\u201cWe are living through the collapse of a paradigm,\u201d said Kula, describing a polarized Jewish community shaken by grief, fear of antisemitism, and, especially for liberal Zionists, despair that their vision of two states for two people will ever come about. Kula, who championed pluralism as the president of the Jewish organization CLAL, said the question was no longer how big the Jewish tent should be, but whether it had already been \u201cshredded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout the evening, Kula resisted turning the discussion into a debate over one state versus two states or competing historical narratives. Instead, he pressed panelists to articulate the fears and \u201cnightmares\u201d driving their positions \u2014 a strategy meant to surface \u201cvulnerability\u201d rather than certainty. For the most part, the audience \u2014 over 400 in the sanctuary, and another 882 who registered online, according to the synagogue \u2014 held its applause and jeers, as Kula requested, lending the evening the hushed air of a memorial service.<\/p>\n
\t Cosgrove, who recently referred to himself as a \u201cliberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government<\/a>,\u201d framed his fears around internal Jewish fracture. Drawing on biblical imagery, he warned that American Jews were increasingly turning one another into enemies, and said that the role of pulpit rabbis like him is to make room in their congregations for disagreement.<\/p>\n \u201cMy primary fear, and that is my primary role right now, is that in a moment of time when the Jewish people don\u2019t lack for external enemies, we are making internal enemies,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I believe that the role of rabbinic leadership and all of leadership right now must be that we restrain ourselves from this need to call the other a \u2018self-hating Jew\u2019 or \u2018self-hating Zionist,\u2019 or whatever label you want to put on one side, and a colonial oppressor on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n Jacobs, whose organization has been outspoken in condemning Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, said liberal Zionism\u2019s credibility has been undermined by institutions that claim its mantle while abandoning their Jewish values.<\/p>\n For years, she said, major Jewish \u201clegacy\u201d organizations instructed American Jews that supporting Israel meant defending its government, ignoring occupation and silencing Palestinian voices. As Israel has moved further away from liberal democracy, that model has alienated young Jews, whose distancing from Israel was front of mind for a panel whose youngest members are in their 50s.<\/p>\n \t \u201cYou have a young generation who\u2019s never known Israel without Netanyahu at the helm, or almost never known the possibility of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n \u201cUnsurprisingly,\u201d she continued, that generation \u201clooks around and says, \u2018Well, if you\u2019re telling me that Zionism means defending occupation and defending illiberal democracy, I want no part of that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Jacobs suggested that most American Jews remain deeply connected to Israel while opposing its current government and supporting a two-state solution \u2014 a position she described as underrepresented in communal leadership.<\/p>\n In March, a Pew Research survey found <\/a>that about 46% of Jewish Americans, or a plurality, said a two\u2011state solution is the best outcome. Polling<\/a> by Pew and others also suggests that while a substantial share of young Jews still affirms the importance of Israel and the two\u2011state idea, they also tend to be less supportive of Israeli policy and more questioning of traditional Zionist approaches than older generations.<\/p>\n Sperber brought the crisis into the realm of family and faith. Speaking as an Israeli with relatives across the political spectrum, she described conversations that have become nearly impossible, even among her siblings in Israel who share religious language and deep attachment to the land.<\/p>\n \t She said her own activism as a founder of Smol Emuni<\/a>, or the \u201cfaithful left,\u201d grew out of alarm at what she called the celebration of power, vengeance and dehumanization in Israel discourse in her community of Orthodox and otherwise observant Jews. Their uncritical support of the current Israeli government and its hawkish policies is often justified, she said, through distorted readings of Jewish tradition.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hear a kind of admiration of power and vengeance and brutality that is using our Jewish tradition as its justification,\u201d said Sperber. \u201cPeople talking about the Palestinians as Amalek, a kind of mythical nation that is supposed to be destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur Judaism has been leached away from us, and we need to find a way to bring it back into a place that\u2019s morally grounded in our Torah and in our kind of democratic and liberal [values],\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n \t What is needed, she argued, is not only broader inclusion but teshuvah \u2014 moral self-examination and repentance \u2014 a core Jewish response to catastrophe.<\/p>\n Beinart, a prominent journalist whose call for one state has placed him outside the liberal Zionist camp, described his own position as emerging from years of listening to Palestinians, including people in Gaza. He spoke of specific conversations that left him haunted by the scale of civilian suffering and fearful of being judged by future generations for silence or complicity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most constructive role I could play is to nudge people a little bit to listen to Palestinians,\u201d he said. Such conversations undermine assumptions about Palestinian intentions and force Jews to confront how \u201cethnonationalism in Israel-Palestine\u201d contradicts their own ideals as Americans. The liberal Zionist promise \u2014 that one could affirm Jewish safety, democracy and equality simultaneously \u2014 has failed under the weight of reality, he suggested.<\/p>\n At the same time, Beinart \u2014 recently criticized by anti-Zionists and supporters of the Israel boycott for his planned appearance at Tel Aviv University \u2014 acknowledged the cost of rejecting the Zionist idea of exclusive Jewish sovereignty: estrangement from the observant Jewish communities he once felt at home in, and anxiety about what that alienation means for his children.<\/p>\n \u201cMy nightmare is that I will continue to lose those relationships because I can\u2019t find a way to communicate effectively with people who profoundly disagree with the positions that I\u2019ve taken, that I do it out of love for our people and then other people,\u201d said Beinart.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ASC_7162-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tA panel on \u2018The Jewish Tent at the Crossroads\u2019 at B\u2019nai Jeshurun in Manhattan drew over 400 people in person, and another 882 online, January 6, 2025. (Gil Getz\/B\u2019nai Jeshurun via JTA)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/20230221_untitled_02740-e1677033143941-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIllustrative: Rabbi Jill Jacobs at a protest against the Israeli government\u2019s proposed judicial reforms in New York City, February 21, 2023. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/smolemuniii-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tAttendees of the second Smol Emuni conference gather in Jerusalem\u2019s Heichal Shlomo building on February 28, 2024. (Gilad Kavalertchik\/Smol Emuni)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AFP__20251010__78E38FP__v2__HighRes__TopshotPalestinianIsraelConflictWestBankSettler-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tIDF soldiers stand behind a masked settler swinging a slingshot while hurling stones at Palestinians who had gathered for the annual olive harvest season, during an attack by Israeli settlers on the West Bank village of Beita, south of Nablus, on October 10, 2025. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh\/AFP)<\/p>\n
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