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Marking two years after that deadly assault of the events of October 7th, an event that profoundly impacted Jewish communities worldwide unlike anything else since the establishment of the Jewish state.

Among Jewish people the event proved profoundly disturbing. For the Israeli government, the situation represented deeply humiliating. The whole Zionist endeavor rested on the presumption that the Jewish state could stop similar tragedies repeating.

Military action was inevitable. Yet the chosen course Israel pursued – the widespread destruction of Gaza, the casualties of numerous of civilians – constituted a specific policy. This particular approach made more difficult the perspective of many US Jewish community members grappled with the October 7th events that precipitated the response, and presently makes difficult the community's remembrance of the day. In what way can people grieve and remember a tragedy against your people while simultaneously devastation experienced by a different population attributed to their identity?

The Difficulty of Mourning

The complexity in grieving lies in the reality that no agreement exists as to the implications of these developments. Actually, within US Jewish circles, the last two years have experienced the disintegration of a half-century-old consensus on Zionism itself.

The early development of Zionist agreement within US Jewish communities dates back to a 1915 essay authored by an attorney subsequently appointed Supreme Court judge Louis Brandeis named “The Jewish Question; Finding Solutions”. However, the agreement really takes hold after the 1967 conflict during 1967. Previously, American Jewry maintained a fragile but stable cohabitation among different factions which maintained a range of views about the requirement for a Jewish nation – pro-Israel advocates, neutral parties and anti-Zionists.

Background Information

Such cohabitation persisted through the mid-twentieth century, through surviving aspects of Jewish socialism, in the non-Zionist US Jewish group, in the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism and other organizations. Regarding Chancellor Finkelstein, the head of the Jewish Theological Seminary, pro-Israel ideology was primarily theological instead of governmental, and he forbade the singing of Hatikvah, the national song, during seminary ceremonies in the early 1960s. Additionally, support for Israel the centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy until after that war. Jewish identitarian alternatives remained present.

However following Israel overcame adjacent nations in the six-day war that year, seizing land such as the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan and East Jerusalem, the American Jewish connection with the nation underwent significant transformation. The military success, combined with longstanding fears regarding repeated persecution, produced a developing perspective about the nation's critical importance to the Jewish people, and a source of pride for its strength. Language about the extraordinary nature of the outcome and the reclaiming of land assigned the Zionist project a spiritual, potentially salvific, meaning. In that triumphant era, considerable the remaining ambivalence regarding Zionism dissipated. During the seventies, Writer the commentator famously proclaimed: “We are all Zionists now.”

The Consensus and Its Boundaries

The pro-Israel agreement excluded strictly Orthodox communities – who generally maintained Israel should only be established via conventional understanding of the Messiah – yet included Reform, Conservative Judaism, Modern Orthodox and the majority of secular Jews. The most popular form of this agreement, later termed progressive Zionism, was established on a belief in Israel as a liberal and liberal – while majority-Jewish – nation. Countless Jewish Americans considered the control of local, Syrian and Egypt's territories following the war as provisional, assuming that an agreement was forthcoming that would guarantee Jewish demographic dominance in Israel proper and neighbor recognition of the nation.

Several cohorts of American Jews were thus brought up with pro-Israel ideology an essential component of their Jewish identity. The nation became a central part in Jewish learning. Yom Ha'atzmaut turned into a celebration. Blue and white banners were displayed in religious institutions. Youth programs were permeated with national melodies and the study of the language, with Israeli guests and teaching US young people Israeli customs. Trips to the nation expanded and reached new heights via educational trips by 1999, providing no-cost visits to the nation became available to Jewish young adults. The state affected virtually all areas of the American Jewish experience.

Evolving Situation

Ironically, in these decades after 1967, American Jewry became adept regarding denominational coexistence. Tolerance and dialogue between Jewish denominations increased.

Yet concerning the Israeli situation – that represented diversity ended. You could be a rightwing Zionist or a liberal advocate, yet backing Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and criticizing that perspective categorized you outside the consensus – outside the community, as one publication termed it in writing recently.

Yet presently, during of the destruction of Gaza, famine, dead and orphaned children and frustration regarding the refusal of many fellow Jews who decline to acknowledge their involvement, that agreement has broken down. The centrist pro-Israel view {has lost|no longer