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Marking two years after the horrific attack of the events of October 7th, an event that deeply affected Jewish communities worldwide more than any event since the creation of Israel as a nation.

Among Jewish people it was profoundly disturbing. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist movement had been established on the belief which held that the Jewish state could stop things like this repeating.

Some form of retaliation seemed necessary. But the response undertaken by Israel – the obliteration of the Gaza Strip, the deaths and injuries of many thousands of civilians – constituted a specific policy. This selected path made more difficult how many US Jewish community members grappled with the attack that set it in motion, and presently makes difficult the community's commemoration of that date. In what way can people honor and reflect on an atrocity against your people while simultaneously a catastrophe experienced by another people in your name?

The Complexity of Mourning

The difficulty surrounding remembrance exists because of the fact that little unity prevails as to what any of this means. Indeed, within US Jewish circles, this two-year period have experienced the disintegration of a fifty-year consensus regarding Zionism.

The origins of Zionist agreement within US Jewish communities extends as far back as a 1915 essay by the lawyer and then future Supreme Court judge Justice Brandeis named “The Jewish Question; Finding Solutions”. Yet the unity truly solidified following the six-day war in 1967. Before then, US Jewish communities housed a fragile but stable cohabitation across various segments which maintained different opinions regarding the need for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Previous Developments

That coexistence persisted during the mid-twentieth century, through surviving aspects of Jewish socialism, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, within the critical religious group and comparable entities. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the theological institution, pro-Israel ideology was primarily theological rather than political, and he forbade singing the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at religious school events in the early 1960s. Additionally, support for Israel the central focus within modern Orthodox Judaism until after that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives existed alongside.

But after Israel overcame neighboring countries in the six-day war in 1967, occupying territories such as Palestinian territories, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish relationship to Israel evolved considerably. Israel’s victory, along with longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in an increasing conviction about the nation's essential significance to the Jewish people, and created pride in its resilience. Rhetoric about the remarkable nature of the success and the freeing of territory gave the movement a theological, even messianic, meaning. In that triumphant era, much of existing hesitation toward Israel dissipated. During the seventies, Commentary magazine editor Podhoretz stated: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Agreement and Its Boundaries

The unified position did not include Haredi Jews – who generally maintained Israel should only be established via conventional understanding of the messiah – however joined Reform, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of secular Jews. The predominant version of this agreement, identified as progressive Zionism, was established on a belief regarding Israel as a progressive and liberal – while majority-Jewish – country. Countless Jewish Americans considered the administration of Arab, Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as provisional, assuming that an agreement was forthcoming that would ensure Jewish population majority in pre-1967 Israel and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of American Jews grew up with Zionism a core part of their religious identity. The nation became a central part in Jewish learning. Israeli national day became a Jewish holiday. Israeli flags decorated most synagogues. Seasonal activities were permeated with Israeli songs and learning of the language, with visitors from Israel instructing American youth national traditions. Trips to the nation grew and peaked via educational trips during that year, offering complimentary travel to the nation was provided to Jewish young adults. The state affected virtually all areas of Jewish American identity.

Shifting Landscape

Interestingly, in these decades after 1967, American Jewry grew skilled in religious diversity. Tolerance and communication among different Jewish movements expanded.

Except when it came to the Israeli situation – that’s where diversity reached its limit. You could be a right-leaning advocate or a liberal advocate, yet backing Israel as a majority-Jewish country remained unquestioned, and criticizing that narrative positioned you outside mainstream views – outside the community, as Tablet magazine termed it in writing that year.

However currently, under the weight of the devastation in Gaza, starvation, dead and orphaned children and outrage regarding the refusal of many fellow Jews who refuse to recognize their involvement, that agreement has collapsed. The liberal Zionist “center” {has lost|no longer