The New and Dangerous Oz: Unpacking a New Jewish World Order

In “Wicked,” the Wizard is not the benevolent leader of Oz as he was depicted in “The Wizard of Oz,” but rather a deceptive and manipulative dictator who uses his position to control the people of Oz. It is as if we have awakened, finding ourselves inside a scene from Wicked, where our leaders are proclaiming a “new Jewish world order.” As we encounter this new reality, we are confronting not only the various threats that seem to define this moment but also the extraordinary opportunities presented to us!

Unwilling and unprepared, we best be ready to manage the unfolding scenario of this moment, as our political and communal worlds are being remade in front of our eyes, and our Jewish worldview is being totally reframed.

We have left the post-war framework where we built our lives, framed our beliefs, and understood the world that would shape our destiny for the past 80 years. This extraordinary and successful cycle, 1945-2025, delivered for us a coherent world view. That experience has now ended!

Eight factors are driving this new world reality:

• The New Authoritarianism and the Growing Political Divisions and Perceptions: We are experiencing a new type of politics within the United States, driven on the political right by National Conservatism, Christian Nationalism, and populism; and on the extreme left, with the emergence of post-modernist politics. America’s political culture and its core policy makers are changing, and with it, we are experiencing a deep polarization by class, party, and ethnicity/race. Our new politics has produced American authoritarianism, as government seeks to gain control and give direction to a society that many who embrace this movement believe has lost its social and cultural moorings, economic direction, and religious values system. In reaction to this phenomenon, we are encountering a post-Modernist revolution, representing an assault on our very identity and connections. In this moment, we are caught politically between these two competing forces, both threatening to our liberal sensibilities and political mindset.

• The New Economic Divides and Realities: The growing disparity in wealth within this nation is creating a heightened level of tension and anger.  Economic inequality is linked to several factors, including technological change, globalization, the decline of unions and work, and the eroding value of the minimum wage. Since the 1980s, this growing division has been on the radar screen of policymakers, politicians, researchers, and the broader public. Today, it is leaving our society further divided and distrustful.

• The End of Memory and the Cancellation of History: Fewer Americans alive today can recall the period of the Second World War, and with this shift in generations also has resulted in the loss of memory and exposure to the impact of Nazism, resulting in the Holocaust.  Correspondingly, with the growing embrace of cancel culture, there is a broad sweep of historical rejectionism, where key figures and events are dismissed due to perceived wrongdoings and offensive behaviors and actions, and with it comes a loss of information and context, creating a historical disconnect with the past.

• The Arrival of Generation Z: This generation of persons 18-35 years of age represents the most diverse racial and ethnic cohort in American history. Their ideas are shaped by the digital age, climate concerns, a shifting and uncertain financial scene, and the experience of the 2020 COVID pandemic.

• Social Media Revolution: The notion of “truth” has itself become problematic, as social influencers today shape beliefs that at one time created a shared understanding of how we understood and accepted ideas. Where once we experienced a common, collective understanding of history, today subjective perspectives have reframed how we engage with the multiple “truths” being placed before us.

• The Decline of Civility: No single marker may be more important to an understanding of social congruence than the quality and character of public discourse. When a society loses its sense of responsibility to preserve order, acknowledge and account for dissent, and respect difference, it forfeits its character and credibility.

• Loss of Trust: Americans have been losing confidence in and support for key democratic, social, and religious instruments of this society over the course of several decades. In the absence of such trust, there is a corresponding decline in democracy’s value or in the value of the institutions that have anchored this nation.

• The Theory of Brokeness: Social scientists are describing a new phenomenon linked to a systemic collapse of key institutions and services, including the role and place of government. In a space of cultural polarization, technological gaps, social dysfunctionality, and economic dislocation, a sense of anomie and displacement occurs, creating social tensions and growing disaffection with core beliefs.

 Inside the Jewish World:

Inside the cocoon that has shaped a post-war Jewish world, we are dealing with the upending of this extraordinary era of Jewish achievement and exceptionalism, only to see it being filled by a set of new and uncertain challenges:

• The Impact of Gaza: By every measure this was and is a different war. Not only by the way it has been conducted, but this conflict also has no boundaries and continues to operate with an unclear set of outcomes. Anger, retribution, and radical Zionist ideology have all become enmeshed in this 18-month campaign. With this uncharted campaign, we are experiencing a bitter backlash driven both externally and internally.  What can be seen as the end product: the rescue and release of hostages, the defeat of Hamas, or the redefinition of what Gaza will represent.
• The New Zionist Reality: A new and unrecognized Jewish State has emerged since October 7th. This war has contributed to the evolution of a very different Jewish political identity. A more radicalized, ideologically driven government is seeking to remake Zionism and Israelism into a nationalistic model. This moment has produced “Israel Unbound,” a fundamentalist-driven brand of statism.
• The Effect of Post-Modernist Thought: The new antisemitism: The seeds of post-modernism have transformed beliefs and triggered actions in the United States and beyond, directed against Israel, describing the Jewish State as a “Colonial Regime” with its apartheid and racist orientation. As such, our political discourse and alliances have all been disrupted. Our credibility as American Jewish liberals upended and silenced.
• The Overreach: A jolting new reality is impacting America’s Jews. For these past decades, Jews have enjoyed a type of political privilege, with extraordinary access and influence within the chambers of power in this nation. What we had assumed that power begets power, in other words, our message, credibility and status were fixtures on the American political stage. In more recent times, we are experiencing a level of political unsettledness, as power becomes more elusive and is being challenged. We are confronting the limits of our political capital; as a small community, we are encountering new political threats, experiencing the loss of some traditional allies, and facing emergent hostile interests, not only emanating from outside of our community but from within, as well.

• The End of the Jewish Love Affair with the Democratic Party: For many of us, the Democratic Party had been our political base for much of this past century. Jews had thrived and benefited from this political connection. Various factors today are undoing parts of this unique and special connection, as new and challenging ideas enter the political market space, and with the emergence of a new generation of candidates taking hold, Democratic liberal ideology is being discredited. In this political transition, we are experiencing the departure and defeat of allies, just as we are encountering a new and different type of politics, targeting Zionism, Israel and Jews.
• The Demographic Disaster: Only now are we fully realizing the implications of our changing identity as a community and as a people. The loss of a shared history, the unevenness of our sense of who we are as a civilization and culture, and the disconnect and distance between our institutional system and those who sit outside of our communal walls reflect the depth of how we have assimilated into worlds and experiences beyond our Jewish gates.

• The New Jewish Generations: Not all that is unfolding is coming to us from the outside. Indeed, our community itself is changing, as new generations of Jewish Americans take control. Carrying with them a different set of Jewish connections and experiences and a significantly more diverse political agenda than their parents’ and grandparents’ orientation. Experimenting with their Judaism, these actors are devising and introducing their own cultural Jewish artifacts. Demography and ideology matter, as the transformation of this community is underway.
• A House Divided: Beyond experiencing the expressions of a different generation, we are encountering a communal Jewish world, deeply divided and disconnected around a host of political, communal, and religious issues. The depth of these political, religious, and social divisions must be seen as significant, in part undoing the more publicity-driven notion of being “one people, one destiny”.  Today, our sense of the collective has given way to the power of individualism, as the rise of the sovereign self has all but upended and destroyed the idea of community.

Re-Imaging the Jewish World:

When a society, or in this setting an ethnic community, is exposed to all these sixteen elements, the resulting experience will generate a fundamentally different set of outcomes.

Despite these descriptions of loss, one ought to also imagine the multiple new possibilities shaping the Jewish world.  We can already identify a renaissance within American life and culture and beyond, and correspondingly,  as we are encountering a new moment in our Jewish communal journey.

Keep in mind the following trends:

• The post-October 7th Surge: The extraordinary re-engagement of Jews with communal and religious institutional life. The growth in Jewish learning, the expansion of Jewish giving, and an acceleration of innovative and entrepreneurial expressions of Jewish involvement and connection.
• The Third Stage:  As I have written elsewhere, American Jews are being exposed to an array of alternative, innovative forms of “doing” and “being” Jewish. This new moment is continuing to generate a host of boutique forms of communal and religious models of practice and connection. With every threat and loss, one finds a contrarian response, as the robustness, creativity and dynamism of American Judaism again asserts itself in moving us to a new place in our journey.
• A New Moment in the Middle East: With the events of June, involving US and Israeli actions directed against the Iranian Islamic Republic, might we be experiencing an alternative political road forward in connection with Israel’s future military and political security?

Simon Rawidowicz’s concept of the “ever-dying Jewish people” is once again being offset by the possibilities of a reimagined Jewish experience!  Let us move forward in this endeavor!