In March 2019, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs published a resolution condemning the “genocide” of the Rohingya people. This was nearly two years after the start of forced expulsions committed by the Burmese military. In its statement, JCPA detailed the atrocities committed against the Rohingya, which included massacring thousands of men, women, and children as well as destroying villages and forcing hundreds of thousands of survivors to flee. The statement approvingly quoted the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who called the attacks “a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.”

The JCPA statement, which was signed by numerous other Jewish groups from across the denominations, explained that it was motivated by the Jewish mantra of “never again,” which it described as the “firm, moral commitment not to remain inactive in the face of unspeakable atrocities.” The authors invoked their authority as Jews after the Holocaust who know what it’s like to have the world ignore the persecution of minorities and the degradation of human life.

This is the identity that Jews in America have embodied for decades. But today, the American Jewish community is experiencing a crisis of identity.

That identity — the story we tell about ourselves based on a selectively positive collection of memories and experiences — is one where Jews are the champions of social justice and the moral voice against oppression. It may be a partial history, but it’s the usable past that has shaped us and inspired our better selves to act.

The two of us grew up with that narrative. In our observant Conservative Jewish homes, in our Solomon Schechter day schools, and in youth groups like USY and Kadima, we learned that being Jewish meant both observing Jewish laws and also upholding principles of equality and justice for everyone because we know what it means to be a persecuted minority.

In the last few years, Jewish communities have continued to lean into that narrative.

We protested Trump’s Muslim refugee ban in early 2017 with signs at the airport that read, “We were immigrants too.”

We compared refugees’ experience to the experience of Jews fleeing the Nazis and being turned away at the shores of the United States.

We filed lawsuits against abortion bans in the name of religious freedom because we have seen what happens when Christian nationalism becomes the........

© The Jewish Week