How Can We Speak To Our Adult Children On the Topic of Israel and Zionism When We Don’t See Eye to Eye.

Yom Kippur Morning, 5785, Oct 12, 2024

Rabbi Daniel Gropper, DD - Community Synagogue of Rye

This past Spring, a congregant came to see me. He was despondent. Despite all his attempts, he and his adult daughter were not connecting. She refused to see his point of view. The issue? Israel. 

The man sitting before me saw Israel’s response to the events of October 7th as justified, even morally correct. His daughter took the opposite view.

She sees Israel as a settler-colonial power intent on subjugating the Palestinians. She believes what the anti-Zionists say, that Israel is committing genocide. “Rabbi,” he said,  “how can I get her to see my way? 

He wasn’t looking to me for the thing to say to his daughter to bring her to his side. What he was really asking was, “how do I ensure that I don’t ruin my relationship with my daughter?”

“Stop talking to her head and talk to her heart.” I said. “If you make this a political debate, even if you are right, you will still lose. Practice empathy. Listen to her. Listen with curiosity, without judgment, without formulating a rebuttal. Hear her. She is not looking for a political debate. She is looking for her father’s love.”

How many of us have had conversations like this with our children during this past year? I have. With our eldest preparing to be drafted into the IDF and our youngest considering a gap year in Israel, our middle child has very different views. As a trans-woman, she views much of the world through the prism of oppressor and oppressed. Since she feels oppressed - which she is -  and she identifies with those who are like her, in this case, the Palestinians, I get it. Still, I plead:  “But what about the Israelis?”  “What about the innocent Israelis who were raped, torturned, decapitated, taken hostage?”  Her first response is that Israel is perpetrating violence. Indeed. This is war. And she holds her ground which, as a father, gives me pride. But it’s a hard conversation in a hard year. In a moment of frustration I even said, “Shai, for someone who identifies with those who are non-binary, you are thinking about all this in a very binary way.” It wasn’t my best moment. Al Chet Shechatati, for blurting out things in moments of exasperation. 

She hears me when I say that Israel has to defend herself, that there is no other way, AND she appreciates that I am critical of the Netanyahu government. She hears me when I say that I have and will continue joining the protestors urging the government to bring the hostages home. And I try my best to listen with my heart, to empathize with what it means to see yourself as oppressed while still advocating for our people. I keep reminding her and reminding myself that the answer here is not an either/or but a both/and with all its messiness; and yes, while it often feels like we have two heads, that is part of what it means to be Jewish.

And then that father in my office says to me, “I will certainly try what you are suggesting but let me ask you this, I thought we raised a Zionist. We took our daughter to Israel. We supported Jewish causes. She knows how important Israel is to us. What did we do wrong?”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” I said. “In fact you did everything right, but right now we are all competing in the oppression Olympics, a special competition that sees everything through the lens of oppressed and oppressor. As Jews, we can cheer on ourselves as the longest-standing competitor and, we are world champions at falling and getting back up but, as you know from watching the Paris games this summer, the prime time events are the sprints. Right now the Palestinian cause is prime time. Israel is viewed as the oppressor. The Palestinians are seen as the oppressed, and in the oppression Olympics, the oppressed always win.”

Still, the conversation made me wonder. How did we get here? Not the question of anti-semitism towards Israel. That’s easy. It’s part of a long history that paints the Jew as a symbol for whatever a given society or civilization regards as its most objectionable qualities. If a society abhors things like apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide and people can point to things Israel does that look like those reviled acts, the Jewish state becomes the most hated country in the world. That explains the anti-semitism towards Israel in the guise of anti-Zionism. But what I continue to ponder is this: how did we get to this place, a place where our own children and grandchildren choose universalism over their own people’s needs? And furthermore, how might we go forward to a place where the answer is both/and instead of either/or?

Join me then, on a journey taking us back 150 years.

In the last decades of the 19th century, as wave after wave of Jews immigrated to these shores, those who fled the Pale of Settlement feared their children would trade ancestral traditions for the allure of American culture. One of those children, Horace Kallen, made it his intellectual project to find a way for Jews to enjoy the bounties of American society without having to fully abandon their Jewishness.

Born in 1882, Kallen had a preordained calling: to become a rabbi like his father. But a Boston truant officer forced him, against his parents’ wishes, to attend a secular grammar school. This set him on the path to Harvard, where he paid his way by reading meters for the Dorchester Gaslight Company. 

At the turn of the century, Harvard was inhospitable to Jews. What a surprise! The Brahmin elite believed newcomers must assimilate in full; commit to what they called “100 percent Americanism.” Kallen had a different view. He extolled an approach that would help lift Jews from their deep sense of parochialism to a type of identity that was deeply patriotic and Jewish. In a word: “hypenation.” To Kallen, the hyphen--Jewish-American, Chinese-American, Irish-American to name just three --  was the essence of democracy. He described America as a “symphony of civilization,” an intermingling of cultures that resulted in a society far more dynamic than most of the countries back in the Old World. The genius of America, despite what the elite of Harvard might espouse, was that it didn’t coerce any minority group into abandoning their marks of difference. This viewpoint of both/and, as opposed to either/or would define American Jewry for generations. 

Kallen’s philosophy of hyphenation quickly dominated. Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, conceptualized a new, expansive vision of civil liberties derived from the values inherent in Jewish tradition. Lillian Wald and Henry Moskowitz co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People based on the notion that everyone is created in the image of God. Jews became enthusiastic supporters of the New Deal, which espoused Judeo-Christian values, a term that only entered the American lexicon in the 1930s. As a Yiddish joke went, Jewish theology consisted of die velt (“this world”), yene velt (“the world to come”), and Roosevelt. And it worked! We became so accepted that in March 1962, Time magazine’s cover read, "America: Protestant, Catholic, and Jew.” We had made it. We were on the podium!

Then things started to disintegrate. In his book Masks Jews Wear, Rabbi Eugene Borowitz noted that the 1960s and 70s brought for American Jews a new, “realism bought at the price of the assassinations of two Kennedys and a King, [and] of the credibility of Presidents Johnson and Nixon.”  Borowitz noted that the political turmoil and division was creating a spiritual and political crisis that he believed would separate American Jews from America. No longer could we be hyphenated. We now had to choose - particularist or universalist? American or Jewish?  Liberal or Religious? Heschel might have marched wearing his kipa with Dr. King, but Goodman and Schwerner didn’t go to register voters during that freedom summer wearing theirs. Abbie Hoffman and Betty Friedan may have been among the leading voices of their movements but they were doing so as Americans who happened to be Jewish, not the other way around. Many were choosing American-Jew over Jewish-American.  

The Six Day War and the Jewish euphoria that followed put the brakes on this existential moment. It created a positive shift in American Jewish self-consciousness where, as Borowitz writes, “we finally triumphed over the ‘self hate’ leftover from the Holocaust.” The enormous outpouring of support for Israel marked a rebirth of Jewish pride. We could root our ethnicity in Israel. Even if we didn’t move there, we were able to move Israel inside of ourselves, into our synagogues, our Federations and our summer camps. Overt Jewish identification surged. 

This turn of events framed the upbringing of many in my generation. We absorbed this understanding through synagogue trips to Israel, visits to our temples and JCCs by heroes like Moshe Dayan and his eye-patch, the map of Greater Israel on our JNF tzedakah boxes.

For me, it was the singing of “Hatikvah” during flag pole at summer camp. No matter what, Team Israel seemed to win every game of “capture the flag.” It was an attitude of defiance, cultivated by repeated assurances that if we do not fight, we die—a mindset reinforced by the firebombing of my childhood synagogue back home in Vancouver.

 In the 1980s though, this idealism began to unravel. Lebanon became Israel’s Vietnam. At 21, I spent my junior year in Jerusalem during the first Intifada. It kindled in me a desire to serve the Jewish people but I also became aware for the first time that Israel was an occupier, what this meant to millions of Palestinians and what it could mean to Israel’s soul. If these thoughts were entering my mind, imagine what someone born in the 1980s and after might think? Israel was no longer David standing up to Goliath. And as politics became more polarized, young American Jews felt they had to choose: oppressor or oppressed? Israel or the Palestinians? David or Goliath?   

In 2007, the year Hamas violently seized power in Gaza, my teacher, Rabbi Jan Katzew wrote words that resonate with even greater force today: “We live in an either/or world. Either you are for us or against us. Either you are right or you are wrong. Either you are good or you are evil. Either you win or you lose. It is simple to live in an either/or world…. An either/or world is inhabited by two types of people, friends or enemies, citizens or barbarians, members or infidels, brothers or others, people who have the truth and people who do not. In extreme cases, an either/or world is divided between people I would die for or people I would kill, people of God and people without God. We are all witnesses to an either/or world, but we do not have to accept it and live according to its norms.”

What if there was another way? What if young Jews didn’t have to choose? What if there was a way to remain Zionist AND liberal, progressive and pro-Israel? Why should progressive groups and social justice coalitions, be permitted to push anti-Zionist narratives without consequence? Why should the bullies get to run the playground? We have more power than we are aware of. We need to reclaim our voice, our history, and our progressive identity, standing proudly as both Jews and Americans. But how?

Judaism offers an approach called “eilu va-eilu.” The phrase comes from a famous Talmudic debate between the rival teachers Hillel and Shammai. The argument had become so intractable that it had to be resolved by Divine proclamation:  “Eilu va-eilu divrei Elohim chayim,” meaning, “These [opinions] and those [opinions] are both the word of the living God… You are both right.” (Eiruvin 13b).  

Our tradition rejects “either/or” thinking and embraces the dialectic of “both/and;” the type of thinking Horace Kallen promoted with his view of hyphenation over 100 years ago. Unfortunately, the Netanyahu government has promoted either/or thinking. Serving 17 of the last 28 years, Bibi is the longest ruling Prime Minister in Israeli history. Most American Jews and most Israelis under 35 have only known him in this capacity. And, as he has embraced the settler movement that sees the world through a myopic lens. Netanyahu’s actions have certainly contributed to the international mindset that views Israel as an oppressor, if not merely an occupier.

My colleague Jonathan Blake reminds us that the enemies of shalom - whether on these shores or in the Middle East live in an either-or world. It is one that says you can either be a Zionist or a champion of equality and justice for all God’s children. You must choose.

I reject that assumption. There is another way. Eilu va-eilu. You can support Israel and support causes that promote equity, inclusion and rights for all. You can critique Israel without becoming allies with those who seek Israel’s destruction. You can support Palestinian lives and uphold and advocate for Israeli lives. As Jon puts it, “You can be a Zionist without being a messianic triumphalist.”

Throughout history, we have faced challenges that demanded adaptation and resilience. We have always found ways to navigate a world that often seeks to marginalize us. Take, for example, the humble bagel. Most of us think of it as a quintessentially Jewish food, but its origins are a testament to our adaptability. In medieval Poland, Jews were prohibited from baking bread because it was seen as a sacred act reserved for Christians. So what did we do? We created the bagel—a boiled and then baked bread that technically didn’t violate the prohibition. The bagel became a symbol of Jewish ingenuity in the face of adversity, turning an antisemitic restriction into an identifying symbol.

Just as our ancestors adapted to challenges by creating new customs, foods, and ways of life, we too must adapt. The narrative that labels Jews and Zionists as oppressors is a distortion of our history and values, a distortion with a long history rooted in antisemitic propaganda. But instead of retreating, we must respond with creativity, resilience, and our insistence on the truth.

One group, Zioness, is leading the charge, showing that one can be unapologetically progressive and proudly Zionist. Zioness activists advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and immigrant rights—all while affirming their connection to Israel. They refuse to be boxed into a narrative that forces Jews to choose between their liberal values and their pro-Israel identity. Zioness’s message is clear: the Jewish community has always been on the side of justice, and that does not change because of our connection to Israel.

Our Jewish values and our commitment to Israel do not contradict liberal ideals—they are expressions of them. Just as we stood with civil rights leaders in the past, we continue to stand for the rights of all people today, even as we stand firmly with our own community. It’s both/and. This dual commitment is not a betrayal of progressivism; it is a testament to its fullest expression. So what if some groups won’t let us play in their playground. We’ll do what generations of Jews have done before us: We will find another one--or we will build our own. 

Despite the antisemitic vitriol from the far left and overt antisemitism in the far right, America remains the most hospitable place for Jews since the time of the first or second Jewish commonwealth. The values that have fostered this environment—tolerance, diversity, and the defense of human rights—are Jewish values, and they couldn’t be more at stake than they are right now. Let us remember that being Jewish and liberal is not a contradiction. It is our legacy. This is what has made America a unique haven for Jews. It is a vision worth fighting (and voting) for.

On this Yom Kippur morning, let us commit to reclaiming our narrative. Let us reject the false dichotomy that pits our Jewish identity against our liberal values and instead, let us join with groups that uphold the value of both/and instead of succumbing to the banality of either/or. 

And I have a request, especially for younger people whose parents love you dearly, who want to understand you and your thinking, who just want to speak with you: quit social media, especially as a news source. The algorithms polarize us and make us angry. Facetime your parents or better, meet them for coffee and when you do, extend them some grace and empathy. Try to see their side as they strive to see yours. Step into the nuance and away from the easy slogans. And finally, rejoin the messy middle: the liminal, soupy, undefined place with no simple answers. Doing this will certainly make your parents happy.

And your parents need to step away from social media too. When it comes to misunderstanding the memes and frequent fractured information on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, and others, there is no age limit. I implore all of you: avoid the rhetoric and easy slogans that lead us to think in binary terms and urge us to vote on single issues, especially when it comes to Israel. Let us instead embrace the totality of what particular candidates stand for and their character. As Jews, especially as Reform Jews, Israel cannot be our only concern. Election day is 24 days away. Just as my wish is for all of us to join the messy middle, we need elected leaders who live there too. We need leaders who will protect and support Israel's right to defend itself and who will represent us in the complexity and messiness of all that we are.

Eilu v’Eilu. Jews have always embraced the messy middle. It’s our superpower. Like the bagel, the Jewish community has adapted and thrived through countless challenges, and we will do so again.

May we go from strength to strength, standing proudly as a community committed to justice, our heritage, and our future. May we answer the question “Ayekah” with a vision of hope, resilience, and unwavering faith in our mission.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May we be sealed for a year of strength, courage, and a renewed sense of purpose. Am Yisrael Chai.

1. Under Christianity, we were Christ killers. Under Islam, we were popularly called the killers of prophets. Under Marxism, especially Soviet Marxism, but even going back to the founder, the Jew was the ultimate capitalist. Under Nazism, the Jew was the ultimate race polluter.

2. Groups like Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, along with various LGBTQ+ organizations