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It has been the mass murder of October 7, 2023, which shook world Jewry unlike anything else following the establishment of the state of Israel.

For Jews the event proved shocking. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The entire Zionist project had been established on the belief which held that the Jewish state could stop such atrocities repeating.

Some form of retaliation seemed necessary. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the widespread destruction of the Gaza Strip, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands non-combatants – represented a decision. This particular approach complicated the way numerous Jewish Americans grappled with the October 7th events that triggered it, and it now complicates their remembrance of the day. In what way can people grieve and remember an atrocity against your people in the midst of a catastrophe being inflicted upon another people attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Remembrance

The challenge surrounding remembrance exists because of the circumstance where there is no consensus about what any of this means. Actually, for the American Jewish community, this two-year period have witnessed the collapse of a fifty-year consensus regarding Zionism.

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as far back as a 1915 essay authored by an attorney and then future Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis titled “The Jewish Problem; Addressing the Challenge”. Yet the unity became firmly established following the Six-Day War during 1967. Previously, American Jewry contained a delicate yet functioning cohabitation between groups that had a range of views about the requirement of a Jewish state – Zionists, non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation endured during the mid-twentieth century, in remnants of socialist Jewish movements, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, among the opposing American Council for Judaism and comparable entities. For Louis Finkelstein, the head at JTS, pro-Israel ideology was more spiritual than political, and he prohibited the singing of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events during that period. Additionally, Zionism and pro-Israelism the centerpiece for contemporary Orthodox communities before the six-day war. Alternative Jewish perspectives existed alongside.

Yet after Israel routed adjacent nations in the six-day war that year, taking control of areas such as the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish connection with the country evolved considerably. Israel’s victory, combined with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, produced a growing belief in the country’s critical importance to the Jewish people, and a source of pride for its strength. Language regarding the “miraculous” quality of the success and the freeing of areas provided the Zionist project a theological, even messianic, significance. In those heady years, considerable the remaining ambivalence regarding Zionism vanished. In the early 1970s, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz declared: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Consensus and Its Boundaries

The unified position left out strictly Orthodox communities – who largely believed Israel should only emerge via conventional understanding of the Messiah – yet included Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of non-affiliated Jews. The common interpretation of the unified position, identified as progressive Zionism, was founded on the idea in Israel as a progressive and democratic – though Jewish-centered – state. Numerous US Jews considered the control of Arab, Syria's and Egypt's territories following the war as provisional, believing that an agreement was imminent that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the nation.

Multiple generations of American Jews were thus brought up with Zionism a core part of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part in Jewish learning. Israel’s Independence Day evolved into a religious observance. Israeli flags decorated most synagogues. Summer camps integrated with Israeli songs and learning of contemporary Hebrew, with visitors from Israel and teaching US young people Israeli culture. Travel to Israel expanded and achieved record numbers through Birthright programs in 1999, providing no-cost visits to the country was provided to US Jewish youth. The state affected nearly every aspect of US Jewish life.

Shifting Landscape

Ironically, during this period after 1967, American Jewry developed expertise at religious pluralism. Acceptance and discussion across various Jewish groups expanded.

However regarding Zionism and Israel – there existed diversity reached its limit. Individuals might align with a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, yet backing Israel as a majority-Jewish country remained unquestioned, and challenging that narrative placed you outside the consensus – a non-conformist, as one publication labeled it in a piece that year.

But now, under the weight of the ruin within Gaza, food shortages, dead and orphaned children and outrage over the denial by numerous Jewish individuals who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has disintegrated. The moderate Zionist position {has lost|no longer