The limits of ‘my story’

There has always been a tension in religious life between what we inherit and how we interpret it, but what seems to be shifting is how much weight we place on personal authorship.

For most of Jewish history, identity has been understood as something passed from generation to generation through text, ritual, and collective memory. Interpretation has always been part of that process. After all, argument is one of the defining features of our tradition, but those arguments always took place within an unspoken boundary: that there was a shared story to argue about. That boundary feels less stable today.

In contemporary Jewish discourse, particularly around Israel, we are seeing more than disagreement over meaning. There’s a growing uncertainty about the premise of the story itself. The question is no longer just “how should this be understood?” but increasingly, “does this belong to me at all?”

Which raises a deeper question: Who gets to define the boundaries of the Jewish story?

Recent data helps explain why this tension feels so pronounced. A 2026 Jewish Federations of North America survey found that while only 37 percent of American Jews identify as Zionist, 88 percent say Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, and 71 percent say they feel an emotional connection to Israel.

We live in a time that emphasizes personal authorship, where each of us defines our own values, experiences, and sense of meaning. That instinct has naturally extended into religion as well. Yet while Judaism has always made space for individual interpretation, it also has been grounded in inheritance, authority, and collective memory.

If you examine the major schisms in religious history, they often come down to a simple question of who gets to define the story, and who decides what remains binding. The Protestant Reformation, for example, was driven by Martin Luther’s insistence that the Bible, rather than the church, should be the ultimate source of truth. In Islam, the Sunni–Shia split grew out of a disagreement over succession and legitimate authority after Muhammad’s death.

Judaism is no different. From its earliest rabbinic period, Jewish life was shaped by argument. The Talmud itself is a record of those debates, preserving multiple perspectives rather than resolving them into a single narrative. In modern times, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and Reconstructionist Judaism have each developed different approaches to law, tradition, and how Judaism answers contemporary questions.

In other words, questioning and reinterpreting inherited stories is nothing new. It’s part of how traditions evolve. At the same time, what feels newer is the degree to which personal interpretation is sometimes seen as sufficient on its own and without much reference to a shared framework.

Judaism has never quite functioned as a “choose your own adventure” tradition. It’s a covenantal one. It begins with the guiding principle that the Jewish people inherit obligations and attachments that they didn’t invent for themselves. We don’t choose whether the Exodus is part of our story, or whether Jerusalem plays a central role in our history. We can, and should, debate what those things mean and how they should be experienced today, but that’s different from each of us acting as a fully independent editor of the tradition.

That’s why the current conversation around Israel feels so significant. There is plenty to debate about the State of Israel’s government, policies, leadership, borders, failures, and aspirations. You can be uncomfortable with the word Zionism. You can feel that it has become politically charged or too vague to be useful. You can prefer different language altogether. But the fundamental question remains: Is the story of the Jewish people meaningfully connected to the Land of Israel?

Traditional Judaism would answer yes, because Jewish memory, liturgy, and peoplehood have consistently placed Israel near the center of the narrative, rather than as a side dish. That’s why many Jewish educators today are working to include Israel within the broader conversation about what it means to be Jewish, rather than treating it as a stand-alone topic.

I spend my professional life helping young Jews build Jewish identity. A big part of that work is helping them figure out what story they connect to, what language resonates, and which parts of Jewish life feel meaningful. I want young people to inherit depth far more than slogans. I want them to ask hard questions, challenge easy assumptions, and build identities that can navigate complexity.

At the same time, there’s a difference between helping someone find their place within a shared story and suggesting that there is no shared story at all. That, to me, is one of the risks of this moment. In our desire to make room for critique and nuance, it’s easy to drift into framing Judaism as a collection of individual choices. And if everything becomes optional, then it becomes harder to articulate what we hold in common. At that point, it’s less about offering a new interpretation, and more about whether we’re still operating within a shared framework.

The task, then, is not simply to persuade more young Jews to adopt a particular label, nor to pressure them into language that doesn’t feel authentic to them. The task is to build Jewish literacy and depth strong enough that young people can understand the story before they try to edit it.

That means teaching both what Judaism says as well as how Jews have argued about it. It also means discussing what Israel is as well as why it has held such a central place in Jewish memory and identity. And it means guiding how to critique, but also how to recognize when outside frameworks reshape Jewish history in ways that don’t fully reflect how our story has been understood.

Because if every Jew defines the story entirely on their own terms, it becomes harder to sustain a shared narrative at all. And without that, what remains are not disagreements within a story, but rather a collection of individual perspectives, each meaningful on its own, but no longer part of something collectively shared.

Sam Aboudara is the interim CEO of NJY Camps, one of the largest Jewish camp complexes in North America. He has dedicated his career to Jewish communal service as an educator, camp director, and executive; his work focuses on building Jewish community and strengthening Jewish identity in all shapes and sizes.