US Jews grapple with surge in attacks, bitter rifts over Israeli policies

For many US Jews, following current events these days can be emotionally tumultuous. Simultaneously, there is a widely shared anger at the upsurge of attacks targeting their communities, and deep divisions within those communities over whether to support or oppose various policies and actions by Israel in the conflict-wracked West Asia.

Just last week, there was a unified condemnation of the attack by a man who drove his pickup truck into a Detroit-area synagogue where more than 100 children were attending a preschool programme. The driver, who had lost family members during an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, exchanged gunfire with a guard before killing himself, according to the FBI.

“To hold American Jews - let alone children in a preschool - accountable for the actions of a foreign government is a dangerous double standard that we don’t apply today to any other group,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

“One can be deeply critical of the policies of the State of Israel and still recognise that targeting synagogues or any Jewish institutions with violence is not political protest; it is antisemitism, plain and simple.” Jewish author and commentator Peter Beinart also denounced the attack, while reiterating his vehement criticism of Israeli policy in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere.

“No matter what Israel does, no matter how immoral or brutal or horrifying, it doesn’t justify attacking a synagogue or justifying attacking American Jews in any way,” he said this week on his podcast. “Americans are not responsible for the actions of foreign governments or foreign organisations, just because they share a religion, an ethnic national ancestry, a race.”

 A debate over displaying pro-Israel signs, Beinart added, however, that US synagogues displaying “We stand with Israel” signs should take them down “because those signs make the congregants less safe and because they are immoral”.

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, has numerous policy differences with the Israeli Government, yet said she wouldn’t ask that “We stand with Israel” signs be taken down. “We live in a country where people are entitled to their beliefs,” she said. “No one should have to risk violence because they’re expressing them.”

It’s important, Spitalnick said, for Jews to acknowledge that these interrelated issues are nuanced. “I believe deeply in the need for a Jewish homeland,” she said. “And I have fundamental disagreements with this government, the humanitarian crisis it created in Gaza.”

Beth Kissileff, a journalist whose husband survived the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack that claimed 11 lives, agrees the issues are complex. “On the one hand, I do feel the fates of Jews the world over are linked,” she said.

“On the other hand, I don’t feel it’s fair for Jews the world over to be the proxies for the actions of the government of Israel.”

She noted that she and many others strongly disagree with various actions of Israel’s current government. She faulted its failure to curb Israeli settlers who are attacking West Bank Palestinians and its policies favouring Orthodox over non-Orthodox expressions of Judaism.

But scapegoating Jews because of Israel is unacceptable, she said.

“It’s outrageous to take anything out on anyone,” she said. “It’s outrageous that Iranian schoolgirls were killed,” she added, referring to the apparent US missile strike based on faulty intelligence, which killed many children, both boys and girls. “I’m outraged when any innocent life is taken.”

Outrage over blaming Jews for the Israeli government’s actions.

Even so, Kissileff said, antisemites will find any excuse - whether Israel or something else - to attack Jews.

Her husband, Jonathan Perlman, is rabbi of New Light Congregation. It was one of three Pittsburgh congregations to lose members in the 2018 synagogue attack, the deadliest antisemitic massacre in US history. The gunman, now on federal death row, claimed to be outraged by Jewish support for refugee resettlement.

At Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Nicole Guzik serves jointly as senior rabbi along with her husband, Erez Sherman. While they try to avoid broaching politics from the pulpit, they have convened events designed so that congregants hear diverse views.

Like many rabbis nationwide, they are dismayed by the high cost of security for their Conservative synagogue - more than USD 1 million a year. A surge in criticism of Israel and anti-Israel protests, triggered by its war in Gaza following Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023, attack, have at times spilled over into violence, prompting synagogues and Jewish institutions to beef up security.

“But we are going to live as Jews as proudly as possible,” Guzik said. “There’s no reason Jews should not be able to express their love for their homeland. ... A love for Israel is intrinsic to Jewish belief.”

Motti Seligson, director of public relations for Chabad-Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish movement, also lamented the need for stringent security measures. But he welcomed another trend, saying many Jews are strengthening ties to their religion and other Jews worldwide following the Hamas attack.

“This is something that we’ve been seeing from October 7, just a tremendous amount of people who want to connect with their faith and connect with their people,” Seligson said.

The conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism challenges Jewish communities.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, a large Conservative congregation in New York, said Jews have “grown uncomfortably accustomed to this new reality,” including the recent attacks in Michigan and Australia.

It shows, he said, “the blurred line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the frightening manner by which violent rhetoric becomes violent action, and the enabling that occurs when people in authority refuse to draw clear moral lines.”

Cosgrove, author of “For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today,” said Jews have an ancient connection to the land of Israel, even while many are critical of specific actions of its leaders.

“As a proud Zionist, an expression of that love of Israel can come and oftentimes does come in the form of dissent with the Israeli government,” Cosgrove said. “Love of Israel ... is different from love of the Israeli government. And the problem of this moment is that it’s all being conflated into one.”

He was grateful that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul visited the congregation last week, advocating for proposed legislation requiring a buffer zone where demonstrations would be prohibited near houses of worship. It followed recent anti-Israel protests outside New York synagogues.

“I urged my community that, shocked as we were, we need to be mobilised, not paralysed,” Cosgrove said.

Israel’s historical role figures in the debate.

Israel was founded in 1948 as a homeland and refuge for the world’s Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. Its leaders consider themselves representatives, partners and defenders of Jewish communities around the world.

Mark Mazower, a history professor at Columbia University, last year published “On Antisemitism: A Word in History,” tracing how the meaning of “antisemitism” had evolved since the word was coined in the 19th century. He asserts that gradually, after Israel’s founding in 1948, antisemitism was applied with increasing frequency to hostility to Israel.

Over the same period, Mazower notes, many US Jews and the major organisations that served them closely embraced Israel - a trend that now has fueled divisions within the US Jewish community over whether to support or criticise various Israeli policies in the Middle East.

“It’s obviously wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for what Israel does,” Mazower said. “Yet large American Jewish organizations have wrapped themselves in the Israeli flag and said it’s the duty of American Jews to stand with Israel.”

Among those organisations is the Anti-Defamation League, which last year reported that incidents related to Israel constituted - for the first time - more than half of the antisemitic incidents in its annual tally.

“We will not apologise for our love and support for the Jewish state of Israel. Not now, not ever,” the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, told the organisation’s national conference this week.