What is progressive American Jewish Zionism?

There seems to be a huge divide in American Jewish life — as there is in American life in general, and in Jewish life around the world, and in Israel, as well.

Unless you’re extraordinarily gifted, you can’t straddle those lines. Think of a circus performer standing on two horses, one leg on each, as they run around the ring. You know far better than to try that at home.

But in real life, when ideas and worldviews are the horses, how do you not try?

Can you be a progressive Zionist? Can you believe in a two-state solution — and if you do, can you talk about it? Can you, for that matter, have Democratic and Republican family members at Thanksgiving dinner this year without expecting turkey gravy and mashed potatoes flung at the walls?

Rabbi Menachem Creditor and his coeditor on this project, Amanda Berman, compiled “Fault Lines: Exploring the Complicated Place of Progressive American Jewish Zionism” in 2021; the essays in that anthology explored the issue.

Now, Rabbi Creditor said, “We put it together years ago, but it has become all the more urgent since October 7.”

Rabbi Creditor is the scholar in residence at UJA-Federation of New York and the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. He will talk about the fault lines running through American Jewish life when he speaks at Friday night services at Temple Emeth in Teaneck on December 13. (See box.)

In the talk, as he did in the book, Rabbi Creditor “will explore the complicated world of progressive American Jewish Zionism,” he said. “Each one of those categories has its own complications.”

It’s good to begin with definitions. It’s hard “to identify what is and what isn’t a values-based progressive American posture,” Rabbi Creditor said. Moreover, “the word progressive has become even more complicated and less palatable, given the extremes of the left.

“In some progressive circles, Zionism has become a dirty word.” And of course the opposite also is true — among some Zionists, the word progressive is equally foul.

“Throughout my career, as I have been involved in different communities” — Rabbi Creditor was a pulpit rabbi in Conservative shuls in Massachusetts and California for nearly two decades — “I have tried to model the compatibility of those two terms, progressive and Zionist. What has become clear since October 7 is that those who use the word progressive as their primary identification aren’t interested in the nuance and breadth of Zionism, and that is a real loss to them and a real challenge to the American Jewish community.

The concept of “American is less complicated, but there’s not just one American identity that we’re talking about,” Rabbi Creditor said. “We’re really a much more complicated polity than we thought we were, and maybe than we used to be.”

The next noun is Jewish — “the concept from which all the rest of this obviously derives” — and it always is inherently fraught. “It is the primary identification, but it doesn’t mean just one thing,” Rabbi Creditor said. “We are a beautifully complicated people.

“Since October 7, for all our much-hyped conflict we have become much more unified than before. We know, especially in our vulnerability, that enemies of the Jews don’t draw distinctions.”

It is true that “those to whom Zionism is anathema have attempted to decouple a love of the Jewish homeland from Judaism — but that is an inauthentic wedge issue.”

The change in attitude toward Jews has affected “Jews on campus, in state houses, in the publishing world, and the music recording world, regardless of their political stance, regardless of their religious identity, in such a way that demonstrates that what happens in Israel is happening to the Jewish people, and what happens to the Jewish people is happening in Israel.

“We are one, despite any of the over-intellectualized campaigns that have been waged by the far left.”

That doesn’t mean that debate among various groups of Jews isn’t possible. “We can have them in healthy ways,” Rabbi Creditor said. “There is no reason to be afraid of conversation. A values-based Jewish conversation always has room for doubt and dissent, but that must be based on listening to each other.”

Really listening, actually hearing, “is the basis of gaining Torah. And there’s a pivotal difference, a red line, between active listening and intolerance that is important to define in ‘Faultline,’ with all its voices.

“It is important to understand the importance of Jewish peoplehood, the powerful Jewish expression that is Zionism, and historical awareness of interwoven Jewish destiny.”

Interwoven with what? With each other. “Jewish destiny is something that encompasses all Jews everywhere,” Rabbi Creditor said.

And there is hope, he said.

“Our hope is readily visible. It comes in the form of the re-found unity between North American Jews and Israeli Jews. It comes in the form of a new generation of activated young Jewish leaders on campus who will be more prepared to fight for Jewish pride and Jewish belonging than my generation ever thought it had to be.” (Rabbi Creditor is in his late 40s.)

“And it comes in the form of robust and growing support for Israel from the American Jewish community.

“We make a mistake — we sabotage our own hope — when we amplify fringe voices from the Jewish community who don’t see the vitality, the necessity, and the beauty of the restored Jewish homeland. Those voices are inauthentic, and they erode our confidence as a people.

“Critical voices always are welcome,” he said. “Negating voices never should be. It is not good to give the squeaky wheels the power over the narrative.”

So, Rabbi Creditor, did your generation not fight because it thought it didn’t have to, or because in fact it really didn’t? “I’m not so sure,” Rabbi Creditor said. “That’s a place of doubt for me.

“In the last few decades, many Jewish leaders — many Jews — thought that we were in what Yossi Klein Halevi called the post-Holocaust era. But as he accurately, piercingly, wrote on the anniversary of October 7, we are experiencing the end of the post-Holocaust era.” (Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute; his column, “The end of the post-Holocaust era,” is posted on the Times of Israel.)

“Now, the assumptions of Jewish safety have been shattered, and some of the fights that had to be fought two generations ago will be fought again by these young new leaders. It is not joyful that we have to fight, but it is inspiring to see the passion of these young Jewish leaders.

“That passion has been awakened since October 7, and it is in response to the delegitimization of Jewish dignity. And it isn’t only in the state of Israel. It’s everywhere where a Jew is.”

Rabbi Creditor makes a distinction between Jewish life in the New York metropolitan area and in the rest of the country, which, he says, is similar to Jewish life in much of Europe. “It is important for us to exercise our agency and influence to make our people and our communities as strong as we once thought they were,” he said.

“Strains of hatred have always been present in American culture, and it is on us to put them back where they belong — in places of shame.”

He’s looking forward to his Shabbat in Teaneck. “This is a moment for reclaiming our story,” he said. “This will be a beautiful Shabbat, of remembering and amplifying the best of us.”

Who: Rabbi Menachem Creditor

What: Will talk about progressive American Jewish Zionism and “the unique and often lonely experience of American Jews within all the worlds they consider home.”

When: Friday night services on December 13 at 8.

Where: Temple Emeth in Teaneck

Sponsored by: Temple Emeth Israel/ARZA Committee

For more information: Go to www.emeth.org or call (201) 833-1322.