Where did we go wrong?

“Where did we go wrong?”

This is a question that many Jewish parents have asked themselves — about how their children were raised and about how their children turned out — for several generations.

First, it was about their sons and daughters turning away from Jewish practice – not keeping Shabbat, not keeping kosher, not going to shul. In contemporary Orthodox parlance, “going off the derech.”

Then, it was about their offspring turning away from Jewish spouses – marrying, at an increasing rate, outside the faith.

Today, it is about them turning away from the Jewish state. Witness the number of young Jews, raised in homes where the parents, typically unabashed supporters of Israel, have taken up the Palestinian cause. And protested against Israeli policies and Israel’s very existence. And declared themselves “non-Zionist.” Or worse, “anti-Zionist.”

This, as anecdotal evidence suggests, is splitting Jewish families. Or, at least, making get-togethers uncomfortable? Who would want to share a Shabbat meal or a seder table with someone whose views about the safety and centrality of Israel are diametrically opposed to yours? When “Next Year in Jerusalem” to you means a city that is proudly the seat of Jewish sovereignty, and to your son or daughter or niece or nephew means the capital of an independent Palestinian state?

This is not hypothetical. We are finding it more difficult to speak to each other, because Eretz Israel (the Zionist Occupation Government in the words of those who deny Israel’s legitimacy), which once united the Jewish community, now divides us.

This distressing phenomenon, mounting in recent decades, has become more evident, more public, more of an embarrassment to their parents, since the bloody Hamas attack on the Jews in the area of Gaza on October 7, 2023. Which brought a cascade of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rallies and violence in the United States and many Western countries – especially on college campuses. Especially among putative liberal, progressive, “woke” students and professors and fellow travelers.

Among whom are numbered many Jews. Too many. Young Jews who attended Hebrew school in their youth, went to Jewish summer camps, and were members of Jewish youth groups.

Now their only Jewish activity, if it can sarcastically be labelled that, is protesting against Israel and abetting the non-Jews who accuse Israel, its government and its army, of engaging in genocide and Apartheid.

There is no lack of anecdotal evidence, of media reports, which describe young Jews, especially at prestigious “liberal arts” colleges, donning keffiyehs and shouting slogans that deny Israel’s right to exist, filling the ranks of questionably-Jewish organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, showing no apparent sympathy for the thousands of Israelis who were killed and tortured and kidnapped on October 7. Or voting against Kamala Harris in November because the Biden-Harris administration had supported Israel in its war against Hamas too strongly.

Some of the stats: A survey commissioned by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism found that 36.7 percent of American-Jewish teenagers either “agreed: or “strongly agreed: with the statement, “I sympathize with Hamas,” and even more, 41.3 percent, agreed that Israel was “committing genocide” in Gaza.

According to the Pew Research Center, younger Jews in the United States “tend to express much more negative attitudes toward Israel” than older Jews. Which “mirror[s] patterns in the broader U.S. public.”

Why is this happening?

Don’t these young Jews feel any loyalty to their extended family, let alone to their own nuclear family?

Didn’t these Jews learn anything in their schools, in their camps, in their youth groups – or in their homes?

If they learned anything, why didn’t it stick?

In other words, “where did we go wrong?” We? The parents, the schools? Are we asking ourselves this question? Or are we avoiding it, because we want to avoid blaming ourselves and our institutions?

Was it inevitable that the affinity for Israel of young Jews – those, who following established generational patterns are likely to rebel, and are most likely to have distanced themselves from Jewish practice and from marrying a fellow Jew – would find themselves estranged from Israel? Especially as the years since the Shoah (whose atrocities made clear the need for a Jewish homeland) increased, and Israel’s image in the mind of many people precipitously dropped (from besieged David to hulking Goliath).

And, is it too late – have we lost this cadre of young Jews, some of whom have visited Israel with their families or with Birthright groups, who seem to have no attachment to the land where endangered Jews have found refuge for more than a century? Is the rip in the fabric of a united Jewish community permanent?

Hard questions rarely engender easy answers.

The cynical view about these young, anti-Israel Jews: They’re stupid. They’re naïve. They’re brainwashed. They’re not proud of being Jewish, and will turn out to be the first targets when their supposed friends in liberal circles turn against their one-time allies.

The young people’s defense of their actions: They are more educated. They are more idealistic, more realistic, more enlightened. They are aware of Israel’s post-1967 history as an “occupation” power. They are defending true Jewish values. They are not interested in their parents’ or grandparents’ emotional connection to irrelevant Jewish beliefs. They know who their true ideological friends are.

The divide dwarfs the Grand Canyon. Just as support for or opposition to the MAGA belief system tears many (non-Jewish) families apart.

First, a word of cautious optimism. The picture is not as bleak as it may seem – young Jews in this country are not deserting Israel en masse.

A survey by the Boundless Israel research and polling organization reported that 56 percent of Jews in the United States said they feel more connected to Israel since October 7. And, according to the Diaspora Ministry survey, a majority of the teens polled said they had pro-Israel sentiments, and 84 percent said Israel has “the right to exist as a Jewish state.”

Statements of minimum support, which offer little comfort.

In Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove’s new book, “For Such a Time As This” (Harvest), he tells of a conversation at a meal with a young woman he calls Maya, a friend of his daughter. “Why do Jewish communities that claim to be politically unaffiliated have to support Zionism?” she asked the rabbi, spiritual leader of the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. “Isn’t it true that with the creation of the Jewish state, they became an oppressor to another group of people – the Palestinians?”

Maya, the rabbi wrote, is a “knowledgeable” Jew – “a product of Jewish day school, Jewish camping, and synagogue youth and Israeli experiences.”

“And here she was, espousing a non-Zionist manifesto.”

Rabbi Cosgrove was “flabbergasted … I said nothing and the conversation pivoted to the pleasantries of the evening.”

In retrospect, he wrote, “it is more important than ever to engage in conversation with the Mayas around us and within us. The ‘Mayas’ of the world are our future. Not just the future of Judaism, but, more broadly, the future for all of us.

“Maya and her generation,” the rabbi wrote, “found themselves marginalized by the Jewish community that gave them life … to ignore Maya’s generation is to lose Maya’s generation … any response to her position must therefore come from a place of generosity of spirit.”

Rabbi Jeff Salkin seconds this notion. A veteran pulpit rabbi and prolific author, he has been an advocate of bringing more spirituality and authentic values into children’s bnai mitzvah preparation and into their wider Jewish education – and of showing respect to those, especially people who are younger and have different life experiences.

“We need to listen to them,” says the rabbi — don’t treat their contrary opinions as “heretical.”

Says Rabbi Salkin, the distancing of young Jews from Israel – and from a general identification with the Jewish community — is an inevitable result of the type of Jewish education (i.e., “Hebrew school”) that most school-age children in this country receive. And of the few hours each week that those schools offer. And of the disinterest of many Jewish parents in encouraging their children to continue even this minimum level of education past their bar- or bat mitzvahs. “The parents don’t even try.”

Why have young Jews in the US drifted away from Israel?

Rabbi Salkin, who says it’s not too late to improve the situation, suggests several reasons:

• The older generation expected the image of threatened Israel, which faced extinction in 1967, and of a “heroic” nation that overcame the odds, to continue. “It was clear” from human nature “that this could not last forever.” To people born in recent decades, the Six-Day War is “ancient history.”
• Parents overwhelmingly blame Jewish schools for this declining interest in Israel. “Parents are quick to blame synagogues for this. Without [parental] support, there is little that synagogue {that run their own religious schools and youth groups] can do.
• The kids went to college – where they learned dogma about Israel being on the wrong side of the “oppressor” – “colonizer” divide. “They absorbed this stuff.”
• Schools and camps and youth groups taught an unrealistically sanitized version of a Jewish homeland, a “Disney Land version of Israel,” without discussing the living conditions and aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs who live there.
• Parents neglected to make support for and discussions about Israel, as a center of Jewish life, a priority at their dinner tables. “We didn’t teach the kids Jewish peoplehood. I wonder how often Israel is discussed in their homes. I wonder how much tzedakah is given to Israel and to Jewish causes in general.”

Two caveats: The prevalent anti-Israel atmosphere in the wider culture is much more common in “intellectual” academic circles than in the “working class” community, Rabbi Salkin says. And, the increasing alienation of Jewish youth is more a feature of Ashkenazic Jews, than of Sephardic Jews, who tend to be more “ethnic” and supportive of Israel.

Part of the fault – or explanation, to use a more-neutral term – for this anti-Israel phenomenon among young Jews lies with Israel, says a very-Zionist, very-liberal teacher friend of mine. Israel is becoming a hard sell. Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting to stay in power as prime minister even as he leads Israel’s fight against Hamas, is making it difficult to unreservedly back the country. He is seen as ruthless, authoritarian, obsessed with his own political survival. It is hard to separate his rule from the land he rules.

All this, even before Hamas attacked, and before the people of Israel who challenged Netanyahu’s conduct circled the wagons, demonstrated for the hostages’ release, reported to their IDF reserves units, and ended their protests that called for his removal from office.

This revitalized nationalistic feeling is much less evident among many of the young Israelis’ age-group peers in this country.

Young Jews’ faith in what they learned at home and in school was certain to diminish once they left that cocoon of certainty, once they went to the colleges that challenged their beliefs with a new, leftist orientation, Rabbi Salkin. “If they lived in a ghetto,” they would probably remain observant, Zionistic.

The Jewish youth of this country, says the rabbi, are following in the footsteps of previous generations of Jews who intermarried because their parents hadn’t made marriage to a Jew seem like a priority.

Bottom line – young Jews can’t be faulted for their opinions, Rabbi Salkin says. “We can’t blame them. Our kids only know what we taught them.”

Or what we did not teach them.