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Marking two years after that mass murder of October 7, 2023, an event that shook Jewish communities worldwide more than any event following the founding of Israel as a nation.

Among Jewish people it was deeply traumatic. For the Israeli government, it was deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist project was founded on the presumption which held that the nation would ensure against similar tragedies occurring in the future.

Military action appeared unavoidable. Yet the chosen course Israel pursued – the obliteration of Gaza, the killing and maiming of numerous of civilians – constituted a specific policy. This selected path created complexity in how many Jewish Americans understood the initial assault that triggered it, and it now complicates their observance of the anniversary. How can someone honor and reflect on an atrocity targeting their community during a catastrophe being inflicted upon a different population attributed to their identity?

The Complexity of Mourning

The challenge of mourning stems from the reality that there is no consensus regarding the implications of these developments. Actually, among Jewish Americans, the last two years have witnessed the disintegration of a fifty-year consensus on Zionism itself.

The origins of pro-Israel unity within US Jewish communities can be traced to an early twentieth-century publication by the lawyer who would later become Supreme Court judge Justice Brandeis named “Jewish Issues; Finding Solutions”. However, the agreement really takes hold following the six-day war during 1967. Earlier, US Jewish communities housed a fragile but stable coexistence between groups which maintained diverse perspectives about the necessity for Israel – Zionists, neutral parties and opponents.

Previous Developments

That coexistence persisted through the mid-twentieth century, within remaining elements of leftist Jewish organizations, through the non-aligned American Jewish Committee, in the anti-Zionist religious group and similar institutions. For Louis Finkelstein, the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Zionist movement was more spiritual than political, and he prohibited singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, during seminary ceremonies during that period. Nor were Zionism and pro-Israelism the central focus within modern Orthodox Judaism until after the six-day war. Jewish identitarian alternatives coexisted.

But after Israel defeated adjacent nations in the six-day war during that period, occupying territories comprising the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and East Jerusalem, the American Jewish connection with the nation evolved considerably. Israel’s victory, combined with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, resulted in a developing perspective about the nation's vital role within Jewish identity, and generated admiration in its resilience. Language regarding the “miraculous” nature of the victory and the freeing of land gave the Zionist project a religious, almost redemptive, meaning. In those heady years, considerable the remaining ambivalence about Zionism dissipated. In that decade, Commentary magazine editor the commentator famously proclaimed: “Everyone supports Zionism today.”

The Consensus and Restrictions

The unified position left out the ultra-Orthodox – who generally maintained Israel should only emerge through traditional interpretation of the messiah – but united Reform, Conservative, contemporary Orthodox and the majority of unaffiliated individuals. The most popular form of the consensus, later termed left-leaning Zionism, was established on a belief regarding Israel as a liberal and liberal – albeit ethnocentric – state. Numerous US Jews viewed the control of Palestinian, Syrian and Egyptian lands post-1967 as provisional, believing that a solution was forthcoming that would guarantee a Jewish majority in Israel proper and Middle Eastern approval of the nation.

Multiple generations of Jewish Americans grew up with support for Israel a core part of their religious identity. The state transformed into a central part of Jewish education. Yom Ha'atzmaut became a Jewish holiday. National symbols adorned many temples. Seasonal activities integrated with Israeli songs and education of the language, with Israeli guests and teaching American teenagers national traditions. Travel to Israel grew and reached new heights with Birthright Israel during that year, providing no-cost visits to Israel was offered to Jewish young adults. The nation influenced almost the entirety of Jewish American identity.

Evolving Situation

Interestingly, in these decades after 1967, American Jewry developed expertise at religious pluralism. Open-mindedness and communication between Jewish denominations grew.

Yet concerning Zionism and Israel – that represented tolerance reached its limit. Individuals might align with a right-leaning advocate or a leftwing Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish state remained unquestioned, and challenging that narrative placed you outside the consensus – outside the community, as Tablet magazine described it in writing in 2021.

However currently, amid of the ruin in Gaza, famine, young victims and frustration over the denial of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their complicity, that consensus has disintegrated. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer