American Jews Are Facing An Unfair Choice

Do we have to pick between openly supporting Israel and being accepted by our peers?

I had a reckoning of sorts the other night that drove home a harsh reality: American Jews are more vulnerable in our own country today than ever in our lifetime.

What prompted this observation was an incident not that unusual these days, which is part of what makes it so troubling. My wife and I were among the nearly 900 people who attended a lively debate at The Temple Emanu-El Streicker Cultural Center dealing with “The Great Divide” among Jews on the topic of Israel. (More on that later.) On our way out of the building, we were urgently directed by security officials to exit toward Madison Avenue and avoid a noisy anti-Israel protest, in the other direction, on Fifth Avenue.

But when we got to the corner of Madison, protected by police, we saw and heard a group of protesters, some wearing keffiyahs and holding anti-Israel signs, cursing us as Jews. I realized that, even literally, wherever we turn, and despite law-enforcement protection, we can’t avoid the fact that Jews no longer can take for granted their full and equal acceptance within American society.

And the challenge for us is what to do about it.

The next morning I called Gady Levy, Streicker Center’s executive director, to ask about the high level of security we’d seen employed, which included having attendees show a photo ID along with our tickets, and giving up our phones in the lobby before entering the auditorium. He explained that those cautionary elements, in addition to scores of police and security officials in the area and on site, were also to avoid unruly protests from inside the auditorium as happened last year at a similar event – protests that were videoed by the protesters and seen around the world on social media.

“This is what it takes to be Jewish in New York these days,” Levy ruefully observed.

Of course, he’s right. And it’s not just New York. The problem is global. How sad that we’ve come to expect and rely on increasingly tight security and law-enforcement patrols in and outside synagogues, Jewish schools and other institutions across the country and around the world to protect against the dramatic spike in hate-filled, anti-Israel protests and acts of arson and violence – sometimes deadly.

Is it still safe to be a Jew in America?

Same Question, Darker Answer

Ironically, six years ago I was commissioned to write a piece for The Atlantic given that exact title. I wrote that in more than four decades of reporting on Jewish life, I had “never encountered such a level of palpable fear, anger, and vulnerability among American Jews as I do today, with attacks—verbal, physical, and, in two tragic cases, fatal—coming from the far left and the far right of our own society, and from attackers whose only common denominator is hatred of Jews.

“We had believed that such worries were relegated to our brothers and sisters in Europe, with its centuries of ugly history of Jew hatred and pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust. Now the attacks are the main topic of discussion among an American Jewish community shaken to its core.”

Sadly, in the wake of October 7, and two and a half years of war in the Mideast, the situation is far worse today. I concluded that Jews were uncertain about whether “the new normal in the land of the free” is to “hide signs of their identity, avoid synagogues, and downplay support for Israel.”

Polls today indicate that twice as many Jews over that six year span now hide their religious identity and say they feel unsafe. There is no need for me to elaborate here on the litany of factors that contribute to this disastrous downturn. We are too aware of the fact that on a daily basis we see how Israel has:

. become a pariah around the world, labeled an apartheid state that has committed genocide in Gaza;

. lost the support of the majority of Americans who now sympathize more with Palestinians;

. been abandoned by a large majority of Democrats, including the top contenders for the 2028 presidential race, and a growing number of Republicans;

. lost a majority of voters under 40 of both parties, including, most troubling, young Jews.

What’s more, “Zionism,” the right of the Jewish people to have a state in their ancient homeland – the movement the vast majority of American Jews have identified with since the creation of the state in 1948 – has become a dirty word for many Americans. That includes Jews on the left who are deeply critical of Israel for its unwillingness to support a two-state solution and for the level of devastation wrought on Gaza and its civilians in the last two and a half years.

The gap is widening between these critics of Israel and its defenders, who assert that it is naive and self-destructive to talk of peaceful co-existence when the IDF is fighting Islamic jihadists – Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and Iran – whose primary goal is not to found a Palestinian state but destroy the world’s only Jewish one.

Debating ‘The Great Divide’

Which brings us to the Streicker Center’s “Great Divide” debate, cited above, that sought to narrow the gap by exploring it and seeking common ground. The program pitted New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a staunch supporter of Israel and its military, against Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” advocacy group whose dovish positions have become increasingly popular with liberal American Jews, though frequently at odds with the great majority of Israeli Jews.

With journalist Abigail Pogrebin doing a crisp job as moderator of keeping both men on point, the participants modeled the kind of sharp but civil discourse they agreed is all too rare in the community.

Ben-Ami had the home court advantage since the evening’s program was co-sponsored by J Street, many of whose supporters were in the audience. But Pogrebin urged the audience at the outset to “put aside your Team Bret and Team Jeremy jerseys” and take in the viewpoints they were offering with an open mind. And indeed, the full house crowd was attentive and respectful as Stephens and Ben-Ami made their points, parting ways most sharply on the difference between an admirable aspiration – Ben-Ami’s call for two states for two peoples – and a harsh reality, with Stephens asserting that there is no past or present evidence of a Palestinian culture willing to accept Israel as a Jewish state.

Ben-Ami said that “pro Israel for me means having a secure Palestinian state alongside Israel.” Stephens noted that the sentiment was laudable, but “I’d sadly say that if Palestinians were offered a chance to destroy Israel, they would take it, while if Israelis were offered real peace, they’d take it.”

Stephens said anti-Zionist assertions that Israel should not exist as a state are “outright antisemitism,” adding: “I would love to see J Street say that.” Ben-Ami countered that an estimated 20-25 percent of American Jews are non-Zionist or anti-Zionist and that “it would be wrong to call them antisemites.” He said J Street calls for “democracy, not Jewishness over democracy.”

And so it went. Ben-Ami said then when 40 of 47 Democrats in the Senate recently voted against legislation to provide military arms to Israel, it was “a warning shot, a symbolic vote” showing that “pursuing war over diplomacy will lose American support.” Stephens called the Democrats’ vote “shameful, a moral collapse,” observing: “When you’re in agreement with Tucker [Carlson], you’re wrong.”

Most compelling to me was the final question posed by Pogrebin and the two responses. She asked Ben-Ami and Stephens what they would say to a 25-year-old American Jew about being a Jew today.

Ben-Ami said he would promote “a relationship with values, justice, equality – not about land. That’s what it means to be a Jew in the world today. Don’t trade our values for nationalism.”

Stephens said he would say that “Israel is two things: a Jewish miracle and a human example that after 1,900 years, a state was created out of ashes through hope, will and courage,” and that “it’s an example of what brave people can do to keep the Jewish people free, secure and bold.”

In the end, it’s unlikely that either of the eloquent and polished participants changed many minds. Ben-Ami represents the view of a growing number of young Jews for whom Israel and its right-wing government have become a source of embarrassment. It is J Street’s position that resonates with Democrats in Congress today while AIPAC, long strengthened by its bipartisan support in Washington, has become anathema. As reporter Ben Sales noted in The Times of Israel, “J Street has become Main Street.”

Stephens speaks for those most engaged in Jewish life and older Jews with vivid memories of Israel’s long history of wars and futile efforts to make peace. “When Israel vacated land” [leaving Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005] “it got more war,” he noted.

Differing Within The Tent

The Streicker Center program offered the kind of approach that Roberta Kwall, a law professor at DePaul College in Chicago, puts forward in a timely

book coming out this fall entitled “Polarized: Why American Jews Are Divided and What To Do About It.” With the core issues being Zionism and support for Israel, Kwall proposes bridging our communal gap by forming a consensus platform in the American Jewish community that broadens the tent without collapsing it. The key ingredients include agreement that Israel should be a Jewish, democratic state, condemning all forms of terrorism and expressing empathy for all innocent civilians.

“We can differ on defining words like ‘terrorism’ and ‘innocent civilians,’ but the point is to talk about issues without vilifying each other,” Kwall told me this week. She said that conversations within families and between organizations can “help rebuild a strong American Jewish center capable of sustaining disagreement without fragmentation. We have to learn how to communicate more effectively to avoid self-sabotage.”

It’s never too late to promote greater Jewish solidarity, but a clear and present priority is dealing with the antisemitism all around us and the internal debate over whether it’s best to fight it or concentrate on strengthening our own Jewish identities.

Of course it is deeply unfair that American Jews have to choose between openly supporting Israel and feeling safe at home, but that is where we are. No doubt we are experiencing our own collective trauma in suddenly recognizing that the full acceptance into American society we achieved over decades has been shaken, if not shattered.

The differences among us may be more about our psyches than our politics. Either way, though, they are real. And the question now is not whether we are safe as Jews in America but how, together, we can reverse this treacherous trend.