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It has been that horrific attack of 7 October 2023, which shook Jewish communities worldwide more than any event since the founding of the Jewish state.

For Jews the event proved deeply traumatic. For the state of Israel, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist movement was founded on the belief that the nation would ensure against similar tragedies repeating.

Military action seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course Israel pursued – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the killing and maiming of numerous non-combatants – constituted a specific policy. This selected path created complexity in the way numerous Jewish Americans understood the October 7th events that set it in motion, and presently makes difficult their remembrance of the anniversary. How does one honor and reflect on a tragedy against your people during a catastrophe done to other individuals connected to their community?

The Challenge of Remembrance

The challenge in grieving stems from the reality that no agreement exists regarding the significance of these events. Indeed, within US Jewish circles, this two-year period have witnessed the collapse of a decades-long consensus about the Zionist movement.

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar and then future Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis named “Jewish Issues; Addressing the Challenge”. Yet the unity really takes hold following the six-day war during 1967. Earlier, Jewish Americans maintained a delicate yet functioning cohabitation among different factions holding diverse perspectives concerning the necessity for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Historical Context

Such cohabitation continued through the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of leftist Jewish organizations, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, within the critical American Council for Judaism and similar institutions. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the leader at JTS, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he forbade the singing of Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events in the early 1960s. Additionally, Zionism and pro-Israelism the central focus within modern Orthodox Judaism until after that war. Different Jewish identity models remained present.

Yet after Israel overcame adjacent nations in that war in 1967, occupying territories comprising Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish perspective on the nation evolved considerably. The military success, combined with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, resulted in an increasing conviction regarding Israel's essential significance to the Jewish people, and created pride regarding its endurance. Discourse regarding the extraordinary aspect of the outcome and the “liberation” of territory gave the Zionist project a theological, even messianic, meaning. In those heady years, a significant portion of previous uncertainty toward Israel dissipated. During the seventies, Writer the commentator famously proclaimed: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Agreement and Restrictions

The Zionist consensus did not include strictly Orthodox communities – who largely believed a Jewish state should only be established through traditional interpretation of the messiah – yet included Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and nearly all unaffiliated individuals. The predominant version of the consensus, what became known as progressive Zionism, was founded on the conviction about the nation as a democratic and liberal – albeit ethnocentric – state. Numerous US Jews considered the administration of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands after 1967 as provisional, thinking that an agreement was imminent that would maintain Jewish population majority in Israel proper and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans were thus brought up with pro-Israel ideology a fundamental aspect of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part within religious instruction. Yom Ha'atzmaut turned into a celebration. Israeli flags were displayed in religious institutions. Youth programs integrated with Israeli songs and education of modern Hebrew, with visitors from Israel and teaching American teenagers Israeli culture. Trips to the nation expanded and peaked via educational trips during that year, providing no-cost visits to Israel was offered to US Jewish youth. The nation influenced virtually all areas of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Paradoxically, in these decades post-1967, US Jewish communities grew skilled regarding denominational coexistence. Acceptance and communication across various Jewish groups grew.

However regarding the Israeli situation – that’s where diversity ended. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a leftwing Zionist, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish state was a given, and challenging that narrative positioned you beyond accepted boundaries – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication described it in an essay that year.

However currently, amid of the destruction within Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration regarding the refusal within Jewish communities who refuse to recognize their complicity, that unity has collapsed. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer