Essays and Reporting from the 2024 Z3 Conference

THE JEWISH NEWS of Northern California

A CURATED COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL REPORTING

Essays and Reporting from the 2024 Z3 Conference Z3 Conference puts spotlight on Israel-diaspora realities

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How educators are adapting to new tensions post-Oct. 7

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What is Zionism after 10/7?

Much more than a label

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As the relative of hostages, I have never felt so alone

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Israel must fully integrate and embrace its Arab citizens

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As a Black Jew, I believe DEI is still worth our time, support

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U.S. Jewish institutions have failed our young people

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THE JEWISH NEWS

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Dear Fellow Z3er, Z3 was so timely this year, as those of us here in the Bay Area feel more connected than ever to Israel. As our gift to you, you will find in these digital pages our reporters’ take on the conference this year, along with essays from some of the most exciting Z3 participants.

The conference is one moment in time, but our relationship with Israel is ongoing. That’s why the Z3 Project and J. The Jewish News of Northern California will continue to work with each other year around.

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Z3 Conference puts spotlight on Israel-diaspora realities SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT

This year’s Z3 Conference, held Nov. 17 in Palo Alto, radiated a very different mood than last year’s event, which took place just four weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.

In 2023, the conference, which each year examines the present and future of diaspora-Israel ties, was marked by grief,

(From left) Marnie Black, Eylon Levy, Amy Albertson and J. staff moderator Emma Goss discuss “Why Are the People of the Book Struggling to Tell a Story?”

(COURTESY Z3)

rage, helplessness and the sense that Jews were once again alone in the world.

This year’s all-day event at the Oshman Family JCC drew more attendees — 1,800 vs. last year’s 1,200 — and offered a sober assessment of what the past year has revealed about strengths and weaknesses of Jewish institutions in the U.S. and Israel.

Speakers exhibited less anger and anxiety than they did last year, when many railed against the international community that so quickly turned from solidarity with Israel under attack to condemnation of its war against Hamas in Gaza.

Under the banner of “unity, not uniformity,” this year’s opening plenary highlighted the demand for the immediate return of all 101 hostages still held in Gaza — and also put a spotlight on the

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commitment and collective spirit of young Israelis.

Breakout sessions focused on the ongoing war and analyses of possible outcomes, as well as on the long-running issues of Arab-Jewish coexistence efforts, antisemitism on campus and the future of Zionism. But there were new areas of interest as well, including several sessions dealing with trauma and healing; the failures of Jewish legacy institutions; Jewish education post-Oct. 7; and the collapse of traditional alliances with other minority communities.

In his welcoming address, JCC CEO and Z3 founder Zack Bodner described the “surge” of diaspora Jews taking a stand this past year on Israel — either for or against — and urged the crowd not to think “in binary terms” about the Jewish state.

“Deep Jewish knowledge and personal connection equals Jewish pride,” he said, and deep knowledge doesn’t mean being in lockstep with Israeli policies.

“We have to embrace the complexity,” he said. “Our children are smart. We can’t continue to feed them white-washed fairy tales.”

Bodner and other speakers, at both the main and breakout sessions attended by J. reporters, spoke about the resilience of the Israeli grassroots, the people who “march against the government” on Saturday nights in Tel Aviv and then “drop everything and go down to the Negev,” as Bodner put it, to help with the harvest or to repair damaged kibbutzim.

“Oct. 7 reminded us that we don’t need a king or a leader. We know what to do,” said Z3 Project director Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, referring to the Biblical story of God giving the Israelites Saul as their king because they were incapable of leading themselves. The Z3 Project — Z3 is short

for Zionism 3.0 — organizes the conference, runs a think tank and trains Jewish professionals.

Speakers also emphasized the need to move beyond words of sympathy for the hostages, their families and Israelis displaced by the war.

“Solidarity isn’t enough. We need you to take action for the hostages. We are one family; our pain is your pain. We need

you to advocate as if every one of you had family held hostage,” said Alana Zeitchik, whose cousin’s husband is still held hostage in Gaza.

“We need you to speak truth to power by demanding a deal to bring them home now,” she continued, echoing those who accuse Israel’s current political leaders of caring more about military victory than the return of the captives.

How educators are adapting to new tensions post-Oct. 7 SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT FIRST PUBLISHED ONLINE 11-29-2024

What should Jewish and Israel education look like, particularly in a post-Oct. 7 world?

The panelists in the “What Are We Teaching Our Kids?” session agreed that much Jewish learning takes place outside of classrooms — in family life, Jewish summer camps and other places where kids can start “to look at the world through a Jewish lens,” as one speaker put it.

“We need to develop not just curriculum, but spaces in which I am constantly able to practice what it means to be Jewish today or … a citizen of the Jewish people in 2024,” said Shalom Orzach, senior educational consultant of The iCenter, which supports Israel education across North America.

The trauma of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel and global rise in antisemitism has brought Jews who were not previously involved in Jewish life into conversation about Israel — whether they wanted that or not — said Ezra Kopelowitz, co-director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education in Israel.

“All of a sudden, this place far away was inserted into [Jewish] lives,” he said, offering an example of a public high school student whose non-Jewish friend suddenly says: “You’re Jewish, tell me what’s going on in Israel?” That can cause the Jewish student, who is now an unwitting spokesperson for

Israel, to find out more, he said. “So in many ways, Oct. 7 is a tremendous opportunity.”

Because many young Jews now feel uncomfortable in spaces that welcomed them before Oct. 7, said Orzach, they are now “looking to come home,” clamoring for a “place at the Shabbat table, at the Hillel table, at the summer camp table.”

That, too, provides an opportunity for “deep introspection,” he suggested.

Rabbi Laura Novak Winer, a program director at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, said that since Oct. 7, Jewish students and educators alike have had to “navigate values that are in tension with each other,” notably universal values, such as tikkun olam and welcoming the stranger, with JWEEKLY.COM

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(From left) Shalom Orzach of The iCenter, Rabbi Laura Novak Winer of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion and Ezra Kopelowitz of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education discussing Jewish and Israel education today.

(COURTESY Z3)

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“We need to develop not just curriculum, but spaces in which I am constantly able to practice what it means to be Jewish today.”

Shalom Orzach, senior educational consultant of The iCenter,

tribal values such as the concept that all Jews are responsible for one another.

She’s seen this struggle play out at Jewish summer camps this year where counselors have worn kaffiyehs or T-shirts with pro-Palestinian slogans, even as they are teaching campers about Jewish values and Israeli life.

“These tensions have been so strong.

Yet when I hear people saying that they want to exorcise those young people who are struggling with their understanding of Israel and their connection of what it means to their Judaism, I say let’s not exorcise them,” she said. “Let’s welcome them in and help them engage with these Jewish values and figure out how they’re going to find their pathway.”

If those values are in tension, Orzach said, then something’s wrong with Jewish education. “Can we not live in the eilu v’eilu?” he asked, referring to the Jewish tradition of accepting multiple viewpoints.

“We as a people thrive on contradictions.

Why have we lost that ability?”

Israeli educators shouldn’t be sent to the diaspora to teach Jews how to be Jewish, said Orbach, who like Kopelowitz lives in Israel. That’s an outmoded model “of arrogance,” Orzach said.

“Why don’t we learn more about each other?” he asked. “I’ve always struggled with Israel’s exclusive rights to tell others their story. I want to learn from your stories in the same way that I believe you can learn from mine.”

What is Zionism after 10/7?

Much more than a label SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT

For Rabba Mor Shimonie, Zionism isn’t about self-definition. It’s a form of action.

“I am a Zionist, not as an identity for myself but as an active part of my life. If I’m doing something out of love and care toward Zion, I am a Zionist,” said Shimonie, the family education director at The Kitchen, an independent congregation in San Francisco.

Shimonie spoke at the Z3 Conference on a panel titled “What Is Zionism After 10/7?”

Shimonie was ordained this year through the Shalom Hartman Institute in her native Israel and moved to San Francisco this summer to work at The Kitchen. She sees the fact that she was born and raised in Israel as her Zionism.

“It’s my habitus,” she said, using a sociological term referring to the way group culture and personal history shape a person.

“It’s not even that I know what it is, or I need to define it. It’s my norms, my language, my

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culture, my people, like everything around me, is the outcome of Zionism. It’s my life.”

Panelist Josh Ladon, vice president and senior faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute on the West Coast, said he sees Zionism as an integral part of Judaism.

But as someone who is both a Zionist and a supporter of a future Palestinian state, he rejects “maximalist Zionists who suggest that if you’re a Jew, the only expression is a Zionism that is really full-throated.”

“Any time there’s a separation or attempt to uncouple Judaism from Zionism,” he added, “I get frustrated. And that’s both an outside frustration, meaning with those who see themselves as non-Zionist, and a frustration with the institutional, internal Jewish world, which oftentimes can turn Zionism into exclusively a political identity and not the sort of cultural, religious, literary revolution” that he understands it to be.

Tablet editor-at-large Liel Leibovitz, another panelist, said he understands

(From left) Jennifer Mamlet of the JCC Association of North America, Liel Leibovitz of Tablet magazine, Rabbi Josh Ladon of the Shalom Hartman Institute and Rabba Mor Shimonie of The Kitchen.

Zionism in religious terms, as the yearning for the messianic age and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. So for him, “Zionism is not really a thing that could be defined. It’s a conversation about what kind of path we wish to take toward this divinely ordained end.”

Leibovitz pointed out that the decadesold argument over whether Israel is a Jewish state or a state of the Jews — i.e., a liberal democracy — became very heated in Israel in 2023 during the anti-government protests, which stopped only because of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. The protests, and the argument, have recently started up again.

“It is not an easy question to answer, and however it is answered, it is going to leave a whole host of Israelis feeling absolutely disenchanted and alienated from their own project,” Leibovitz said. “And yet, this is the conversation that we must have.

It’s the only one going on.”

For more than a decade, American Jews have been obsessed with the concept of “peoplehood” as the core of diaspora-Israel relations, the speakers said. At least one of them noted that Israelis have a conflicted relationship with the idea of peoplehood, stemming from the early Zionist notion that the diaspora was “lesser than” Israel.

“Is Israel at the center? Is it a place we have to have?” said Shimonie, who uses the

honorific “rabba” that emerged more than a decade ago among the small number of Orthodox rabbinic programs that began to ordain women.

“Post 10/7, we feel this [question] really strongly. Now it’s like, wait, this project — it hasn’t ended yet.”

Before Oct. 7, Shimonie said, Israelis felt as if they had inherited a building “and my project is to decorate it and manage the neighbors who don’t like me. Now I’m like, oh no, I’m still building the foundation of this imaginary building.”

The speakers generally resisted repeated questions from moderator Jennifer Mamlet, acting CEO of the JCC Association of North America, regarding what has changed in the diaspora-Israel relationship since Oct. 7.

The three panelists suggested there is not a big difference in substance.

More Jews might be having the conversation, but the basics remain as they were. Understanding what diaspora itself means and the position of Israel in that conception is the central, burning question, one constantly evolving.

“I’m deeply committed to Israel and the Jewish people being sovereign in Israel, and I believe in a version of Israel that I’m committed to make happen,” Ladon said.

“It’s a Zionism of yearning, and it continues to be that way.”

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“I am a Zionist, not as an identity for myself but as an active part of my life.”

Rabba Mor Shimonie, the family education director at The Kitchen, an independent congregation in San Francisco

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As the relative of hostages, I have never felt so alone ALANA ZEITCHIK | GUEST CONTRIBUTORT

Alana Zeitchik is an advocate for the hostages in Gaza.

She is a writer and the executive director of the Narrow Bridge Project based in Brooklyn.

Signs at the March for Israel rally Nov. 14, 2023, demanded the release of hostages held by Hamas.

(JCRC BAY AREA)

Last November I traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak at the March for Israel.

The march was organized by the Jewish Federations of North America to stand in solidarity with the Jewish state and against rising antisemitism.

After six people in my family were taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, I became their primary advocate here in the United States, and I thought the march would be a chance to feel comforted by my Jewish community. Instead, it was the first time I felt disillusioned with our institutional pro-Israel spaces.

On Oct. 7, 2023, my cousin Sharon Alony Cunio, her husband, David Cunio, and their 3-year-old twin girls, Emma and Yuli, as well as my cousin Danielle Alony and her 5-yearold daughter, Amelia, were stolen from

Kibbutz Nir Oz in an act of barbaric violence.

Unlike my cousins, I have had the privilege of being born and raised in America where I have never felt the pang of fear from rocket sirens. So I felt it was my responsibility

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to access my privilege and power to fight for them.

Advocating for Israelis held hostage has not been easy. In fact, it has been one of the loneliest and most confounding experiences of my life. Early on, I was struck by the speed at which the progressive community turned its back on us. I live in Brooklyn and, like in the Bay Area, I am surrounded by a diverse group of people who share similar liberal values and political ideologies.

I was horrified by the justification of my family’s kidnapping as “resistance,” but I was not surprised. During Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas, I had already seen how the Palestinian cause for self-determination, which is a righteous one at its core, had completely captivated many of my peers.

What really surprised me was the frustration and loneliness I came to feel within the Jewish American community.

I had already been dismissed as less worthy by far-left Jewish activists, such as those who support the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, which I believe dangerously disregards the threat against Israelis. Then, at the march in D.C. last November, I began to feel alienated from pro-Israel spaces too.

Backstage I watched American influencers flit by smiling brightly while wearing an Israeli flag as a cape. I was feeling heavy with grief when someone presented me with a flag asking if I wanted to do the same. I politely declined, but inside I wanted to scream. I had fastened pins of my cousins’ faces to my jacket, and the idea of wearing any other national symbol or insignia felt like a betrayal.

It was clear to me that nobody, other than fellow hostage family members, understood that we were not only up against Hamas but also the current Israeli government. I took the stage and looked out upon a sea of Israeli flags. After my speech, people cheered “bring them home,” but the experience left me feeling empty instead of energized.

Israel’s military response in Gaza had already been brutal, killing many innocent Palestinians, including children. It had been reported that hostages were being kept in hospitals, not only in tunnels, and they could also be killed in the ongoing bombardments.

I had been tirelessly advocating for the safe return of the hostages to be the only priority and knew it would take compromise and diplomacy, yet everyone around me balked at the notion of a cease-fire.

About two weeks later, a deal was struck. Sharon, Danielle and their three children were released in the one and only diplomatic deal of the war. It included a temporary cease-fire, a release of 105 hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were not convicted of a crime.

However, my cousin’s husband David Cunio was left behind and he remains captive today.

Shortly after the miraculous return home of the 105 hostages, three other hostages were killed by the Israel Defense Forces while holding white flags. The response from the greater Jewish community was one reminiscent of “thoughts and prayers” after a school shooting. I crumbled. Where would I find support if my community could not come together even in that moment?

The Jewish American narrative pushing solidarity felt suffocating, demanding that we be uniform under the banner of being united. I didn’t need solidarity — I needed allies who would speak out against anyone and everyone endangering the lives of the hostages.

It finally dawned on me that our entire community was too fractured to give me the support I needed. There was one group of anti-Zionist Jews revising our history to fit another people’s narrative — and another group unable to see that the war had gone too far and was harming our own people.

Both of these realizations led me to ask myself an important question: If we can’t be

allies to each other, then how can we ask others to stand with us?

I think it can be easy to look outside of ourselves and place blame upon those who have left us behind. But in truth I think now is the time to look inward and strengthen allyship from within. Now is the time to listen and cultivate respect for our fellow Jews. It is time to have challenging conversations across our political differences, reconnect to our peoplehood and recommit to the Jewish values we all hold dear. Our future depends on it.

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What really surprised me was the frustration and loneliness I came to feel within the Jewish American community.

Hostage posters on a wall in Tel Aviv, March 2024 (ANDREW ESENSTEN/J. STAFF)

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Israel must fully integrate and embrace its Arab citizens MOHAMMAD DARAWSHE | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

Mohammad Darawshe is director of strategy at Givat Haviva and a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel.

The prospect of becoming refugees, even in a future Palestinian state, is not an appealing option to Israel’s Arab citizens.

The tragic events of October 7, 2023, created a new challenge to Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel. This is not the first time that the cross-border, cross-greenline Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shaken the sensitive relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. But as the war drags on, we are witnessing a growing rate of mutual fear and mistrust between these communities.

In the 1990s, the Oslo negotiations offered a path for peace in the shape of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but did not address the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who today number about 1.7 million people. That has left them with two options: moving to a future Palestinian state or staying in Israel as an eternal minority.

Given how inhospitable the Middle East has been to Palestinians since 1948, the prospect of becoming refugees, even in a future Palestinian state, is not an appealing option to Israel’s Arab citizens. Indeed, more than 93% of them have said they would stay in their homes, in their towns, in their homeland — in the State of Israel.

This leaves integration into Israeli society as their only realistic option.

Making this work hasn’t been easy, largely because Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people and refuses to see its Arab citizens as full equals. This negates the promise of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which appealed to the “Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”

The declaration also promised that Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or

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sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”

Many laws have been enacted in recent decades with the cumulative effect of reducing the promise of equality: the citizenship law, the Nakba law, the acceptance committees law, land laws, municipal jurisdiction laws and budgeting laws. These culminated in a 2018 law declaring that Israel is the “nation-state of the Jewish people” — in other words, that Arab citizens are not equals. The law also downgraded Arabic from an official national language to one with only “special status.” Among Arabs in Israel, this has been perceived as a deep insult and sends a signal to the wider Arab world that, in Israel, Arab culture is inferior.

Even as the promise of political equality shrinks, islands of success in Jewish-Arab relations have emerged, pointing the way forward. The most visible among them is in the health care industry, where fully a third of Israel’s medical professionals are Arab citizens. Academia is another island of success: The percentage of Arab students in Israeli universities is now equivalent to their numbers in society. Recognizing the centrality of education in social mobility, Israel’s Arab citizens have taken their career paths into their own hands.

Their success has been enhanced by the board of higher education and the universities choosing to reduce obstacles and by socially conscious Israeli employers who see the value in diversity and inclusion.

University entrance exams are now offered in Arabic, for example, and Arab students can defer exams scheduled while they are fasting for Ramadan. Certain government ministries have also played a positive role, establishing more high schools in Arab villages.

Yet parallel to the islands of success, we see many areas of failure, mostly resulting from conscious institutional discrimination by certain government agencies. Arab municipalities receive inadequate budgets, crime in the Arab sector is allowed to fester and Arab voices that speak out against the government are often silenced.

But it is in Israel’s national interest to create a truly shared society for Jews and Arabs. Doing so will demonstrate to the Arab world that Jews returned to the Middle East with good intentions. The burden of proof is on the government of Israel, but civil society plays a role too. Organizations like Givat Haviva, which focuses on building a “shared society” between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, are taking action to speed up the process through education and municipal partnerships.

By placing Jewish teachers in Arab schools and Arab teachers in Jewish schools, Givat Haviva proves that studying together reduces stereotypes and humanizes the other. Each year, we bring 18,000 Jewish and Arab young people to meet one another, fostering the formation of positive perspectives about the other’s culture. Hosting Jewish and Arab graduates of art schools for a joint residency allows the co-creation of joint art exhibits.

Municipal cooperation between Jewish and Arab towns, funded and facilitated by Givat Haviva, have resulted in joint facilities that serve both communities.

For this work, Givat Haviva won the UNESCO prize for peace education in 2001.

But for these efforts to make the largescale impact that we believe they can, two things need to happen. First, we must train more teachers, facilitators, mayors, corporate leaders and government officials to understand the value of cooperation and to develop the skills to operate these programs. Second, the government must sponsor such programs nationwide.

Many feared that Oct. 7 would lead to massive confrontations between the two communities. Many tried to fuel the tensions resulting from the war to bring about clashes between the two sides. At the same time, many groups worked to consolidate the accumulated successes, helping to reduce tensions and limit disagreements to nonviolent dialogue. This success is critical to speed the healing process the day after the war.

Participants during a facilitator training course at Givat Haviva, the bridgebuilding organization where the author works.

(COURTESY SADIE BAKERWACKS)

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As a Black Jew, I believe DEI is still worth our time, support APRIL POWERS | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

April Powers is vice president of DEI at Project Shema and co-founder of Jewbian Princess.

She will speak at the Z3 Conference as a nominee for the 2024 Z3 Bridge Builder Award.

Over 400 days after Oct. 7 and a week after a highly charged election in the U.S., I’ve been thinking a lot about our human family and our mishpocha, our Jewish family and allies.

Connecting is one of the things we, as a Jewish community, do best. We must not stop doing this now, when it feels most difficult.

I am a Black Jew — and despite all the pain some of our allies have caused us, I still believe in the ongoing work of diversity, equity and inclusion. Is it perfect? No, but it is currently the only tool we have for discussing and combating antisemitism in the workplace.

I encourage you to reach out to your company’s DEI professional or those responsible for workplace culture. Ask them to form a Jewish “employee resource group” and adding Jewish identity and antisemitism education into their DEI and anti-bias frameworks.

I know it can be stressful to advocate for yourself in that way. But as someone whose public cancellation made international news, I know a thing or two about getting through a debilitating public shaming and reconnecting.

Following the Israel-Hamas military conflict in May 2021 — after a year of my speaking out in support of Black lives and trans youth and against anti-Asian hate — I posted about antisemitism.

In response, Jewish members of my team at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators were attacked. Our social media and travels to Israel were exposed by trolls, as if our beliefs were problematic. There were death threats. Someone told me, “You’re not Black. You’re a white supremacist.”

I quit my job as chief equity and inclusion officer. I suffered from depression. And I came out the other side realizing that as a global head of DEI, I hadn’t done a good job of including Jewish identity in my own DEI practice. How could I be upset with others who hadn’t?

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If you, like me, have been told you should not be a part of a movement because of your Zionism, I invite you to stay unless it’s unsafe for you to do so. If we continue to cede space movements that otherwise reflect our values, Jewish voices will disappear and no one will know us. After demonization and dehumanization, exclusion is the next stage of targeting Jews and has consistently led to violence against us. When we aren’t there, others can say that Jews don’t show up for them, and people stop knowing who we are and what our values are.

If you’ve ever said, “I have given my all to a movement that doesn’t see me, value me, or want me in it, so now I’m going to focus on supporting my community,” I get it. And yet — please still stay engaged in the work.

As a Black Jew, I’m committed to renewing the “Black Jewish covenant,” as political analyst Van Jones lovingly refers to our common goals of supporting robust equitable democracies. When our two communities work together, we are unstoppable.

I also offer a kind reminder: Please include Black Jews in this work. We navigate these conversations regularly, and it would be a misstep to forget our voices. We should apply that to any coalition building because the Jewish diaspora includes members of many marginalized communities, including most ethnicities, disabilities, LGBTQ+ identities and those suffering from substance abuse and poverty.

The theme for this year’s Z3 Conference is “The Future Starts Now.” We have much work to do replanting seeds that have been blown away by the strong winds of hatred, bigotry, disinformation, and misunderstanding. My hope is that our communities can rebuild solidarity based on deep roots, like the adopted motto of so many movements from Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos: “What didn’t you do to bury me / but you forgot that I was a seed.”

U.S. Jewish institutions have failed our young people DAVID HAZONY | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

After the Oct. 7 attack, American Jewish institutions failed. For more than a year, whether on campuses or in urban centers, whether in Congress, in schools, or professional organizations, antisemitism suddenly became a legitimate, and in some circles even dominant, position.

This nightmare wasn’t supposed to happen. For a century, Jewish philanthropy in America spent hundreds of millions of dollars each year on an entire system of “defense organizations” and other bodies aimed at protecting the Jewish community.

Yet none of them, it seems, did their jobs. Consistently, major Jewish institutions failed to warn, to foresee and certainly to prevent or prepare for the avalanche of hatred Jews now face. Nobody has resigned. No commissions of inquiry were launched. Instead they circle their wagons, and the phrase “nobody could have imagined” tumbles out of every press

FIRST PUBLISHED ONLINE 11-15-2024

release, gala speech or interview.

The fact that some did imagine it — writers like Martin Kramer, Izabella Tabarovsky, Gil Troy, Natan Sharansky and David L. Bernstein, the last of whom published a book in 2022 called “Woke Antisemitism” — doesn’t trouble them in the least.

Those who have paid the greatest price for this failure are young American Jews, especially students. It is they who see the hatred in their fellow students’ eyes.

It is they who have to choose every day whether to wear a Magen David in public.

It is they who have to face, each day, the accusatory question “Are you a Zionist?” and to sit in class as professors rattle off the litany of horrendous calumnies about Israel that have now become the touchstone of tenure-track chic.

It is also they who feel most abandoned

by Jewish institutions — and in many cases

David Hazony is director and Steinhardt senior fellow at the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities in Palo Alto. He is editor of the “Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out” and “Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of our People.”

He lives in Jerusalem.

Demonstrators approach Sather Gate at UC Berkeley during a protest against antisemitism on campus, March 11, 2024. (AARON LEVYWOLINS/J. STAFF)

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If we continue to cede space in all of the movements that otherwise reflect our values, Jewish voices will disappear and no one will know us.

have taken matters into their own hands, leading the charge to push back, to protest and to organize.

These young people constitute a new movement in Jewish life, one that will color our collective future even more than did the Soviet Jewry movement of the 1970s and 1980s. From universities to synagogues to communal organizations, a new spirit has arisen, one committed never to make the mistakes of their elders. They are angry, they are proud, and they are committed to serving the Jewish future with both love and wisdom.

How do I know this? Since my first visit back to the U.S. from Israel last October, I’ve been collecting their writings, published in a new book called “Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out.” Its 31 essays express the authors’ disillusionment and anger, but also their vision, passion and creative commitment. It is a remarkable document.

“Young Zionist Voices” includes some of the better-known campus activists like Shabbos Kestenbaum from Harvard, Eyal Yakoby from University of Pennsylvania, Julia Steinberg from Stanford, and Maya Platek and Talia Bodner from Columbia, as well as Adela Cojab, whose 2019 lawsuit against NYU under Title VI of the Civil

Rights Act opened the door to a wave of similar lawsuits against elite colleges around the country. There are also young rabbis, Jewish professionals, scholars and artists, as well as Gen Z counterparts in the U.K., Australia and Israel, including several who chose to make aliyah. Many of them will be at the Z3 Conference in Palo Alto on Nov. 17, when the book will be officially launched.

This is the future of our people. As author Dara Horn has written, “Reading this book is like taking all these brilliant young people out for coffee — and then listening, in silent awe, as they articulate their visions for the future. In a time of horror, here’s some fantastic news: The Jewish future is in good hands.”

We older folks have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss young Jews as disconnected, ignorant and subject to undue influence from social media. We disparage them as the “TikTok Generation.”

We think we know better. But what we should have learned from the experience of the last year is that we really don’t.

Israel’s wars will come to an end, with the Jewish state hopefully emerging victorious. The diaspora’s wars, however, have only begun. Will we listen to those who can lead us to victory?

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