Our communal liminal moment
There is a moment, taught the Baal Shem Tov, when a hatching egg is no longer an egg, but is not yet a chicken. That liminal moment of transformation – that moment that lies between what had once existed and what has not yet come into being – is both a time of great potential and of great vulnerability. The next chapter has not yet been written. The unknown can be terrifying.
We Jews have encountered such moments many times before: when Abram left his family to enter the unknown place that God would show him, when the Israelites walked into the Sea of Reeds; when they stood at Sinai, when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, destroying the second Temple, the religious, political, and social center of Jewish life; when we emerged from the ashes of the Shoah and built the State of Israel in our indigenous homeland.
In each case, we had to reimagine ourselves. We were filled with sadness, grief, and anxiety. We longed for what had been. But, despite our pain, we seized the moment’s potential and began to rebuild the Jewish community we know today.
Rather than dwelling on what had been lost, we set out to answer the question: “What now? What’s next?”
On October 7th, 2023, the Jewish people were cast into another liminal moment. As we learned of the unprecedented attack on the Jewish State, we knew that our world was forever changed. We didn’t know what form those changes would take. We still don’t. But we know there is no going backward, only forward.
On October 7th, Israelis, many of whom had already lost faith in their political leadership, lost faith in their military’s ability to protect them. Israeli security, though able to defend against rocket and missile attacks, was revealed to be unready to cope with terrorists in paragliders with small arms. This renewed sense of vulnerability, a vulnerability the Jewish people are all too familiar with, came as a shock to many.
On October 7th, American Jews suddenly realized that we had been living in a historically anomalous, and relatively brief, period of acceptance and prosperity. We suddenly recognized that behind the façade of societal acceptance, there still lurked the bigotry that has, all too often, been a hallmark of Jewish history.
In the aftermath of October 7, the ugliness of antisemitism, which had already been growing in unprecedented ways, began to metastasize and normalize. If we need proof of that, we need only to look at the fact that the demonstrations in our city streets and college campuses demonizing Israel began on October 8th, days before the dead were buried or Israel began any responsive action. The timing and rhetoric of those demonstrations made it clear that Israeli policy, much of which, I agree, desperately needs to change, was not at the core of the outpouring of animosity. Hatred of our community was. The demonstrations celebrated the rape, kidnapping, and slaughter of our people.
In the months after the attack on October 7, we saw frequent demonstrations in support of the Palestinian people. But too often, the rhetoric at these demonstrations quickly shifted from support for the Palestinian people to the demonization and marginalization of Israel. At many – certainly not all, but many – of the demonstrations, anti-Israel rhetoric transformed into outright Jew hatred.
On some college campuses, protestors have actively sought to marginalize anyone who self-identifies as a Zionist or looks overtly Jewish. Ostracizing Jews will not help the cause of Palestinian self-determination.
In the ensuing months, many of us have lost friends or have drawn criticism because of our views. Those of us who stand with Israel at this difficult time have been labeled as uncaring and dispassionate toward the suffering of the Palestinian people. Those of us who are understandably horrified by the suffering of the civilians in Gaza have been labeled as kapos, anti-Zionists, and self-hating Jews. Those of us who critique the Israeli government have been labeled as traitors.
Progressive community members suddenly found that many groups they had worked with for decades to advance social justice issues were silent. They were unable or unwilling to express compassion and empathy for the Jewish community after we experienced the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Even groups that work to address the plague of sexual violence were often silent in the face of evidence of the atrocities Hamas committed on countless innocent women that day.
For the last year, many of us have felt completely alone.
As Anita Shapira, professor emerita of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University and the former head of its Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, noted,
“Before October 7, I never imagined that the most terrible slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust would inspire a wave of antisemitism. The demonstrations calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and denying the atrocious deeds of Hamas in the United States, Great Britain, and France reflected the revival of the old hatred. No longer is it a question of borders but of the very right to exist of the Jewish state, the only state in the world whose right to exist is placed in doubt. After October 7, we learned that the vision of Herzl—that the establishment of a normal Jewish state would bring about the end of antisemitism—was illusory.”
“We are changed since October 7,” an article from the Jerusalem Post stated a few months ago. “Some of us are hardened, feeling our hearts close off so as not to raise our hopes up at each new promise of negotiations, of returns, of the eventual tomorrow. Many of us have experienced awakenings – of Jewish pride, Jewish joy, Jewish strength. And of Jewish vulnerability. We’re figuring out how to navigate between all of these realities.”
But for others of us, these changes have not taken the form of pride, but have instead led to feelings of distance and estrangement.
No matter how we each feel, the fact of the matter is that Israel, home to half of world Jewry- is facing an existential threat from large, militarized terrorist groups committed to its destruction.
The other half of world Jewry, the Jewish diaspora, faces growing attempts to marginalize us and calls for a global intifada. Calls for violence against our community are now heard in cities across America and much of the world.
“This latest surge of antisemitism did not suddenly surface out of nowhere,” writes former Canadian Prime Minister Bryan Mulruney. “It is part of the historical continuum that was only briefly interrupted following the Second World War. In the wake of the Holocaust that killed two out of every three European Jews… firewalls were thrown up, and the bonfires of antisemitism were, for a time, reduced to flickering embers. But those firewalls, weakened by the passage of time and willful neglect, have been breached. Cloaked in the armor of free speech, fueled by hate, and stoked by the oxygen of the internet and social media, those fires now burn out of control.”
The numbers are shocking.
In just the past ten years, there has been almost a 900% increase in reported antisemitic incidents. And those are just the ones that have been reported. Recent studies have revealed a significant spike in the last year:
- More than 42% of Americans now report having friends or family who dislike Jews or find it socially acceptable for a close family member to support Hamas.
- We’ve seen a 300% increase in anti-Jewish bias incidents on college campuses.
- Among Jewish college students who completed DEI training, only 18% reported those learning modules included anything specific about Jew hatred[MB1] .
Meanwhile, we do not turn away from the destruction and suffering in Gaza. It is heartbreaking. As NYTimes columnist Bret Stephens wrote in an article in Sapir Magazine,
“We know that innocents are dying. And we grieve for those innocents. We do not need to follow that sentence with “but.” We can pause for a moment and know that mothers and fathers have been bereft, and people who have no share in the conflicts initiated by their leaders are dying.”
It is an impossible situation. However, as Stephens writes later in that piece, “The crucial moral difference is that, for Israel, the death of civilians is a tragic by-product of war, and Israel tries to avoid it; for Hamas, the death of civilians is the point, the yearned-for result.”
Many news outlets and countless people are quick to believe Hamas reports of casualty numbers and so-called Israeli atrocities when, time and again, we have seen Hamas use lies and propaganda as a central strategy against Israel and Jews. They have proudly and publicly said that it is a tactic in their war on Israel.
Israel is accused of genocide by a devoutly genocidal organization that has not only said they want to kill every Jew possible but has repeatedly taken steps to fulfill that commitment, only the most recent of which was the October 7 atrocity. And yet, intelligent, educated, reasonable people accept their lies, accept their false narratives about Israel, and increasingly turn away from the only liberal democracy in the region.
All of this is made more challenging by the fact that Israel’s current extremist government seems committed to doubling down on counterproductive and morally questionable policies in the West Bank, among other places.
For those who still believe this is only about Israel as a political entity, let us not forget that Hamas chose to attack our community on Simchat Torah, a Jewish, not an Israeli, holiday. As they carried out their atrocities, they didn’t call for a change in Israeli policy or a two-state solution. They gleefully chanted about killing Jews. Likewise, when Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack in world history, aimed not at military targets but throughout Israel and the West Bank, it did so just before Rosh Hashanah. For Iran, Hamas, and other Iranian proxies, this is not, nor has it ever been, about Israeli policy. It is about Jews and the very existence of a Jewish State.
As Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur wrote in a recent social media post:
“Palestinian calls for liberation are not antisemitic. They are valid and necessary. I call for Palestinian liberation. Palestinians who refuse any form of liberation in which Jews still have a state or even live in the land — that’s antisemitic. Hamas is an example of the latter…”
Regardless of our personal approach to and understanding of Judaism, Israel, and the relationship between them, the path forward has to begin with our standing together as a Jewish people. It’s time we got serious about ensuring that the Jewish community today and tomorrow will be safe, secure, and able to thrive. But that can only happen if we embrace the opportunity presented to us by this challenging moment, take it seriously, and act upon our commitments and responsibilities as members of this community.
So here are a few suggestions.
First, if you donate to a college or university that has not taken clear steps to protect Jewish students on campus: stop donating. Send a note explaining why you have withdrawn your support, and explain what you need to see before your support is restored. Use the money you would have donated to help build Jewish life. Support Hillel. Support the Jewish organizations that create future Jewish leaders. Increase your support to your synagogue. Invest in the Jewish future.
Second, if you work with organizations that have disregarded the horrors facing our community, keep doing the important work you have been doing. You were drawn to this work for a reason, and the myopathy and lack of care shown by others should never keep us from doing what we know is right. Coalitions are hard, and justice is not transactional. Use your involvement to demand they do better.
Third: support Israel. Regardless of where you stand on Israeli policy, the current government, or how Israel has waged its war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, our people – 50% of the world’s Jews- need our support.
Finally, when you are confronted by misinformation and propaganda, educate yourself and speak out. In the face of a radical movement that wants Israel to disappear from the world stage, we need to understand why ensuring the continuity of our people matters. That requires us to better understand our community through study and engagement. That requires us to recognize that, while Israel is far from perfect, it is not the genocidal, apartheid-loving monster depicted on social media and countless college campuses.
We can help shape Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state by making our voices heard with love, support, and honesty, and by standing together as an extended Jewish people.
The only moral and pragmatic long-term resolution to this conflict remains a two-state solution. What we are seeing around the world is an attempt at a one-state solution that does not provide a homeland for the Jewish people. We need a renewed movement that is anti-terrorism, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. That will not happen if we join the chorus of those who are looking to demonize the only Jewish state in the world and turn our backs on half of the world’s Jews at the very moment when our community needs us the most.
“What happened on October 7th,” my friend and teacher Yossi Klein Halevi recently said during an interview with Dan Senor, “was that the Jewish world entered a new historical era, which does not yet have a name, but I would call it, tentatively, the end of the post-Holocaust era. We all grew up in the post-Holocaust era, which was a time of seemingly limitless Jewish possibilities.”
Since the end of the Holocaust, we have enjoyed an unprecedented period of acceptance and achievement, both in diaspora and in Israel. On October 7th, that era came to a violent end. We were thrust into something new. We do not yet know what this new chapter holds, but one thing is clear: we will need to write it together.
This is a challenging time to be Jewish. We are living in our own liminal moment between what was and what will be. And as we step up to meet this challenge, I pray that, as a community that understands our obligations to one another and our history, we will each do our part to help shape that future.