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Marking two years after the horrific attack of the events of October 7th, which shook Jewish communities worldwide more than any event since the establishment of Israel as a nation.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist movement was founded on the assumption that Israel could stop such atrocities occurring in the future.

Military action appeared unavoidable. However, the particular response that Israel implemented – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of many thousands ordinary people – constituted a specific policy. And this choice complicated the way numerous American Jews grappled with the attack that set it in motion, and it now complicates their observance of that date. In what way can people mourn and commemorate a tragedy targeting their community while simultaneously a catastrophe experienced by another people in your name?

The Challenge of Mourning

The difficulty surrounding remembrance stems from the circumstance where no agreement exists about what any of this means. In fact, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have witnessed the disintegration of a fifty-year agreement about the Zionist movement.

The origins of Zionist agreement among American Jewry dates back to a 1915 essay authored by an attorney and then future Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis called “The Jewish Problem; Addressing the Challenge”. Yet the unity really takes hold subsequent to the six-day war in 1967. Before then, American Jewry maintained a vulnerable but enduring parallel existence between groups holding a range of views concerning the requirement for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Historical Context

This parallel existence continued throughout the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of socialist Jewish movements, in the non-Zionist Jewish communal organization, within the critical American Council for Judaism and other organizations. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Zionism was primarily theological rather than political, and he did not permit the singing of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, at religious school events in the early 1960s. Nor were Zionism and pro-Israelism the centerpiece within modern Orthodox Judaism until after the 1967 conflict. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

But after Israel routed adjacent nations in that war in 1967, occupying territories comprising Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish relationship to the nation changed dramatically. The military success, coupled with enduring anxieties of a “second Holocaust”, led to a developing perspective about the nation's vital role to the Jewish people, and created pride regarding its endurance. Rhetoric about the “miraculous” nature of the outcome and the “liberation” of territory provided the Zionist project a religious, even messianic, importance. In that triumphant era, considerable existing hesitation toward Israel dissipated. During the seventies, Publication editor Norman Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Agreement and Its Limits

The unified position excluded the ultra-Orthodox – who typically thought Israel should only be established via conventional understanding of the messiah – however joined Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all non-affiliated Jews. The most popular form of this agreement, identified as liberal Zionism, was established on the idea about the nation as a progressive and free – albeit ethnocentric – state. Countless Jewish Americans saw the occupation of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands following the war as not permanent, assuming that a resolution would soon emerge that would ensure Jewish demographic dominance within Israel's original borders and neighbor recognition of the nation.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans grew up with Zionism a fundamental aspect of their identity as Jews. The state transformed into a central part in Jewish learning. Israeli national day turned into a celebration. Israeli flags adorned most synagogues. Seasonal activities became infused with Israeli songs and education of the language, with Israeli guests instructing US young people Israeli customs. Trips to the nation grew and peaked via educational trips by 1999, offering complimentary travel to the country was offered to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated almost the entirety of US Jewish life.

Evolving Situation

Interestingly, during this period after 1967, US Jewish communities developed expertise in religious diversity. Acceptance and communication between Jewish denominations grew.

Yet concerning Zionism and Israel – that represented tolerance ended. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish state was a given, and questioning that narrative placed you outside mainstream views – outside the community, as one publication termed it in writing that year.

But now, during of the devastation within Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and anger over the denial of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that unity has broken down. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer