JTA — In the two years since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, the Jewish discourse over the war in Gaza has been agonizing and polarizing. Jews have argued over the Israeli government’s military aims, over what it means to “bring the hostages home,” over the left’s betrayal of its Jewish allies and over the influence of Israel’s far-right ministers.

Since the summer, however, a number of Jewish religious and thought leaders are debating another assertion: that the war in Gaza is not just a military, ethical or diplomatic challenge, but a crisis of faith. They are warning that the death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the settler violence in the West Bank are shaking the beliefs and practices of engaged Jews.

“What we are facing today is a spiritual catastrophe, and what is at stake is not just the future of the state of Israel, but the very soul of the Jewish people,” Rabbi Sharon Brous, leader of the independent IKAR congregation in Los Angeles, said in a Rosh Hashanah sermon.

Most, but not all, of these spiritual critiques are coming from liberal Zionist thinkers and rabbis from the non-Orthodox denominations, not to mention pundits opposed to or disillusioned with Zionism. Critics of their stances, meanwhile, say the real spiritual hazard is that Jews abandon Israel and the hostages during a just war that Israel didn’t ask for.

But the latest discourse suggests that among many Jews in the mainstream, the second anniversary of the attacks is raising difficult questions about Israel, Judaism and Jewish identity.

In an interview in August, the journalist Peter Beinart asked Rabbi Ismar Schorsch how he would respond to a fellow Jew who might be dismayed over Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

“What would you say to someone,” Beinart continued, “whose very belief in God and whose belief in Judaism had been brought into question by what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank?”

Schorsch, 89, the chancellor emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, accepted the premise of Beinart’s question, replying:

“I think that in some ways, Judaism is at [a] critical moment. Are we going to be able to defend Judaism, which has the burden of the chillul Hashem [desecration of God’s name], taking place in the West Bank and in Gaza? Will we be able to live [with] that Judaism, and if we don’t speak out now, it may be too late. This may be our final moment. In raising the ethical constraints that need to be imposed on the Israeli government, we are defending Judaism, and Judaism is going to have to survive this catastrophe. And how will we be able to live with ourselves if we were silent?”

The response was surprising, perhaps, coming from a historian who, from 1986 until his retirement in 2006, as head of Conservative Judaism’s flagship, was not known for either fiery rhetoric or public criticism of Israel. In some rabbis’ forums, there was dismay that Schorsch had aired his views in conversation with Beinart, an observant Jew whose very public drift from Zionism has been the subject of debate and much ridicule.

But Schorsch had aired similar misgivings about the spiritual toll of the war over the summer, in an essay for the fast day of Tisha B’Av. “The unremitting violence against helpless Palestinians in Gaza and their wholly innocent coreligionists on the West Bank will saddle Jews with a repulsive religion riddled with hypocrisy and contradictions,” Schorsch warned. “The messianism driving the current government of Israel is sadly out of kilter with traditional Judaism — and an utter moral abomination.”

In her sermon, Brous describes Hamas as a “formidable foe who has repeatedly expressed its intent to repeat the massacres of the 7th of October again and again and again.” And yet she excoriates Prime Minister........

© The Times of Israel