Israel threatens the identity of American Jews 

My father was something of a lapsed Jew. An ardent atheist, he thought all religion, including Judaism, was a dangerous anachronism. He couldn’t speak a lick of Yiddish, unlike his Russian-born father, and disliked most Kosher food. Borscht Belt humor was lost on him.  

Nevertheless, my father celebrated how Jews have won far more Nobel Prizes than their tiny numbers would imply and that some of history’s most consequential minds — Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx — were members of the tribe. And though a devoted Yankee fan, he admired Dodger great Sandy Koufax, a Jew who famously refused to play on Jewish holidays.

But more important to my father than Jews being good at something, even many things, was them simply being good. Morality mattered most. Thus, for him, the key insight of thousands of years of Jewish history and learning was the importance of honor, integrity and compassion. In other words, being a mensch.  

My father’s worldview, however paradoxically arrived at given his estrangement from many aspects of Judaism, is typical among American Jews. Asked by Pew what aspects of Judaism are “essential” to being Jewish, American Jews ranked the pursuit of justice and equality near the top, far ahead of being part of a Jewish community or observing Jewish law. Simply put, for most American Jews, a commitment to social justice makes Jews Jews. It’s always been thus — though that may change.  

Why? Israel. 

The Jewish state, for some time following its establishment, could plausibly be seen as an exemplar of the most cherished egalitarian values held by many Jews regardless of where they lived. The country’s Declaration of Independence, after all, proclaims that Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”  

Of course, the Jewish state has fallen short of its noble ideals — its expulsion and displacement of Palestinians in the one-year conflict that created Israel in 1948 and its placing Palestinian citizens under martial law for nearly two decades thereafter are just two examples. But for many like my father, squinting allowed the illusion to be maintained, as the young country, forged in the wake of the Holocaust, took in Jews from around the world and made the proverbial desert bloom.  

However, this blinkered view is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, particularly as Israel has nakedly embraced ethno-nationalism, as recently demonstrated by passing laws decreeing the “right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel as “unique to the Jewish people” and by abandoning any pretense of ending its half-century-plus occupation of Palestinian territories. Jerusalem’s response to savagery with savagery, since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks has further exposed the country’s darker side.  

All this is apt to accelerate perceptions among American Jews, especially younger ones who came of age as Israel lurched dramatically rightward, that the Jewish state doesn’t embody what they see as Jewish values. Already in 2021, according to a survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute, fully 38 percent of Jewish respondents in the U.S. under 40 agreed with the description of Israel being an “Apartheid state.”  

Why does this matter? 

Writing in The New Republic, Emily Tamkin introduces Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, who is distraught by recent developments in Israel, including a right-wing government that includes one minister who was exempted from military service due to his extremist views and associations and another who proudly calls himself a “homophobe” and has advocated the full annexation of the West Bank. Such individuals and their policies, Rabbi Jacobs laments, are “literally at odds with how we understand Judaism and democracy.”   

While the rabbi is right to be distressed, how he and others “understand” Judaism may be wrong. At least that’s what many American Jews may conclude after being unable to reconcile what they thought Judaism stood for with what’s happening in Israel. In short, for many American Jews, Israel is a test—a test of their deeply held conviction that being Jewish means doing good, and, if they determine Israel fails to measure up, they may conclude it does no good to be Jewish.  

This, I suspect, would disappoint many Jews, even lapsed ones like my father, who still hold onto the belief that Judaism’s strange alchemy has something important to offer to a world in desperate need of repair.   

Jon Sebastian Shifrin is a writer of political commentary and short stories. He also is the founder of The Daily Dissident, a current events web magazine. Shifrin is a foreign affairs officer at the State Department. The views expressed in the piece are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the State Department or the U.S. government.