“I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not tribal enough…
Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
– Emma Lazarus (1883)[1]

Black Saturday (10/7) was horrific and shocking not only in itself, but also because Hamas and its collaborators openly rejoiced in sadism and depravity at a level that even the Nazis went to great lengths to hide because they knew it was evil. In the U.S., an ensuing wave of anti-Jew violence was unleashed[2] as the Progressive Left and other pro-Palestinian advocates expressed their antisemitic genocidal glee in the moment.[3] But when the government steps in and takes unprecedented steps to forcefully protect Jews,[4] mainstream and Progressive Jews recoil in fear for democratic norms and rights.[5] In doing so, are they turning their back on the People of Israel (Am Yisrael) in favor of moral relativism[6] and transgressing the Jewish moral standard that condemns “those who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perversity of evil” (Proverbs 2:9, 19)?

For Jews, “evil is an attribute of the act, not the agent.”[7] It reveals itself in the actor’s veneration of false gods[8] and rejection of the image of God in man (צֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים, or imago Dei) and that each life is sacred (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5). It represents the inversion of virtue (a“privation of the good”).[9] Evil is, therefore, action unhinged from moral moorings and G-d commandments (Proverbs 2:9).[10]

The U.S. government is primed to fight the evil incarnate in the glorification of, and support for, Hamas and Black Saturday. The 10/7 attack coincided with a prevailing American sensitivity to a decline of moral order and fear of moral illiterates.[11] Only a year later, conservatives and independents voted in a new President and Congressional supporters to promote communal moral values–which incorporate notions of “us” and“them”–above concerns for individual autonomy.[12]

American Jews, who are “far less religious than American adults as a whole,”[13] appear content to allow terrorist supporters to hide behind individual free speech rights, despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution does not permit advocacy–even non-violent and lawful–in support of foreign terrorist organizations.[14] Their position is aligned with their disdain of communal ethical principles, and their passionate pursuit, and a narrow reading, of–tikkun olam (“repairing the world”) and kavod habriyot (“respect for the dignity of all people”).[15] But the Jewish soul is communal.[16] By exalting personalist and universalist values,[17] these Jews stand apart from traditional Judaism, as well as mainstream Americans.[18]

According to Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, now Dean of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York,

American Jews feel “shame” and “despair” and disappointment with Israel, and are so tired of fighting over it that they are starting to lose interest. Some rabbis are dropping it from Hebrew school curricula and no one notices.[19]

The moral stuttering[20] of American Jews following Black Saturday speaks to this detachment. Their hostility to government policies and actions that callout and protect Jews from antisemitism reveals their abdication from the fundamental principle that all Jews are responsible for one another in their shared fate (Shevuot 39a:22).[21]

Endnotes

1. Emma Lazarus, Epistle to the Hebrews (1883), quoted in, E. Mischel, How Emma Lazarus Discovered Her Heritage and Became the Voice of Her People, Aish (Aug. 22, 2023), https://aish.com/how-emma-lazarus-discovered-her-heritage-and-became-the-voice-of-her-people/

2. Three weeks after the Hamas attack, protesters were already turning on Jewish students. At the Cooper Union in New York, Jewish students were locked in a library to ensure their safety from pro-Hamas demonstrators, who pounded on the doors and shouted slogans. See, L. Tress, Jewish students locked in NYC’s Cooper Union as protesters chanted ‘Free Palestine’, Times of Israel (Oct. 26, 2023), https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-students-barricade-in-nycs-cooper-union-as-protesters-chant-free-palestine/; cf., Some U.S. Professors Praise Hamas’s October 7 Terror Attacks, ADL Center on Extremism (Nov. 8, 2023),  https://www.adl.org/resources/article/some-us-professors-praise-hamass-october-7-terror-attacks

3. Cf., S. Otterman, Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas, NY Times (Oct. 9, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/nyregion/columbia-pro-palestinian-group-hamas.html

4.  Cf., Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, Heritage Found. (Oct. 7, 2024), https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism

5. See, e.g., S. Brous, I Am Not Your Pawn (Sermon March 8, 2025), https://ikar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/I-Am-Not-Your-Pawn-Purim-5785.pdf; A. Lau-Lavie & J. Dorf, Christian conservatives have appropriated Queen Esther as a symbol. Let’s take her back, Jewish Telegraph Agency (March 4, 2025), https://www.jta.org/2025/03/04/ideas/christian-conservatives-have-appropriated-queen-esther-as-a-symbol-lets-take-her-back; BROAD COALITION OF MAINSTREAM JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS RELEASE STATEMENT REJECTING FALSE CHOICE BETWEEN JEWISH SAFETY & DEMOCRACY, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (April 15, 2025), https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/press-release/jewishcommunalstatement/

6. US Attorney-General William Barr, quoted in, T. Hurka, Why social liberals are not moral relativist, New Statesman (March 3, 2021), https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2021/03/why-social-liberals-are-not-moral-relativists; cf., Virtue and Volunteerism: Why Schools Should Stop Clarifying Values and Start Instilling Virtues, Society for Classical Learning (Jan. 1, 2014), https://www.societyforclassicallearning.org/virtue-and-volunteerism-why-schools-should-stop-clarifying-values-and-start-instilling-virtue/; C. Hoff Summers, Teaching the Virtues, Imprimis, Vol. 20, Iss. 11 (Nov. 1991), https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/teaching-the-virtues/

7. J. Sacks, Yom Kippur in a Nutshell, Ceremony & Celebration (Yom Kippur 5781), https://rabbisacks.org/app/uploads/2018/10/CC-Yom-Kippur-FINAL.pdf

8. “The worship of false gods is not the only subject to which we are forbidden to pay attention; rather, we are warned not to consider any thought which will cause us to uproot one of the fundamentals of the Torah. Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), Avodat Kochavim, Ch.2:3, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/912360/jewish/Avodat-Kochavim-Chapter-Two.htm

9. Cf., N. De Warren, Evil and the Holocaust, in M. Polgar and S. John, The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience, Penn State U. (2023), https://psu.pb.unizin.org/holocaust3rs/chapter/4-2-international-law-justice-and-reparations

10. See, https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16373/jewish/Chapter-2.htm#v19

11. While more than 50% of Americans give “poor” ratings to the state of morals in the country, with Republican and Democrat negative views only slightly changing, it is independents who registered the greatest change in worsening views. M. Brennan, Views of State of Moral Values in U.S. at New Low, Gallup (June 9, 2023), https://news.gallup.com/poll/506960/views-state-moral-values-new-low.aspx; see also, Donald Trump Supporters Think about Morality Differently than Other Voters. Here’s How., Cato Inst. (Feb. 5, 2016), https://www.cato.org/commentary/donald-trump-supporters-think-about-morality-differently-other-voters-heres-how;  B. Enke, MORAL VALUES AND VOTING: TRUMP AND BEYOND, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Working Paper 24268 (2018), https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24268/revisions/w24268.rev0.pdf

12. Cf., B. Enke, MORAL VALUES AND VOTING: TRUMP AND BEYOND, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Working Paper 24268 (2018), https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24268/revisions/w24268.rev0.pdf

13. Cf., Jewish Americans in 2020, Pew Research Center (Report May 11, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/

14. See, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project,  130 S. Ct. 2705 (2010).

15. A. Eisen, The Two Worlds of Judaism, in October 7 as Turning Point in Jewish History, Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (Oct. 18, 2014), https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/resources/blog/october-7-turning-point-jewish-history; cf., T. Williams & J. Olof Bengtsson, Personalism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/; J. Krasner, The World is Broken, So Humans Must Repair It: The History and Evolution of Tikkun Olam, Brandeis U. (May 22, 2013), https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/history-culture/2023/may/tikkun-olam-history.html

16. According to Rabbi Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine:

The relationship between the Jewish people and its individual members is different than the relationship between any other national group and its constituents. All other national groups only bestow upon their individual members the external aspect of their essence. But the essence itself each person draws from the all-inclusive soul, from the soul of God, without the intermediation of the group… This is not the case regarding Israel. The soul of the individuals is drawn from … the community

Rabbi A. Kook, Orot, p. 144, quoted in, E. London, Lo Titgodedu: Do Not Separate Yourself, Sefaria (May 13, 2015), https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/10928.1?lang=bi&with=AboutSheet&lang2=en

17. See, e.g., S. Brous, I Am Not Your Pawn (Sermon March 8, 2025), https://ikar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/I-Am-Not-Your-Pawn-Purim-5785.pdf; A. Lau-Lavie & J. Dorf, Christian conservatives have appropriated Queen Esther as a symbol. Let’s take her back, Jewish Telegraph Agency (March 4, 2025), https://www.jta.org/2025/03/04/ideas/christian-conservatives-have-appropriated-queen-esther-as-a-symbol-lets-take-her-back; BROAD COALITION OF MAINSTREAM JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS RELEASE STATEMENT REJECTING FALSE CHOICE BETWEEN JEWISH SAFETY & DEMOCRACY, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (April 15, 2025), https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/press-release/jewishcommunalstatement/

18. More than a millennium ago, Maimonides warned (Mishneh Torah 3:11) that those who separate themselves from the community and go their own way, “as if you were one of the Gentiles and did not belong to the Jewish people,” have “no share in the World to Come.” https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Repentance.3.11?lang=bi

19. Quoted in, P. Weiss, The divide between progressive American Jews and Israel is widening, Mondoweiss (Nov. 1, 2019), https://mondoweiss.net/2019/10/american-jews-are-sick-and-tired-of-israel-says-leading-rabbi/; cf., also, A. Brownfield, Alienation of American Jews From Israel Dramatically Affects U.S. Policy, Washington, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Jan./Feb. 2020), https://www.wrmea.org/2020-january-february/alienation-of-american-jews-from-israel-dramatically-affects-u.s.-policy.html

20. Cf., N. Norwalk, MACINTYRE ON STORIES, Icthus (Dec. 21, 2010), https://harvardichthus.org/2010/12/macintyre-on-stories/; J. Davison Hunter, The Denial of the Moral as Lived Experience – What became of moral formation in a democratic society?, Hedgehog Review (Spring 2024), https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/missing-character/articles/the-denial-of-the-moral-as-lived-experience

21. See, שֶׁכׇּל יִשְׂרָאֵל עֲרֵבִים זֶה בָּזֶה!, or “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh,” meaning “All Jews are guarantors for one another.” https://www.sefaria.org/Shevuot.39a.22?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en; The Meaning of Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh, Colel Chabad, https://colelchabad.org/kol-yisrael-arevim-zeh-bazeh-and-charity/