Why are Young Jews Turning Against Israel? - with Yossi Klein Halevi and Sara Labaton

For Heaven's Sake - Shalom Hartman Institute, Ark Media

In a live discussion at the Shalom Hartman Institute's Wellspring Summit, Yossi Klein Halevi and Sara Labaton explore the growing phenomenon

Key takeaways

• The rise of Jewish anti-Zionism reflects a moral reckoning rather than mere political dissent, rooted in a perceived loss of Jewish innocence after centuries of powerlessness.
• Israel's survival depends on morally difficult choices, such as the war in Gaza and occupation policies, which create tension with diaspora Jews who prioritize ethical consistency over security.

Main topics

• Rise of Jewish anti-Zionism among younger generations
• Moral crisis in Israeli and American Jewish discourse

Notable quotes

"I have this terrible feeling that the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism is the punishment for our having lost sight of our own moral commitments."

"What happens when you will have the power?" – a question central to understanding modern Jewish identity.

Conclusion

The conversation underscores a profound challenge: how to sustain Jewish moral integrity while

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) you Speaker 3 (0:03) You are listening to an Art Media Podcast. Speaker 2 (0:09) Welcome to For Heaven's Sake. This week, we're bringing you something special, a live discussion between Yossi Klein-Halevi and Sarah Labaton, Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. It was recorded in the courtyard of our Jerusalem campus in July as part of the Institute's Wellspring Summit for Educators. Yossi and Sarah wrestle with the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism, the widening divide between Israel and American Jewry, and the question of how our people can hold on to our moral tradition in an era of Jewish power. Now, here's Yossi and Sarah. Speaker 1 (0:45) I have this terrible feeling that the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism is the punishment for our having lost sight of our own moral commitments. There's a certain obtuseness that's set in to... the Israeli discourse or absence of discourse on morality. And something has changed and we all feel it. Speaker 4 (1:12) I mean, I'm just thinking about a young man I met and he said, I'm queer, I'm on the left, I'm proudly Jewish, I'm a professional, and I want to defend Israel to my peers, to my communities. But Israel makes it just so damn hard to do that. Speaker 1 (1:31) The anti-Zionist assault is exactly focusing on the healing process of the Jewish people beginning in 1945. And that process involved the reclaiming of power, military power, sovereignty in Israel, and soft power, political power, philanthropic power in the diaspora. And that's exactly what the anti-Zionists and the progressive left are targeting now. And that's the story we have to start figuring out. how to defend. Speaker 4 (2:12) Hi, everybody. It is so great to be here with you. We're so thrilled to welcome you to the Mahon, and I'm so honored and gratified to be in conversation with Yassi Klein-Halevi tonight. I just wanted to open up by recalling a metaphor that one of my former supervisors used to describe the work of education and of educators. They had said that educators are bridges between the older generation and the newer generation. But unlike bridges that just transport things back and forth, educators also have to mediate and have to translate the ideas and the scholarship and the values of the past and of the present. to the future, to those who will be inheriting this world and shaping this world. So I think this is an amazing opportunity from two sides, both for you to bring back some of Yossi's perspectives and insights and what will come out of this conversation to translate that to your... students and to your educational contexts, but also for you to represent the voices and perspectives and dilemmas and challenges of your students to this arena and to bring those voices into the arena. So like I said, it's incredible that you're here and we're excited to get started. So in that vein, Yassi, I wanted to start us off with Jewish anti-Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionists, which is, of course, a prevalent or is becoming a more prevalent phenomenon, especially in the younger generation, whether in high schools or on university campuses. And I wanted to ask you how you understand this phenomenon. What are the motives or what are the contributing factors that are propelling this movement? And what can maybe the North American Jewish mainstream or the establishment learn from this movement? Speaker 1 (4:18) So first of all, Speaker 2 (4:20) hi, Sarah. It's Speaker 1 (4:21) wonderful to be with you. And good evening, everyone. As Sarah said, we're thrilled to have you here at the Machon and Baruch Im Ha'abaim. So if you're asking about the reasons for what's happening, I think that there is... a reason that we can attribute to Israel, there's a reason we can attribute to diaspora Jews, and then there's a broader civilizational crisis that's happening in the West. In terms of Israel, our share of responsibility is that in some ways I have this terrible feeling that the rise of Jewish anti-Zionism is the punishment for our having lost sight of our own moral commitments, the standards that we set for ourselves. And it's there in the Declaration of Independence. It's not a left-wing or right-wing divide. So when I see the alienation, I feel that there's something at play here that in part, and I'm going to emphasize in part, that we've... helped bring on ourselves. There's a certain obtuseness that's set in to the Israeli discourse or absence of discourse on morality. And something has changed, and we all feel it. The diaspora side of this, when I listen to the kids who are turning against Israel, what I hear, and this is if I'm generous, when I'm in a generous mood to really find the kafschut, the measure of justness in what they're saying, there's this cry in the diaspora soul, if I may put it that way. of this loss of innocence. And we need to unpack that because I think it's more complicated. But the loss of who we saw ourselves as being as a people. And think about the encounter in the Kuzari by Yehuda Levi, the medieval Jewish philosopher, where the king of the Kuzaris turns to the rabbi. It's a disputation. among the three monotheistic faiths. And the rabbi proclaims that we are the best faith because we don't harm anyone. And the Khuzari king essentially laughs and he says, well, of course you don't because you can't. You don't have the power. What happens when you will have the power? And I think that's really, in some ways, one of the most important questions of our time. But, you know, the Jewish self-definition through 2,000 years of powerlessness, enforced powerlessness, was as a tender people. One of the most cherished ways in which Jews describe themselves was as Rahmanim b'nei Rahmanim, merciful children of merciful parents. And inevitably, something of that has been lost in the transition to power. Now, what I would argue, in response. I think there's much that we need to say in response. But first of all, we didn't lose our innocence by regaining power. We lost our innocence in the most extreme experience of powerlessness that the Jews or any other people ever experienced, and that, of course, was the Shoah. That's when we lost our innocence. And so I understand the cry of pain of losing something essential that defined us. But if we had not regained power, if we had remained this beaten people in 1945 without any prospect of reconstituting ourselves as a nation, being able to adequately defend ourselves, I think we would have faded away in despair. And so power actually, I believe, saved the vitality of the Jewish people and made it possible for us. to question the abuses of power. If my father, who was a survivor, if my father had been able to eavesdrop on a Hartman conversation about power in 1945, he simply wouldn't have understood what's the angst? What's the problem here? How could there ever be a situation where Jews have too much power coming out of 1945? And so I think that what we're seeing in the outbreak of diaspora anti-Zionism, and by the way, it's not really accurate to speak about a diaspora Israel crisis. It's an American Jewish Israeli crisis. Because in the rest of the diaspora, no matter how uneasy Jews are about Israeli policies, there is not a fundamental alienation from Israel. And I think that that's really an important... question that American Jews need to ask themselves is what's gone wrong in America? Why have understandable feelings of anger and alienation translated into organized forms of alienation? And that's something, again, that's happened very minimally. So we're looking at a failure of American Jewry. There's the Israeli failure here. There's an American Jewish failure at the same time. And I would just to expand that, I would say that part of the American Jewish failure is an educational failure, a failure to inculcate young American Jews with the thrill and the responsibility of being born with a Jewish state as a reality. And what that means in the context of 2,000 years of Jewish history, something has not been transmitted. And the final piece of this is the civilizational crisis in the West, where you have a generation not only in the U.S., throughout obviously Western Europe as well, Western Europe, not Eastern Europe, interestingly, where young people aren't sure that the West is worth defending. They're not sure that the West deserves to survive, that the West stands for anything. And I think this is a civilizational collapse. And young American Jews, certainly young liberal progressive American Jews, live in that environment. And they are bringing in that civilizational crisis into an arena where it does not belong. Because we in Israel, we have many crises here, but we are not having a crisis of the fundamental legitimacy. of our being here and