In giving the keynote address to the recent Biennial National Assembly of the American Zionist Movement (AZM), Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove called for a “new Zionism.” His core issue: to enhance “an appreciation for our internal [Zionist] pluralism.” Lacking an awareness of a “big tent” encompassing supporters for Israel’s existence, he claimed, some Jews on the Left have drifted into the anti-Zionist camp. In Part I of my response, I concurred with Rabbi Cosgrove and called for the AZM to launch an effort to better educate American Jews regarding the diversity provided by the 40-plus AZM member groups, revealing a “wall-to-wall Zionist coalition” that provides representation to those with views reflecting the Left, Center, and Right of the political spectrum.

There is yet another challenge to educating young Jews in such a way that they will identify with a besieged Israel. It is posed eloquently by Sarah Hurwitz in her book “As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us” (2025). Hurwitz is a brilliant young woman, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and former head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. She is representative of her generation of non-Orthodox Jews, an alumna of her family’s temple who had the requisite bat mitzvah ceremony. Hurwitz has expressed regret that this milestone at age 13 marked the end of her formal Jewish education — until she had a Jewish awakening in her mid-30s. At that time, serving with empathy as a nondenominational chaplain, Hurwitz said she envied the spiritual resources available to her Christian peers. Thirsting for her roots, Hurwitz commenced reading about Jewish religious and cultural themes, an exploration documented in her first book, “Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There).”

But omitted from her Jewish quest was learning about Zionism. Why had she avoided Israel study? When asked, Hurwitz acknowledged: “The truth is that the idea of writing about Israel filled me with anxiety…. I knew hardly anything about Israel.” Moreover, what she did know from her time as a student at Harvard was the anti-Zionist narrative in all of its particulars. While Hurwitz sought out Judaic resources about “God, ethics, spiritual practice, Shabbat, holidays, and life-cycle rituals,” she found herself “largely avoiding [Zionism].” She had been “schooled” to “believe” that Israel was not an essential part of connecting with Judaism. This led her to the fallacy that you could hate Israel and yet not despise most Jews.

As her Jewish journey progressed, Hurwitz said, she learned quite the contrary. She discovered that “the Land of Israel is intertwined with every single aspect of Judaism I was writing about….” Furthermore, “Jews have lived in this Land continuously for more than three thousand years, and nearly half the Jews on earth live in the modern State of Israel….” Thus, Hurwitz concluded, “the idea that I was making room for Judaism by ignoring Israel was nonsense — and it was a cop-out.” She began to read about Zionist history and about its present. For the first time, she took stock of objective reality against the anti-Zionist narrative she had imbibed, one that characterized the Jewish state as embodying “colonialism, racism, apartheid, and genocide.”

Hurwitz thought “there was some kind of original sin at the heart of [Israel’s] very founding.” She had been told that Jews destroyed an existing State of Palestine, present “from time immemorial.” In studying history books, she learned that no “Palestinian state” had been dislodged by the Jews. In fact, the early 20th century “was a pre-statehood period of time in the Middle East.” The Ottoman (Turkish) Empire was sovereign everywhere in the region. “This land was not referred to as a ‘state’ of Palestine, nor was it a ‘state’ of Israel; in that region nation-states weren’t a thing until decades later.” Not even the Arab residents of the Land “referred to themselves as ‘Palestinians’; [instead] they would have identified in terms of family, religious affiliation, and city or village of origin.” She acknowledged that “the more I learned, the less Jews seemed like conquerors and colonizers at all.”

Hurwitz came to realize that instead of stealing the land from local Arabs, the early Zionists, without help from others, built a state with their bare hands. They had “immigrated and bought land — much of it of such poor quality that it was nearly useless, and often at wildly inflated prices.” Moreover, “the land was thinly settled, and much of it was swamps or barren. Infant mortality was high, and malaria was rampant.” The early builders of Israel, she learned, did not regard themselves as colonizers displacing the locals, but rather as immigrants seeking to remake themselves, to — in the words of Israeli philosopher Micah Goodman — “heal the Jewish character” and “forge a new Jew.”

Rather than import the culture of imperial/colonial Britain, Hurwitz found out, the pioneers “cultivated a thriving Jewish culture — literature, art, music — and even revitalized their ancient Jewish language, Hebrew.” They insisted upon being self-sufficient through Jewish physical labor, “draining swamps, plowing fields, and planting trees. They built roads, ran farms, and established collectivist communities known as kibbutzim…. It was arduous and dangerous work…but they persevered.” Longtime victims of antisemitism, they had come to the conclusion that “the only way forward was to reclaim Jewish autonomy and re-create a Jewish home” in the ancestral homeland.

In her deep dive, Hurwitz learned that wars of independence in the aftermath of World War II resulted in suffering among those on both sides, such as India and Pakistan. Examining Israel’s 1948-49 struggle for independence, Hurwitz expected to see a record of “war crimes” committed by the Jews. “If there were atrocities to be found [by Zionists], this is where I would find them,” she wrote. “I had seen enough on [anti-Zionist] social media to know what to expect…: [Jewish] crimes against humanity, including genocide.” But to her surprise, what she found instead was war. “It was horrific…; atrocities were committed — by both Jews and Arabs…, devastating numbers of casualties — of both Jews and Arabs.”

Well-schooled in the anti-Zionist narrative, Hurwitz was aware that the events of Israel’s War of Independence were labeled the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” for Palestinians, creating a Palestinian refugee crisis, including displacement of some 750,000 people. What she hadn’t known, she said, “was that the Jews faced a massive refugee crisis of their own in the Arab world.” Already during World War II, “Arab nations began massacring their Jews in pogroms, expelling them, confiscating their businesses and homes…as 850,000 Jews fled Arab countries, and about 650,000 eventually wound up in Israel.”

Throughout the chapter “My Search for Israel’s Original Sin,” Hurwitz assesses unfolding aspects of the anti-Zionist assumptions of critics on campuses and social media. She measured them against actual historical studies and current data. This highly articulate writer provides insight into reasons for receptivity to the anti-Israel point of view of New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, among her Jewish peers. Hurwitz’s journey offers a case study of the state of being an “empty vessel” with regard to the Jewish narrative regarding the conflict. Into this void, content expressed by Israel haters has been inserted by social media, the classroom, and the news media.

The fault of this partly lies with the inadequate Jewish education of our adolescents and young adults. We owe them an apology for providing insufficient preparation for the “brainwashing” that leads many young adults astray. It’s not that previous generations were better prepared, but in those times, we faced neither campus nor workplace anti-Zionist propaganda as a mainstream point of view. We were not bombarded with TikTok screeds against the Jewish state, nor were we confronted by anti-Zionist professors, administrators, and journalists.

Now it is evident that what must be created — and it is long overdue — is a mass-based educational effort for disaffected teens and young adults and for the next generation as well.

Jewish young adults must be educated to recognize — as Sarah Hurwitz has come to see — Israel as a source of Jewish pride: “While Israel is a country with plenty of flaws and moral failings that come with power…it is also something quite extraordinary. I can think of no other story like it: a people who after thousands of years serving as history’s punching bag — blamed for every kind of catastrophe and human failing, living and dying at others’ whims — took their fate into their own hands, reclaimed their ancestral homeland, and built a thriving state within it, all in just a few generations.”

The leaders of the newly reconstituted World Zionist Organization, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, and the Jewish Agency for Israel must rise to meet the challenge. They should fund and staff programs and curricula for the education of Jewish adolescents and young adults that correct the paucity of historical content in the “Jewish narrative” in their mindset. Sending educator shlichim to the already well-fortified full-time day schools and yeshivas is praiseworthy but insufficient. The targets should also include those who are like the “pre-awakening” Sarah Hurwitz. Otherwise, their lack of truth-based Jewish answers to anti-Zionist canards will lead to the inevitable increase in bitter young Jewish critics of the existence of the Jewish state.