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Marking two years after the horrific attack of 7 October 2023, an event that deeply affected Jewish communities worldwide like no other occurrence since the founding of the Jewish state.

Within Jewish communities the event proved deeply traumatic. For the state of Israel, it was deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist movement rested on the presumption that the nation could stop similar tragedies from ever happening again.

Some form of retaliation appeared unavoidable. However, the particular response Israel pursued – the obliteration of Gaza, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of civilians – represented a decision. And this choice created complexity in the way numerous US Jewish community members processed the October 7th events that triggered it, and it now complicates their observance of the anniversary. How does one honor and reflect on a tragedy against your people in the midst of an atrocity experienced by other individuals attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Remembrance

The difficulty of mourning exists because of the circumstance where there is no consensus about what any of this means. Actually, among Jewish Americans, the recent twenty-four months have witnessed the collapse of a fifty-year agreement on Zionism itself.

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry dates back to an early twentieth-century publication written by a legal scholar who would later become high court jurist Louis D. Brandeis titled “Jewish Issues; How to Solve it”. However, the agreement became firmly established following the 1967 conflict that year. Earlier, US Jewish communities housed a fragile but stable coexistence among different factions holding a range of views regarding the necessity for a Jewish nation – pro-Israel advocates, neutral parties and opponents.

Previous Developments

That coexistence continued throughout the post-war decades, within remaining elements of Jewish socialism, within the neutral Jewish communal organization, within the critical Jewish organization and comparable entities. For Louis Finkelstein, the leader of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he forbade singing the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at JTS ordinations in those years. Nor were support for Israel the centerpiece for contemporary Orthodox communities before the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

But after Israel defeated its neighbors during the 1967 conflict during that period, occupying territories including Palestinian territories, Gaza, the Golan and Jerusalem's eastern sector, the American Jewish relationship to Israel changed dramatically. The military success, combined with persistent concerns of a “second Holocaust”, led to an increasing conviction in the country’s critical importance to the Jewish people, and created pride regarding its endurance. Rhetoric concerning the “miraculous” aspect of the outcome and the “liberation” of areas provided the Zionist project a spiritual, almost redemptive, significance. In those heady years, considerable existing hesitation about Zionism vanished. In that decade, Commentary magazine editor Podhoretz stated: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Unity and Its Limits

The unified position did not include the ultra-Orthodox – who largely believed a nation should only be ushered in by a traditional rendering of the Messiah – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and the majority of non-affiliated Jews. The most popular form of this agreement, identified as progressive Zionism, was founded on a belief about the nation as a liberal and free – albeit ethnocentric – nation. Many American Jews viewed the control of local, Syria's and Egyptian lands post-1967 as provisional, believing that a solution was forthcoming that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in Israel proper and neighbor recognition of the state.

Multiple generations of US Jews were thus brought up with Zionism a fundamental aspect of their religious identity. The nation became a key component within religious instruction. Israeli national day evolved into a religious observance. National symbols were displayed in religious institutions. Youth programs were permeated with Israeli songs and education of contemporary Hebrew, with Israelis visiting instructing American teenagers Israeli customs. Trips to the nation grew and peaked with Birthright Israel in 1999, when a free trip to the country became available to US Jewish youth. Israel permeated virtually all areas of Jewish American identity.

Changing Dynamics

Ironically, during this period following the war, US Jewish communities developed expertise regarding denominational coexistence. Acceptance and communication between Jewish denominations grew.

Yet concerning Zionism and Israel – that’s where diversity ended. One could identify as a right-leaning advocate or a liberal advocate, however endorsement of the nation as a Jewish state was a given, and challenging that position positioned you outside the consensus – a non-conformist, as a Jewish periodical labeled it in an essay recently.

But now, under the weight of the devastation of Gaza, starvation, child casualties and anger over the denial by numerous Jewish individuals who refuse to recognize their complicity, that agreement has broken down. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer