Which Path Leads the Jewish Community Out of Moral and Physical Danger?

About 2500 years ago, a Jewish communal leader living in the diaspora, the prophet Isaiah, proclaimed an urgent message: “For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace. For Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns.”    (Isaiah 62)

In a similar vein a distinguished Rabbinic colleague recently wrote in these pages (Times of Israel blog): “This is a dangerous moment for our community and our democracy…particularly urgent in a divisive election season.”

I imagine this incontrovertible observation is universally shared. But I profoundly disagree with his conclusion, “We need real unity and principled leadership in this moment to turn down the temperature and stand up for our values, but J Street is helping to fuel it.”

I don’t believe there can be any real unity between those who believe that the only way Israel’s survival can be guaranteed is through a solution that recognizes both Jewish and Palestinian self-determination, and those who disagree with Isaiah and say we should justify the status quo and muffle our consciences.

If my friend is driving recklessly, even suicidally, what kind of love am I showing by my silence or worse, my support?   With respect, I would further argue that a Jewish organization which advocates supporting candidates for US public office who deny the election results in 2020 or identify with Christian nationalism is endangering the pluralism and civil liberties that have allowed the American Jewish community to flourish.  J Street’s alternative approach, i.e., endorsing candidates who recognize Israel’s right to exists as a Jewish homeland while upholding time-honored democratic norms strengthens the US-Israel relationship and American Jewry.

This is a very important debate as the dangers are all too real.  Consider the argument to be in the category of what Pirkei Avot describes as a machloket l’shem shamayim — a dispute for the sake of Ultimate Reality.  The paradigm case is Hillel and Shammai: two schools of Talmudic thought that frequently disagreed, yet whose arguments the tradition tells us “will endure,” precisely because they were rooted in shared love of Torah rather than a desire to win. The Talmud even calls both “the words of the living God.”  You don’t build lasting authority by shrinking your tent — you build it by being secure enough to hold the argument inside it.

Polling of American Jewry for well over a decade now has captured a generational gap in connection to Israel, with younger Jews expressing a weaker relationship. It is a trend that has captured the attention of the Jewish community and triggered consternation among many. Such generational fissures have only deepened since October 7 and the Gaza War.

Similarly, we have seen a growing change in American politics with respect to the ways politicians approach the US-Israel relationship. Many, particularly in the Democratic Party, are finding it increasingly difficult to align the policies and actions of the current Israeli government with democratic values and American interests.

Certainly, there are some lawmakers who are undeniably anti-Israel. However, the vast majority are dedicated to Israeli security. although they may also be deeply uncomfortable with violence and discrimination against Palestinians.  They welcome a vibrant, democratic Israeli society and oppose the occupation beyond the Green Line that disenfranchises Palestinians. They uphold self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians. And in the face of repudiation, they refuse to remain silent.

Yes, this is a different pro-Israel approach than older generations may be accustomed to. But like the communal strategy with younger Jews, the answer to our shifting politics isn’t to write off or cast out the voices causing us discomfort. Rather, we should demonstrate that there is more than one way of being pro-Israel. Because if we don’t — if we remain so rigid with purity tests — then supporters of Israel as well as of Palestinian rights surely will become lost to us.

This is precisely the wager J Street has made, and it is paying off.

For nearly two decades, J Street has built and grown a political home for the lawmakers described above: those who support Israel enough to want it to live up to its own founding ideals, and who understand that unconditional silence is not friendship — it is abdication. Through JStreetPAC, the organization has recruited, endorsed, and helped elect a growing bench of pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy candidates who otherwise would have had nowhere to stand. These are not fringe figures. They are members of committees that oversee foreign aid, chairs of subcommittees, rising leaders within their caucuses — people who, because J Street built the space for them, no longer have to choose between caring about Israel and telling the truth about what they see happening in the West Bank and Gaza. That is not a small achievement. It is the deliberate, patient construction of political infrastructure where none existed before, and it has changed the terms of the conversation in Washington.

This matters most with lawmakers on the left who are outspoken critics of the current Israeli government. J Street’s impact has ensured that some of the loudest voices on the left are arguing for a better Israel rather than against Israel itself, and it keeps the door open to a future, more moderate Israeli government that will have allies already in place in Washington.

Our sages also insisted that love without honesty is incomplete. This is captured in the ethic of tochecha — the obligation to offer correction to someone you care about in a spirit of relationship rather than contempt. The alternative, the Talmud warns starkly, is complicity: one who is able to protest a wrong and fails to do so is held accountable for it. By that standard, the lawmakers unwilling to stay silent about settlement expansion or the erosion of Palestinian rights are not abandoning the pro-Israel cause. They are fulfilling one of its oldest obligations — to love enough to speak plainly.

None of this requires pretending the discomfort isn’t real. Many in the community find this posture genuinely difficult, even painful, especially in the aftermath of October 7. That discomfort deserves acknowledgment. But the lesson of both our politics and our polling is the same: the future of American Jewish life, and of a genuinely pro-Israel politics, will be secured by expanding, not narrowing, the definition of who is considered pro-Israel. J Street’s endorsement strategy has shown that a bigger tent is not a weaker one — it is how you keep both a movement and a country from losing the very people it most needs to hold onto.

The same prophetic book, which insists on our not remaining silent in the face of moral injury, concludes in its first chapter as interpreted in the Talmud:

“Jerusalem will be redeemed only through righteousness, as it is stated: “Zion will be redeemed with justice and those who return to her with righteousness.”

This task is not easy; but let all of us argue firmly what we truly believe to be what Jewish tradition and Jewish history teach us, l’shem shamayim, for the sake of Heavenly justice.