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It has been that mass murder of 7 October 2023, which deeply affected global Jewish populations unlike anything else since the establishment of the Jewish state.

Within Jewish communities the event proved shocking. For the Israeli government, it was a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist project was founded on the assumption that Israel would prevent similar tragedies occurring in the future.

Military action seemed necessary. But the response Israel pursued – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of numerous non-combatants – was a choice. This selected path made more difficult the perspective of many Jewish Americans grappled with the initial assault that triggered it, and it now complicates the community's remembrance of the day. How does one mourn and commemorate a horrific event affecting their nation in the midst of an atrocity done to other individuals attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Grieving

The complexity in grieving exists because of the fact that there is no consensus as to what any of this means. Indeed, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have experienced the collapse of a decades-long consensus regarding Zionism.

The beginnings of pro-Israel unity among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay by the lawyer and then future high court jurist Louis D. Brandeis called “Jewish Issues; Finding Solutions”. However, the agreement became firmly established after the six-day war that year. Earlier, US Jewish communities maintained a vulnerable but enduring parallel existence among different factions holding diverse perspectives about the requirement for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

That coexistence endured during the 1950s and 60s, through surviving aspects of leftist Jewish organizations, in the non-Zionist US Jewish group, among the opposing religious group and comparable entities. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, the Zionist movement had greater religious significance instead of governmental, and he prohibited the singing of Hatikvah, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations during that period. Additionally, Zionism and pro-Israelism the main element of Modern Orthodoxy until after that war. Different Jewish identity models remained present.

However following Israel overcame neighboring countries in that war that year, occupying territories comprising the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish perspective on the country evolved considerably. Israel’s victory, coupled with persistent concerns about another genocide, resulted in a developing perspective in the country’s critical importance for Jewish communities, and created pride for its strength. Language regarding the remarkable nature of the victory and the freeing of territory provided the movement a religious, even messianic, meaning. During that enthusiastic period, much of the remaining ambivalence toward Israel dissipated. In that decade, Writer Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Consensus and Its Boundaries

The unified position left out strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained a nation should only be established by a traditional rendering of the messiah – yet included Reform, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and most secular Jews. The predominant version of the consensus, identified as liberal Zionism, was founded on a belief regarding Israel as a progressive and liberal – though Jewish-centered – nation. Many American Jews viewed the occupation of Arab, Syria's and Egypt's territories after 1967 as provisional, thinking that an agreement would soon emerge that would ensure a Jewish majority within Israel's original borders and neighbor recognition of the state.

Multiple generations of US Jews grew up with pro-Israel ideology an essential component of their identity as Jews. The state transformed into a central part within religious instruction. Yom Ha'atzmaut turned into a celebration. Blue and white banners decorated many temples. Youth programs were permeated with Hebrew music and education of contemporary Hebrew, with Israelis visiting educating US young people Israeli culture. Trips to the nation expanded and peaked with Birthright Israel by 1999, providing no-cost visits to Israel was offered to Jewish young adults. The nation influenced virtually all areas of the American Jewish experience.

Shifting Landscape

Interestingly, in these decades following the war, American Jewry developed expertise in religious diversity. Open-mindedness and communication across various Jewish groups grew.

However regarding the Israeli situation – that represented pluralism reached its limit. One could identify as a rightwing Zionist or a liberal advocate, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish homeland was assumed, and criticizing that perspective positioned you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as a Jewish periodical termed it in a piece in 2021.

But now, under the weight of the ruin of Gaza, starvation, dead and orphaned children and outrage about the rejection by numerous Jewish individuals who decline to acknowledge their responsibility, that consensus has collapsed. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer