt reminds us that ideological
hegemony is never good for any collective; hegemony yields laziness and
overconfidence and is ultimately self-destructive. In her 1948 essay, To
Save the Jewish Homeland, she writes:
Unanimity
of opinion is a very ominous phenomenon, and one characteristic of our
modern mass age. It destroys social and personal life, which is based on
the fact that we are different by nature and by conviction. To hold
different opinions and to be aware that other people think differently
on the same issue shields us from that Godlike certainty which stops all
discussion and reduces social relationships to those of an ant heap.
In Origins of Totalitarianism she
wrote that such hegemony can be a first stage of totalitarianism in a
polity with power. Jews in America do not have the kind of power she was
referring to, but they do have responsibility for the health of their
collective. Ideological hegemony is not healthy.
Israeli
troops search the scene of a rocket attack in the Israeli kibbutz of
Kfar Aza on the border with the Gaza Strip on 11 October 2023. Photograph: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images
Zionism
in America will continue, and it may even thrive. But it will no longer
serve as a gatekeeper to Jewish life. If American Zionists continue to
deny a place at the table for those who are not Zionists, they will fade
into increasing irrelevance as young Jews build institutions of their
own. And they will soon attain considerable resources and power.
The
first anniversary of any tragedy is focused on the proximate past. In
Judaism, the first anniversary is ritualized in some communities as an
“unveiling” of the tombstone. The second anniversary has no unique
ritual – perhaps because it heralds a turn from the past to the future.
That does not mean the time for commemoration is over. But the distance
allows for a view of the consequences and repercussions of the tragedy.
People embrace each other during a Yizkor prayer service on Yom Kippur on Thursday. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian
More
than 2,000 years ago, when Jewish leaders knew the Jerusalem Temple
would fall, they left it behind and constructed a new Jewish future.
What they created is what we understand as Judaism. In our time we can
construct a more pluralistic vision of Judaism that includes both
Zionists and diasporists – those Jews outside Israel who de-emphasize
the role of the state in their Jewish identity.
New
growth always sprouts from such precarious moments. Part of our job is
to cultivate a productive future rather than only lament what has
fallen. For Jews, 7 October and the destruction of Gaza are the
tragedies of our time. The death and destruction of innocents can never
be rectified, and can never be justified, but we still must build a
future from the wreckage. Friedrich Nietzsche stated it plainly: “If a
temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed; that is the law.”