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It has been that horrific attack of 7 October 2023, an event that profoundly impacted Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence following the creation of the state of Israel.

Within Jewish communities it was profoundly disturbing. For Israel as a nation, the situation represented a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist movement rested on the belief that the Jewish state would prevent things like this from ever happening again.

A response was inevitable. Yet the chosen course undertaken by Israel – the comprehensive devastation of Gaza, the casualties of numerous ordinary people – constituted a specific policy. This particular approach complicated how many Jewish Americans processed the attack that triggered it, and presently makes difficult the community's commemoration of that date. In what way can people honor and reflect on a horrific event against your people during devastation done to another people attributed to their identity?

The Challenge of Remembrance

The complexity in grieving exists because of the circumstance where no agreement exists about the significance of these events. In fact, within US Jewish circles, the recent twenty-four months have experienced the collapse of a fifty-year unity about the Zionist movement.

The early development of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry dates back to an early twentieth-century publication by the lawyer who would later become high court jurist Louis D. Brandeis titled “The Jewish Problem; How to Solve it”. But the consensus became firmly established following the 1967 conflict during 1967. Before then, American Jewry contained a vulnerable but enduring parallel existence between groups which maintained different opinions concerning the requirement for Israel – pro-Israel advocates, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation continued throughout the post-war decades, through surviving aspects of socialist Jewish movements, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, in the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism and comparable entities. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the chancellor of the theological institution, pro-Israel ideology was primarily theological than political, and he prohibited singing Israel's anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events during that period. Additionally, support for Israel the main element within modern Orthodox Judaism before the 1967 conflict. Alternative Jewish perspectives remained present.

However following Israel defeated adjacent nations during the 1967 conflict that year, seizing land including Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish connection with Israel changed dramatically. The military success, combined with enduring anxieties about another genocide, produced an increasing conviction about the nation's essential significance for Jewish communities, and generated admiration for its strength. Language concerning the extraordinary nature of the outcome and the freeing of land provided Zionism a religious, even messianic, importance. During that enthusiastic period, considerable previous uncertainty regarding Zionism disappeared. In that decade, Writer Podhoretz stated: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Agreement and Restrictions

The unified position excluded strictly Orthodox communities – who largely believed a Jewish state should only be established by a traditional rendering of the Messiah – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative, Modern Orthodox and nearly all unaffiliated individuals. The most popular form of this agreement, what became known as liberal Zionism, was founded on the conviction about the nation as a democratic and free – albeit ethnocentric – country. Numerous US Jews saw the administration of local, Syrian and Egypt's territories post-1967 as provisional, assuming that a solution was imminent that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the nation.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans grew up with Zionism a fundamental aspect of their identity as Jews. The nation became a central part in Jewish learning. Israeli national day became a Jewish holiday. National symbols were displayed in many temples. Youth programs integrated with national melodies and learning of modern Hebrew, with Israeli guests instructing American teenagers national traditions. Trips to the nation grew and achieved record numbers through Birthright programs in 1999, when a free trip to Israel became available to young American Jews. Israel permeated virtually all areas of US Jewish life.

Evolving Situation

Ironically, throughout these years after 1967, Jewish Americans became adept regarding denominational coexistence. Tolerance and discussion among different Jewish movements increased.

Yet concerning the Israeli situation – that represented pluralism found its boundary. One could identify as a right-leaning advocate or a leftwing Zionist, yet backing Israel as a majority-Jewish country was assumed, and challenging that position placed you outside the consensus – an “Un-Jew”, as one publication termed it in an essay that year.

Yet presently, during of the ruin within Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration about the rejection by numerous Jewish individuals who refuse to recognize their complicity, that consensus has broken down. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer