On Belonging, Grief, and the Limits of Moral Certainty in Jewish Community Life

There is an old Jewish joke: A Jewish man is stranded alone on a desert island for fifteen years. One day, a ship appears on the horizon. Rescue at last. Before leaving, he asks the captain to take one final walk with him. As they stroll, he points proudly.

“This is where I slept.”

“This is where I stored my food.”

“And this,” he says, gesturing to a hut, “is the shul I go to.”

They walk a little farther and pass another building.

The captain asks, “And what’s that one?”

The man replies, “Oh, that’s the shul I would never step foot in.”

Even alone on a desert island, we built two synagogues.

We laugh because it is absurd. We laugh because it is familiar. But in an era of rising antisemitism and deep internal polarization, the joke feels more like a cautionary tale. After all, we are no longer alone on an island. We are under pressure from outside. And yet we continue to divide ourselves inside.

Jews disagree. We always have. The question now is not how to avoid division, but how to remain one people inside it.

The External Reality We Cannot Ignore

The Anti-Defamation League recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2023, the highest annual total since tracking began in 1979, with a dramatic spike following October 7. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jews continue to be the most targeted religious group in reported hate crimes.

These numbers shape real decisions: security budgets, insurance costs, whether Jewish students wear visible symbols, how institutions plan public events. But security infrastructure, however necessary, cannot answer the deeper question antisemitism forces upon us. It does not distinguish between denominational labels, political affiliations, or cultural identities. It collapses us into peoplehood. But, we are willing to live into that peoplehood ourselves?

The Internal Fractures

Our internal fractures are very real.

The Pew Research Center found in its 2020 study that 27 percent of Jewish adults identify as having no religion while still identifying as Jewish culturally or ethnically. Among younger Jews, that number is higher. Others remain deeply rooted in denominational synagogue life. Our community is not shrinking........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)