A Collapse of a Zionist Agreement Among US Jews: What Is Emerging Now.
Two years have passed since the mass murder of 7 October 2023, which profoundly impacted world Jewry more than any event following the founding of the Jewish state.
Within Jewish communities the event proved deeply traumatic. For the Israeli government, it was a profound disgrace. The whole Zionist endeavor had been established on the presumption that the Jewish state would ensure against similar tragedies repeating.
Military action seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course that Israel implemented – the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip, the casualties of tens of thousands of civilians – constituted a specific policy. And this choice created complexity in the way numerous American Jews understood the initial assault that triggered it, and currently challenges their observance of the anniversary. In what way can people honor and reflect on a tragedy targeting their community while simultaneously devastation done to another people in your name?
The Challenge of Mourning
The difficulty surrounding remembrance lies in the fact that little unity prevails as to what any of this means. Indeed, within US Jewish circles, this two-year period have seen the breakdown of a fifty-year agreement about the Zionist movement.
The origins of Zionist agreement among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay written by a legal scholar subsequently appointed supreme court justice Louis D. Brandeis titled “The Jewish Question; Addressing the Challenge”. Yet the unity really takes hold after the six-day war in 1967. Earlier, American Jewry housed a vulnerable but enduring coexistence among different factions which maintained a range of views regarding the requirement for a Jewish nation – Zionists, neutral parties and opponents.
Previous Developments
That coexistence endured during the 1950s and 60s, through surviving aspects of socialist Jewish movements, in the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, within the critical Jewish organization and comparable entities. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, Zionism was primarily theological instead of governmental, and he prohibited singing Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, during seminary ceremonies during that period. Nor were Zionist ideology the main element of Modern Orthodoxy prior to that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives existed alongside.
However following Israel overcame adjacent nations in that war during that period, occupying territories comprising Palestinian territories, Gaza, the Golan and East Jerusalem, US Jewish relationship to the country underwent significant transformation. The military success, combined with persistent concerns about another genocide, resulted in an increasing conviction about the nation's critical importance for Jewish communities, and created pride regarding its endurance. Rhetoric regarding the extraordinary aspect of the outcome and the “liberation” of territory provided Zionism a religious, potentially salvific, significance. During that enthusiastic period, considerable the remaining ambivalence about Zionism vanished. In the early 1970s, Writer Norman Podhoretz stated: “We are all Zionists now.”
The Agreement and Its Boundaries
The unified position did not include the ultra-Orthodox – who largely believed Israel should only be ushered in via conventional understanding of redemption – however joined Reform, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all unaffiliated individuals. The most popular form of the consensus, what became known as liberal Zionism, was established on the idea in Israel as a democratic and democratic – albeit ethnocentric – state. Numerous US Jews considered the control of local, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as temporary, thinking that a resolution was forthcoming that would guarantee Jewish population majority within Israel's original borders and neighbor recognition of Israel.
Two generations of American Jews were raised with Zionism an essential component of their Jewish identity. The state transformed into a key component within religious instruction. Israel’s Independence Day evolved into a religious observance. National symbols adorned religious institutions. Summer camps integrated with Hebrew music and learning of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting educating American youth Israeli customs. Travel to Israel grew and reached new heights via educational trips by 1999, providing no-cost visits to the nation was provided to young American Jews. The state affected almost the entirety of Jewish American identity.
Shifting Landscape
Paradoxically, throughout these years post-1967, Jewish Americans became adept regarding denominational coexistence. Open-mindedness and dialogue among different Jewish movements expanded.
However regarding the Israeli situation – that represented pluralism found its boundary. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a leftwing Zionist, yet backing Israel as a Jewish homeland was a given, and questioning that narrative categorized you outside mainstream views – a non-conformist, as Tablet magazine described it in writing in 2021.
Yet presently, under the weight of the destruction of Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and anger regarding the refusal of many fellow Jews who refuse to recognize their responsibility, that unity has broken down. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer