From Covenant to Convenience: A Moral Reckoning for American Zionism
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy’s words once captured a defining moment in American history with a call for civic responsibility – a call to service that transcended personal interest. It is a quote still cherished in the United States, emblematic of sacrifice, duty, and collective purpose. And yet, strikingly, this ethos often seems absent from contemporary internal conversations within the American Jewish community about Zionism and Israel.
Less than a month ago, at the American Zionist Movement’s Biennial Conference, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue delivered the keynote address before an audience representing the ideological breadth of American Zionism. He noted that if he delivered his remarks properly, he would likely upset everyone. For some, he succeeded.
Rabbi Cosgrove spoke of love for Israel, yet posed a question that has become increasingly common: why should a young American Jew feel compelled to embrace Israel if Israel does not appear to embrace the liberal values many American Jews hold dear? This sentiment did not stand alone. It echoed a comment from another participant who wondered aloud how he could move to Israel – finances were not an issue, he clarified, but Israel did not feel like a place where he could authentically express his Judaism as a progressive rabbi. That concern merits consideration.
But this framing raises a deeper and more troubling question: is Zionism now contingent upon personal comfort, ideological affirmation, or self-actualization?
When Israeli citizens abroad rushed home on October 7th to defend our homeland, did they pause to calculate personal benefit? If American Zionism is reduced to a calculus of “what’s in it for me,” then it ceases to be Zionism at all. It becomes transactional, conditional, and ultimately hollow.
Rabbi Cosgrove further suggested that it is unrealistic to expect a generation of young progressives – some of whom support figures such as Zohran Mamdani – to embrace a country that does not reflect their values. I would respectfully redirect that question back to our communal leadership and ask: how did we arrive here?
The Jewish community excels at crisis management. We run interference, issue statements, and apply rhetorical bandages. But perhaps, as Rabbi Cosgrove himself intimated, it is time for a true cheshbon hanefesh – a moral reckoning. Where were our Jewish leaders over the past twenty-five years, as congregants proudly sent their children to Ivy League institutions heavily funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia – institutions that were, and in many cases remain, incubators for hostility toward Israel and, increasingly, toward Jews? To claim ignorance now is insufficient. If individual parents could recognize what was happening, then institutional leaders should have recognized it as well – and used their positions to question, investigate, and challenge the environments in which these sentiments were taking root. Instead, too often, we retreated into damage control, asking how to make things better after students returned home saying, “You didn’t tell me.”
We have, in effect, helped raise a generation that believes it understands history while engaging only its surface, speaking with confidence but lacking depth. And when Zionism becomes dependent on how Israel accommodates individual ideological preferences, it is no longer a covenant but a negotiated arrangement. Jewish history has never framed responsibility as a matter of preference. Again and again, individuals are called to act not because the moment is comfortable or affirming, but because they find themselves positioned within it.
Rabbi Cosgrove also suggested that Israelis do not particularly concern themselves with the values or lives of Jews in the Diaspora, even as Diaspora Jews are expected to care deeply about Israel. Yet October 7th revealed precisely the opposite. It reminded us, brutally, that we are one mishpacha, and our response must be rooted not in self-interest, but in the sacred charge of ethical obligation.
This was witnessed firsthand. In the early months after that horrific day, while distributing letters from communities across the United States to wounded soldiers, to families waiting in anguish at Hostages Square, and to displaced Israelis struggling to comprehend the upheaval of their lives, one refrain surfaced again and again: People think about us outside of Israel? The answer was unequivocal – you are all we think about. And throughout that same visit, it was Israelis who repeatedly asked, “But how are you in America? With the antisemitism – are you safe?” The Talmud’s formulation is precise: kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – all Jews are bound up in responsibility for one another (Shevuot 39a). Responsibility does not require ideological alignment, nor does it wait for reciprocity. It simply binds – and it is our moral imperative.
That Israelis care is evident. Not that it should be the standard by which our commitment is measured. Israelis do not exist to serve American Jews, nor do they have the luxury of prioritizing the comfort of Jews living outside Israel in secure and privileged circumstances. And yet, they still worry. They still ask. They still show up.
History makes this clear. Wherever and whenever Jews have been in danger – whether in Yemen, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Ukraine – it was Israel that acted. And should the unthinkable occur here, it would be Israeli planes that would respond again, even for those who have spent years denouncing the very state that would rescue them.
As a community, we must object to the accusation that Israelis do not care. More troubling still is a vision of Zionism that centers entitlement rather than responsibility. For such a time as this, it would behoove us to take a breath and borrow from Kennedy:
Ask not what Israel can do for you, but what you can do for Israel.
