A Dissolution of the Zionist Consensus Within American Jewish Community: What Is Emerging Today.

Two years have passed since that deadly assault of 7 October 2023, which profoundly impacted Jewish communities worldwide unlike anything else following the creation of Israel as a nation.

Within Jewish communities it was profoundly disturbing. For Israel as a nation, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist project had been established on the assumption which held that the Jewish state would ensure against such atrocities 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 non-combatants – constituted a specific policy. This selected path created complexity in the perspective of many American Jews understood the attack that triggered it, and it now complicates the community's observance of the day. In what way can people mourn and commemorate a tragedy targeting their community in the midst of an atrocity done to a different population attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Remembrance

The challenge surrounding remembrance stems from the fact that little unity prevails about what any of this means. Actually, within US Jewish circles, the recent twenty-four months have seen the disintegration of a fifty-year unity on Zionism itself.

The origins of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as an early twentieth-century publication by the lawyer subsequently appointed Supreme Court judge Justice Brandeis named “The Jewish Problem; Finding Solutions”. But the consensus truly solidified subsequent to the 1967 conflict that year. Previously, US Jewish communities contained a delicate yet functioning parallel existence among different factions that had different opinions about the need for a Jewish nation – Zionists, neutral parties and opponents.

Previous Developments

Such cohabitation endured through the post-war decades, through surviving aspects of leftist Jewish organizations, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, among the opposing religious group and other organizations. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the theological institution, Zionism had greater religious significance than political, and he did not permit singing Israel's anthem, the national song, during seminary ceremonies in those years. Nor were support for Israel the centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy prior to that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

But after Israel overcame adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict that year, occupying territories such as Palestinian territories, Gaza, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, the American Jewish connection with Israel underwent significant transformation. Israel’s victory, along with enduring anxieties about another genocide, produced a developing perspective about the nation's essential significance within Jewish identity, and generated admiration regarding its endurance. Rhetoric regarding the remarkable quality of the victory and the reclaiming of territory gave the movement a religious, almost redemptive, importance. During that enthusiastic period, much of the remaining ambivalence about Zionism disappeared. In the early 1970s, Publication editor the commentator famously proclaimed: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Consensus and Restrictions

The pro-Israel agreement did not include Haredi Jews – who generally maintained a Jewish state should only emerge through traditional interpretation of redemption – yet included Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and most unaffiliated individuals. The predominant version of the unified position, what became known as left-leaning Zionism, was established on the idea about the nation as a liberal and democratic – though Jewish-centered – country. Many American Jews saw the occupation of Arab, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as temporary, believing that a solution would soon emerge that would maintain Jewish population majority in Israel proper and Middle Eastern approval of Israel.

Multiple generations of American Jews were thus brought up with support for Israel a core part of their Jewish identity. The state transformed into an important element within religious instruction. Israeli national day became a Jewish holiday. Israeli flags adorned religious institutions. Seasonal activities integrated with Hebrew music and learning of the language, with Israelis visiting and teaching American teenagers national traditions. Trips to the nation expanded and peaked via educational trips in 1999, offering complimentary travel to the nation was provided to young American Jews. The nation influenced almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

Evolving Situation

Paradoxically, in these decades post-1967, US Jewish communities developed expertise at religious pluralism. Tolerance and communication among different Jewish movements increased.

Yet concerning support for Israel – there existed pluralism reached its limit. One could identify as a conservative supporter or a liberal advocate, but support for Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and challenging that perspective placed you beyond accepted boundaries – an “Un-Jew”, as Tablet magazine described it in an essay recently.

However currently, under the weight of the destruction within Gaza, food shortages, young victims and frustration regarding the refusal within Jewish communities who avoid admitting their responsibility, that unity has broken down. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer