Will Judaism after Gaza actually be different from Judaism before Gaza?

The sun sets as Israel launches its ground assault on Gaza City. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson September 19, 2025

In the past few months, Jewish thinkers including Peter Beinart, Shaul Magid and others have begun asking a new question about the Israeli military action in Gaza: not whether it is right or wrong, measured or excessive — but how the war has changed Judaism itself.

There is no question, of course, that the war has changed the Jewish community, especially in the United States. We are more divided than ever, calcified into three camps: for the war, against the war, and conflicted about but now mostly against it. (I have been in the third category for some time.) It seems to me that these three camps rarely speak to one another anymore; we’re exhausted by the rhetoric, and by one another. And many of us are horrified at what Israel’s nationalistic leaders are capable of doing. We can never un-see these things.

But what about Judaism as a religion? How, paraphrasing Beinart, do we reckon with our Jewishness after the wholesale destruction of Gaza?

Some have said that Judaism, not just the Jewish people, has been irrevocably changed by the war. Yet while much about the Gaza war is terrifyingly new, some of the tensions regarding it are quite old, even fundamental to the Jewish experience.

At the deepest layers of Jewish civilization lies a tension between universalism and particularism. The predominant God of the Bible is, on the one hand, the creator of the entire world, but on the other, in a special relationship with Israel, his chosen people. (There are other, less triumphalist, and less male biblical theologies, but this is the predominant biblical one.) On the one hand, the Torah sets forth seemingly universal moral principles, but on the other, it is only binding on Israelites; the other 99.5% of the world is not of primary concern. (The “Seven Laws of Noah” came much later.)

And while the Torah clearly teaches that we must pursue justice and be kind to the stranger, Jewish law sets forth different punishments for offenses committed against non-Jews than for those against Jews and has numerous specific provisions expressing mistrust and denigration of non-Jews. Generations of rabbis have debated whether it’s permissible to break the Sabbath to save a non-Jew’s life, or whether a Jew must return a non-Jew’s lost property.

More broadly, Jews have, across history, often conceived of themselves not merely as coreligionists, but as a civilization, a tribe, a nation, and a family — sometimes even a race. Sometimes these conceptions are benign, but other times their particularism has troubling consequences. For example, some Hasidic sources teach that only Jews have a spark of the divine within them. Non-Jews do not.

The fundamental tension between universalism and particularism has always been part of Judaism; the only thing that is different now is that a hyper-particularist strain is in power in Israel, with the power to actualize what was always there in potential.

In the last 200 years, Reform and other non-Orthodox forms of Judaism have sought to downplay the particularistic elements of the tradition — even, in the Reconstructionist case, eliminating the concept of the ‘chosen people’ entirely. A numerical majority of American Jews generally believe that we are one people among many, that there are many paths to the sacred, and that while Jews are distinctive and perhaps chosen in some sense, we are not superior to others.

But, to put it mildly, not all Jews agree.

Sociologically and theologically, Modern Orthodox and Haredi Jews are far more likely to experience their identities as opposed to that of the non-Jewish world, and in some ways superior to theirs. Not coincidentally, they are also more likely to support Israel’s right-wing governments over the past 50 years — though there are important exceptions, such as today’s Smol Emuni (Faithful Left) movement.

Many non-Orthodox Jews have similar perspectives. Whether because of the Holocaust, or Zionism, or simply a sense of Jewish pride and “peoplehood,” many non-Orthodox and non-observant Jews have a strong sense of national, communal, tribal identity — if not outright superiority. And the stronger one holds that identity, the more likely one is to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza.

This is even true among people who, to outsiders, may look like hippies, with long hair, copious cannabis use, spiritual practices of all sorts, and a love of jam bands. Sometimes these “hippies” are among the most nationalistic of all; they are indeed filled with love of kedusha (holiness), but that love is for the people and land of Israel first and foremost. And it is often stronger than their compassion for innocent people caught in the crossfire.

I first experienced this emotional and cognitive dissonance 20 years ago, when I was living in Israel — in the spiritually drenched neighborhood of Nachlaot, Jerusalem, where the sounds of prayer and song often echoed among the stones, and where American Jewish neo-Hasidim like myself came to build community and experience some of that kedusha. At the time, the divisive issue was the Israeli hitnatkut (“disengagement”) from Gaza, which has now, of course, come full circle. Opponents of the policy festooned their cars, apartments and clothes with bright orange ribbons — and Nachlaot was a sea of orange.

This came as a shock. Incredulous, I wrote in 2005 that “the ‘peace and love’ crowd, the hippies who are most likely to meditate, sing songs, and smoke marijuana before davening — these people were not only anti-disengagement; they were some of its most hardcore opponents in the country, even more so than the ordinary national-religious camp.” Then as now, these people may have deep, juicy spiritual practices of prayer, learning and celebration. But they see Israel as under existential threat from an implacable, even inhuman, foe. Love of Israel comes first.

Of course, it’s possible to cite facts and figures — Palestinian public opinion, civilian death rates, military tactics — but we know these would be beside the point. This isn’t a cognitive, intellectual debate; it’s an emotional and spiritual one rooted in a particularist iteration of Jewish values. For many Jews, Judaism is about the love of other Jews, first and foremost, as well as our God and our holy land. And, quite honestly, they have plenty of Jewish sources to back them up.

Particularist Judaism fails as a spiritual, ethical practice that applies to all human beings. It always has. It will always prefer Jews to non-Jews. It will always inculcate powerful feelings of tribal cohesion, love, and separateness that influence how people reach ethical conclusions. Its distortion of conscience is a feature, not a bug.

My Judaism is fundamentally different. To me, opening the heart means opening the heart to all people and cultivating compassion for everyone, not only Jews or even primarily Jews. Yes, I have my family and tribal loyalties and loves, but ethical axioms supersede them. What I love about Judaism is precisely what is being ignored in Gaza. And I have plenty of sources to back me up as well.

Universalist and particularist tendencies have existed in Judaism since the very beginning. Of course, what’s different now is that Jews (or at least the Israeli military) have temporal power. Israel has the army, guns, bombs and naval blockade. Whereas 200 years ago, rabbis could only excommunicate heretics and utter prayers to save their communities from antisemitism, now the Jewish state has the power to inflict misery on millions of people. As it is doing.

Decades on from that year in Nachlaot, I see how the alienation from my spiritual fellow travelers changed my life. I gradually moved away from traditional Jewish practice and traditional Jewish communities. I drifted away from Jewish mysticism and toward other spiritual practices. I never left Judaism, of course — I just chose a Jewish path that is both grounded in tradition and committed to human rights, justice, love and universalism.

I recognize that there are other ways to be Jewish, and I respect that they are grounded in tradition. But they are incommensurate with how I understand the deepest questions of human ethics and spirituality. In some ways, I practice a different religion, a different way of life, from at least half the religious Jews in the world. Maybe I always have.