Younger Jews Embrace Solidarity with Palestinian Families

Younger Jews are increasingly speaking out against Israel and for Palestinian families’ human rights. In doing so, they are adhering to lessons Jewish values teach every generation – to stand with oppressed people, always, and respect the sanctity of all life. From their perspective, Palestinian families deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as everyone else, including Jewish Israeli families. This analysis, however, exposes sharp fault lines in the American Jewish community.

Younger people observe Israel’s policies toward Palestinian people and wonder why the Jewish institutions they were raised in are not speaking out against such obvious mistreatment. This analysis, however, runs counter to most Jewish American institutions, where older generations enjoy substantial power and agenda-setting privileges and advocating for Palestinian human rights is often perceived as an existential threat to the state of Israel.

This is precisely why younger generations of Jews are engaging with Jewish institutions less and questioning the connection between Judaism and Israel more. The divergent wings of the American Jewish family avoid the “Israel talk”… until they’re forced into close interaction over Passover seder or Thanksgiving dinner. And then?

In recent years, the Israel/Palestine discussion has become impossible to avoid. In previous decades, any potential for explosive dinner conversation was systematically short-circuited. Instead of sparklers, the kids’ hands were busied with blue and white flags with a Jewish star.

Today, the youngsters are putting away their Israel coloring books and forgetting the words to Hatikva. They’re picking up kaffiyas and chanting “Free, Free Palestine” instead, following their moral Jewish upbringing to support peace, justice, and security for all people. They’re also diversifying their reading lists and social networks, creating their own communal Jewish spaces, and rediscovering a Judaism independent of a nationalist framework.

Solidarity for Palestinian Families Without Apology

In a 2019 piece for Mondoweiss, Liz Rose, writing under a pseudonym, interviewed Jewish teenagers who published critiques of Israel in their high school newspaper.

“This past May, something remarkable happened in the senior issue of the Evanston Township High School newspaper, the Evanstonian: two Jewish seniors published essays unburdened of the anxiety and baggage that typically accompany such essays critical of the Jewish State.”

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“Their pieces negate the…rhetoric that silences criticism of Israel and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Most of all, their essays were without the emotional angst and malaise that have characterized so many renunciations.”

What enabled Krumholz and Frolichstein-Appel to forgo the emotional baggage that comes with challenging Zionism publicly? Their parents and families.

“These teens don’t fear their parents when it comes to their views on Israel/Palestine…They’re supported by their families. This is vastly different from what I have experienced in my generation. The…awakenings I have witnessed in the last fifteen years in people who grew up in liberal Zionist homes have been against considerable resistance from their parents and the older generation–Jews in their 60s and 70s who were raised with the religion of Zionism. We had to rebel against our families and, for some of us, the political awakening came at a great cost.”

Rebelling Against Israelism: Why Do Some Jews Support Palestine?

The struggles and public narratives presented by a previous wave of young Jewish activists is another reason high school students in 2019 Evanston felt so empowered to speak so openly. In the decade before, movement leaders like Simone Zimmerman helped normalize and destigmatize Jewish dissent on Israel.

Zimmerman co-founded IfNotNow, a movement of American Jews organizing “for equality, justice, and a thriving future for all: our neighbors, ourselves, Palestinians, and Israelis.” Israelism, a 2023 documentary exploring Israel indoctrination in the Jewish American community, captures Zimmerman’s transformation from a Hebrew day school student.

IfNotNow and other progressive Jewish organizations helped propel the conversation in the Jewish public square. A 2016 article in Jewish Journal by David N. Myers, the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA, titled “Who is Simone Zimmerman?”, reflects on this change in discourse:

“The younger generation, which is no less passionate and engaged, calls to mind progressive groups that took rise in the 1970s such as Breira and Peace Now.

But the young Jews of today seek to exercise steely discipline in contending with one question: How do we bring an end to the occupation, which is not only a moral and political disaster, but an ongoing crisis for American Jewry? Rather than compound the difficulty of the task by considering a range of long-term political solutions, IfNotNow’s sole focus is to upset the status quo of opinion and deed in order to bring an end to the occupation, full stop.”

The Moral Teachings of Institutional Judaism

Unfortunately, conversations sparked a generation ago by younger, progressive Jews – and continued by a new generation of Jewish progressives – have failed to resonate or win acceptance within the considerably more-conservative Jewish American establishment. As a result, communal ties that have continued to strain for decades have now stretched into gaping relational chasms.

Feeling unheard and cut off from the communal inheritance promised by the Jewish tradition of l’dor v’dor (generation to generation), many Jewish Palestine supporters are leaving (or never entering) congregations and eschewing engagement with legacy institutions like Federations. Despite increasing numbers of rabbis speaking out in recent months, the unwillingness and inability of mainstream Jewish institutions to condemn the genocide is exacerbating this exodus.

Rabbi Sandra Lawson, Executive Director of Carolina Jews for Justice, reflects on this phenomenon in a recent blog post, “Losing a Generation: Moral Clarity, Gaza and the Soul of Judaism:”

“We are losing a generation of Jewish people and it’s not because they don’t care about Judaism, quite the opposite. But because legacy Jewish institutions — the very ones that claim to safeguard our tradition — have lost their moral clarity. In this moment of global suffering and devastating violence, especially in Gaza, too many of our institutions have failed to respond with the compassion, integrity, and prophetic vision our tradition demands.”

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“Young Jews see this contradiction. They see the gap between the Torah they’ve been taught and the silence of the institutions that claim to represent that Torah. They see Jewish leaders defending power instead of challenging it. They see a community that once said “Never Again” now hesitating to speak when “again” is happening — just not to us.

So they are walking away. Not from Judaism — but from a version of Judaism that has become unrecognizable to them. They are searching for communities rooted in justice, compassion, and truth. And when they don’t find them in our legacy institutions, they build their own. Quietly. Boldly. Righteously.”

Wondering how to support Palestine?

Want to learn more about shifting perspectives on Palestine in the Jewish community in Israel and the United States?

Check out the An Evolving View exhibit.