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Two years have passed since the horrific attack of 7 October 2023, an event that deeply affected world Jewry unlike anything else since the creation of Israel as a nation.

Among Jewish people it was shocking. For the state of Israel, it was a significant embarrassment. The whole Zionist endeavor had been established on the assumption which held that the nation would prevent such atrocities repeating.

Military action was inevitable. Yet the chosen course that Israel implemented – the comprehensive devastation of Gaza, the deaths and injuries of numerous of civilians – represented a decision. This selected path complicated the perspective of many US Jewish community members processed the attack that set it in motion, and currently challenges the community's remembrance of that date. How can someone mourn and commemorate a horrific event against your people during an atrocity done to another people attributed to their identity?

The Challenge of Remembrance

The difficulty in grieving exists because of the reality that no agreement exists regarding the significance of these events. In fact, among Jewish Americans, this two-year period have witnessed the collapse of a decades-long unity about the Zionist movement.

The beginnings of Zionist agreement among American Jewry extends as far back as an early twentieth-century publication written by a legal scholar who would later become Supreme Court judge Louis D. Brandeis named “Jewish Issues; Addressing the Challenge”. However, the agreement really takes hold subsequent to the six-day war during 1967. Before then, American Jewry maintained a delicate yet functioning coexistence among different factions which maintained different opinions regarding the requirement for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and opponents.

Background Information

That coexistence endured during the post-war decades, through surviving aspects of leftist Jewish organizations, within the neutral American Jewish Committee, in the anti-Zionist Jewish organization and similar institutions. For Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Zionism was primarily theological than political, and he prohibited the singing of Israel's anthem, the national song, at religious school events in those years. Nor were Zionist ideology the central focus of Modern Orthodoxy until after the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

Yet after Israel overcame neighboring countries during the 1967 conflict in 1967, occupying territories such as the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Jerusalem's eastern sector, US Jewish connection with the country evolved considerably. The triumphant outcome, combined with longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in a developing perspective regarding Israel's critical importance for Jewish communities, and generated admiration regarding its endurance. Discourse about the remarkable aspect of the success and the “liberation” of territory provided Zionism a religious, potentially salvific, importance. In that triumphant era, considerable existing hesitation toward Israel vanished. In that decade, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz declared: “Zionism unites us all.”

The Consensus and Restrictions

The Zionist consensus did not include strictly Orthodox communities – who largely believed Israel should only be ushered in via conventional understanding of redemption – but united Reform Judaism, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and nearly all unaffiliated individuals. The common interpretation of this agreement, later termed left-leaning Zionism, was founded on a belief regarding Israel as a liberal and democratic – though Jewish-centered – nation. Countless Jewish Americans viewed the occupation of local, Syrian and Egypt's territories following the war as provisional, assuming that an agreement was imminent that would maintain Jewish demographic dominance in Israel proper and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of US Jews were raised with support for Israel a core part of their Jewish identity. The state transformed into a central part within religious instruction. Israeli national day turned into a celebration. Israeli flags decorated most synagogues. Seasonal activities were permeated with Israeli songs and learning of modern Hebrew, with Israelis visiting educating American youth Israeli culture. Travel to Israel expanded and peaked via educational trips by 1999, providing no-cost visits to Israel became available to Jewish young adults. The nation influenced virtually all areas of Jewish American identity.

Evolving Situation

Paradoxically, throughout these years following the war, US Jewish communities became adept at religious pluralism. Tolerance and discussion between Jewish denominations grew.

Except when it came to the Israeli situation – that represented tolerance ended. One could identify as a conservative supporter or a progressive supporter, but support for Israel as a majority-Jewish country remained unquestioned, and questioning that perspective categorized you outside the consensus – a non-conformist, as Tablet magazine termed it in writing in 2021.

However currently, amid of the ruin within Gaza, famine, young victims and outrage over the denial within Jewish communities who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has collapsed. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer