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THE ZIONIST CONSENSUS AMONG US JEWS HAS COLLAPSED.  
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Shaul Magid
October 7, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Two years after the 7 October massacre and the onset of Israel’s
slaughter in Gaza, American Jewry has been profoundly transformed _

People pray on the ground at an intersection on Yom Kippur as part of
an act of civil disobedience organized by Jewish groups calling for a
ceasefire in Israel’s war in Gaza in Brooklyn, New York, on
Thursday. , Guardian Design/Photos by Julius Constantine Motal/The
Guardian, Pacific Press/Getty Images

 

It has been two years since the mass murder on 7 October 2023, an
event that shook world Jewry more than any event since the creation of
the state of Israel [[link removed]].

For Jews it was shocking. For the state of Israel, it was deeply
humiliating. The entire Zionist project was founded on the presumption
that the Jewish state would prevent things like this from ever
happening again.

A response was inevitable. But the response Israel pursued – the
obliteration of Gaza, the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of
civilians – was a choice. And this choice complicated how many
American Jews processed the attack that set it in motion, and it now
complicates the community’s commemoration of the day. How does one
mourn and commemorate an atrocity against your people in the midst of
an atrocity done to another people in your name?

The complexity of mourning lies in the fact that there is no consensus
as to what any of this means. In fact, for the American Jewish
community, the last two years have seen the collapse of a
half-century-old consensus on Zionism itself.

[people in a crowd tear pieces of white fabric]
People tear fabric as part of a mourning ritual known as kriah during
a Yizkor prayer service on Thursday. Photograph: Julius Constantine
Motal/The Guardian

The beginnings of a Zionist consensus among American Jewry extends as
far back as a 1915 essay
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by the lawyer and then future supreme court justice Louis Brandeis
titled “The Jewish Problem; How to Solve It”. But the consensus
really takes hold after the six-day war in 1967. Before then, American
Jewry housed a fragile but stable coexistence between groups that had
a range of views about the necessity of a Jewish state – Zionists,
non-Zionists and anti-Zionists.

That coexistence persisted through the 1950s and 60s, in remnants of
Jewish socialism, in the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee, in the
anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism
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For Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary, Zionism was more spiritual than political, and he did not
permit singing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, at JTS
ordinations in the early 1960s. Nor were Zionism and pro-Israelism the
centerpiece of Modern Orthodoxy until after the six-day war. Jewish
identitarian alternatives coexisted.

But after Israel routed its neighbors in the six-day war in 1967,
occupying territories including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan
Heights and East Jerusalem, the American Jewish relationship to the
country changed dramatically. Israel’s victory, along with
longstanding fears of a “second Holocaust”, resulted in a growing
belief in the country’s critical importance to the Jewish people,
and a source of pride in its resilience. Rhetoric about the
“miraculous” nature of the victory and the “liberation” of
land gave the Zionist project a religious, even messianic,
significance. In those heady years, much of the remaining ambivalence
about Zionism disappeared. In the early 1970s, the Commentary magazine
editor, Norman Podhoretz, memorably proclaimed: “We are all Zionists
now.”

[people hold signs in support of Israel]
Pro-Israel protesters hold up placards and Israeli flags in Lafayette
Park near the White House in Washington DC on 8 June 1967. Photograph:
Bettmann/Getty Images

The Zionist consensus excluded the ultra-Orthodox – who largely
believed a Jewish state should only be ushered in by a traditional
rendering of the messiah – but united Reform, Conservative, Modern
Orthodox and most non-affiliated Jews. The most popular form of the
consensus, what became known as liberal Zionism, was founded on a
belief in Israel as a liberal and democratic – albeit ethnocentric
– state. Many American Jews saw the occupation of Palestinian,
Syrian and Egyptian lands after 1967 as temporary, believing that a
solution was forthcoming that would ensure a Jewish majority in
pre-1967 Israel and regional acceptance of the state.
Two generations of American Jews were thus brought up with Zionism as
a core part of their Jewish identity. Israel became a central part of
Jewish education. Israel’s Independence Day became a Jewish holiday.
Israeli flags adorned most synagogues. Summer camps became infused
with Israeli songs and the study of modern Hebrew, with Israelis
visiting and teaching American youth Israeli culture. Visits to Israel
increased and reached new heights with Birthright Israel in 1999, when
a free trip to Israel was offered to young American Jews. Israel
permeated almost the entirety of the American Jewish experience.

[people hold a sign that reads ‘a sovereign state in the family of
nations Israel; David Ben Gurion’]
Supporters of Israel march in a parade to celebrate the 30th
anniversary of the founding of Israel in New York on 7 May 1978.
Photograph: Peter Keegan/Keystone/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Ironically, in these decades after 1967, American Jewry became adept
at religious pluralism. Tolerance and dialogue between Jewish
denominations increased.

Except when it came to Zionism and Israel – that’s where pluralism
reached its limit. You could be a rightwing Zionist or a leftwing
Zionist, but support for Israel as a Jewish state was a given, and
questioning that narrative placed you outside the consensus – an
“Un-Jew”, as Tablet_ _magazine termed it in an essay
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in 2021.

But now, under the weight of the destruction of Gaza, famine, dead and
orphaned children, and anger over the denial of many fellow Jews who
refuse to recognize their complicity, that consensus has collapsed.
The liberal Zionist “center” has lost its hegemonic hold on
American Jewry.
For some, that has meant a move to the right; after 7 October many
American Jews defended Israel’s actions as necessary and
justifiable. Witnessing Israel’s response prompted others to move to
the left and question the Zionist project entirely. That is especially
true for young American Jews on the left, for whom anti-Zionism has as
much to do with redefining their own Jewish identity as it does with
their critique of the country.

Recently, Arielle Angel, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents,_
_wrote a piece titled: “We need new Jewish institutions
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have arrived, in many forms: new and growing non- or anti-Zionist
congregations and _minyanim_ (Jewish prayer groups); the precipitous
rise in membership in non-Zionist Jewish organizations such as Jewish
Voice for Peace or IfNotNow; the founding of at least one non-Zionist
Jewish day school in Somerville, Massachusetts; a revival of interest
in Yiddish language and culture; non-Zionist Jewish student groups
(there are three at Harvard where I teach); the rise in popularity of
Jewish Currents; and a new organization called The Jewish Left out of
Boston University. (The Jewish Left’s 2025 conference had about 800
attenders; in 2024 there were about 300.) These are just a few
examples.

[people sit on the ground outside]
Jews and supporters hold a Passover Seder to protest against the war
in Gaza in Brooklyn, New York, on 23 April 2024. Photograph: Andrew
Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Liberal Zionism remains on the scene in many synagogues and
institutional Jewish life – but increasingly finds itself on the
defensive, against both the right and the left. Its message – that
Israel can return to some sort of “Jewish and democratic” path
that arguably never existed – has become almost inchoate. Meanwhile,
Israel becomes more and more illiberal, a two-state solution seems
almost absurdly utopian, and a one-state reality – where Israel
controls all of the territory and dominion of all its people between
the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – becomes entrenched.

We find ourselves at a moment where the compatibility of
“liberalism” and “Zionism” feels increasingly untenable. How
can a state that privileges its Jewish citizens while so egregiously
devaluing the lives of the Palestinians under its control ever be
called liberal? Basic principles of liberalism that include equality
and the protection of individual rights for all do not cohere with
present-day Israel even on a generous reading. The permanent
occupation, to say nothing of the destruction of Gaza, has undermined
any plausible claim to Israel as a “liberal” country.
This rift has caused significant damage in American Jewry. It has
spurred family feuds, broken friendships, attempts to ostracize those
who oppose Israel, and even cases of people being denied or fired from
jobs in Jewish communal life.

Over the last two years, I have heard liberal Zionists say that this
disaffection is probably temporary, assuming young Jews will return to
the fold when the war ends. I think that is a mistake. For many of
these talented and energetic young Jews, the liberal Zionist narrative
is in their rearview mirror. They are building a new Jewish future and
new institutions where Israel may or may not play a role – but it
will not be at the center.

Is this schism good for American Jewry? Not only do I think it is, I
think it is essential to the health of Jewish life. Hannah Arendt
reminds us that ideological hegemony is never good for any collective;
hegemony yields laziness and overconfidence and is ultimately
self-destructive. In her 1948 essay, To Save the Jewish Homeland, she
writes:

Unanimity of opinion is a very ominous phenomenon, and one
characteristic of our modern mass age. It destroys social and personal
life, which is based on the fact that we are different by nature and
by conviction. To hold different opinions and to be aware that other
people think differently on the same issue shields us from that
Godlike certainty which stops all discussion and reduces social
relationships to those of an ant heap.

In Origins of Totalitarianism she wrote that such hegemony can be a
first stage of totalitarianism in a polity with power. Jews in America
do not have the kind of power she was referring to, but they do have
responsibility for the health of their collective. Ideological
hegemony is not healthy.

Zionism in America will continue, and it may even thrive. But it will
no longer serve as a gatekeeper to Jewish life. If American Zionists
continue to deny a place at the table for those who are not Zionists,
they will fade into increasing irrelevance as young Jews build
institutions of their own. And they will soon attain considerable
resources and power.

The first anniversary of any tragedy is focused on the proximate past.
In Judaism, the first anniversary is ritualized in some communities as
an “unveiling” of the tombstone. The second anniversary has no
unique ritual – perhaps because it heralds a turn from the past to
the future. That does not mean the time for commemoration is over. But
the distance allows for a view of the consequences and repercussions
of the tragedy.

[people embrace each other in a crowd]
People embrace each other during a Yizkor prayer service on Yom Kippur
on Thursday. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian

More than 2,000 years ago, when Jewish leaders knew the Jerusalem
Temple would fall, they left it behind and constructed a new Jewish
future. What they created is what we understand as Judaism. In our
time we can construct a more pluralistic vision of Judaism that
includes both Zionists and diasporists – those Jews outside Israel
who de-emphasize the role of the state in their Jewish identity.

New growth always sprouts from such precarious moments. Part of our
job is to cultivate a productive future rather than only lament what
has fallen. For Jews, 7 October and the destruction of Gaza are the
tragedies of our time. The death and destruction of innocents can
never be rectified, and can never be justified, but we still must
build a future from the wreckage. Friedrich Nietzsche stated it
plainly: “If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed;
that is the law.”

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Shaul Magid is professor of modern Judaism in residence at Harvard
Divinity School and the rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue. His most
recent book is The Necessity of Exile
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book is Jewish Anti-Zionism as Political Theology: The Major Writings
of Joel Teitelbaum
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