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It has been the horrific attack of October 7, 2023, an event that shook global Jewish populations unlike anything else following the founding of the Jewish state.

Within Jewish communities it was profoundly disturbing. For the Israeli government, it was a significant embarrassment. The entire Zionist movement was founded on the assumption that the nation could stop things like this occurring in the future.

A response appeared unavoidable. But the response that Israel implemented – the comprehensive devastation of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of numerous non-combatants – constituted a specific policy. This particular approach complicated the perspective of many American Jews grappled with the October 7th events that triggered it, and it now complicates their remembrance of the day. How does one mourn and commemorate an atrocity against your people during devastation experienced by another people attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Mourning

The complexity surrounding remembrance stems from the fact that no agreement exists regarding what any of this means. Indeed, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have seen the disintegration of a decades-long unity on Zionism itself.

The beginnings of pro-Israel unity within US Jewish communities extends as far back as an early twentieth-century publication written by a legal scholar and then future Supreme Court judge Justice Brandeis called “The Jewish Question; How to Solve it”. But the consensus became firmly established after the 1967 conflict during 1967. Before then, US Jewish communities housed a fragile but stable coexistence across various segments holding a range of views concerning the necessity for a Jewish nation – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Previous Developments

Such cohabitation persisted throughout the 1950s and 60s, through surviving aspects of leftist Jewish organizations, in the non-Zionist Jewish communal organization, within the critical religious group and comparable entities. In the view of Louis Finkelstein, the leader at JTS, Zionism was more spiritual rather than political, and he prohibited performance of the Israeli national anthem, the Israeli national anthem, at JTS ordinations in those years. Additionally, Zionist ideology the main element of Modern Orthodoxy until after the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

However following Israel overcame neighboring countries in that war during that period, occupying territories such as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish perspective on Israel underwent significant transformation. The military success, coupled with longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, produced an increasing conviction about the nation's essential significance to the Jewish people, and created pride in its resilience. Rhetoric about the remarkable aspect of the victory and the reclaiming of land gave Zionism a religious, even messianic, significance. In that triumphant era, considerable the remaining ambivalence toward Israel dissipated. In the early 1970s, Publication editor Podhoretz famously proclaimed: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Consensus and Restrictions

The Zionist consensus did not include the ultra-Orthodox – who generally maintained a Jewish state should only emerge via conventional understanding of the messiah – but united Reform, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all secular Jews. The most popular form of the consensus, what became known as left-leaning Zionism, was founded on the conviction about the nation as a progressive and democratic – though Jewish-centered – country. Many American Jews viewed the control of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands after 1967 as not permanent, assuming that a solution was forthcoming that would guarantee Jewish population majority in pre-1967 Israel and Middle Eastern approval of Israel.

Several cohorts of US Jews grew up with pro-Israel ideology a core part of their religious identity. The state transformed into an important element in Jewish learning. Israel’s Independence Day became a Jewish holiday. Blue and white banners were displayed in most synagogues. Summer camps became infused with national melodies and learning of modern Hebrew, with visitors from Israel educating American youth national traditions. Travel to Israel increased and peaked through Birthright programs during that year, providing no-cost visits to Israel was provided to young American Jews. The nation influenced almost the entirety of US Jewish life.

Shifting Landscape

Ironically, throughout these years after 1967, US Jewish communities became adept at religious pluralism. Open-mindedness and discussion across various Jewish groups grew.

However regarding Zionism and Israel – that’s where pluralism found its boundary. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and questioning that narrative positioned you outside the consensus – a non-conformist, as a Jewish periodical labeled it in an essay recently.

However currently, during of the devastation of Gaza, starvation, young victims and anger over the denial of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that agreement has disintegrated. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer