Jewish collective identity can be understood and analyzed using three key lenses: first, the ethnic or ethnic national; second, the religious/sacred; and third the liberal/ethical/universalist. The last refers to the extension of human and civil rights to all human beings including minorities. The first two are rooted in traditional views of the Jewish people. First, that Jews are a people, an ethnos, with legitimate national aspirations. Judaism is also a religion and over time, there was broad recognition that one cannot be Jewish if one is a member of another religion. The final dimension comes from the centuries-long Jewish experience of being a minority.

With the Emancipation (1791) most Jews sought civic equality and integration into the emerging modern nation-states. In practice, that meant supporting universal human and civil rights. These values were often seen as aligned with universal values in Judaism, such as we are all created in the image of God (B’tzelem Elohim). The identity configuration that served as the basis for the North American Jewish “civil religion” described in Sacred Survival (referred to earlier in this report) merged the ethnic, the religious, and the universal. Thus, working for the safety and flourishing of the Jewish people, rescuing Jews, supporting the young State of Israel as it battled external foes, was understood as a sacred undertaking with religious value (though not necessarily in a strictly Orthodox sense (see JPPI’s 2014 Annual Assessment of the Situation and Dynamics of the Jewish People). Similarly, as Jews having been “strangers” and a persecuted minority, supporting minority rights – political and economic – was championed. The ethnic, religious, and universalist wove together into a powerful braid of Jewish collective identity.

Said differently, from l967 into the earliest years of the 21st century, the mainstream of Jewish life in the Diaspora – and in many ways, in Israel – understood that one could be Jewishly engaged, committed to strengthening and protecting Israel and the Jewish people, and at the same time deeply committed to liberalism. In recent years, for multiple reasons that merit further study, this configuration, this package of views, has started to disaggregate. The constituent elements have started to distance from each other. This has led to the emergence of different configurations of Jewish collective identity, which are vigorously vying for legitimacy and influence. On the liberal left, universalist values seem to have primacy – affording them religious or quasi-religious status – which often leads to severe criticism of certain policies promulgated by Israeli governments and Diaspora Jewish leadership alike. And on the right, there is a new configuration based on ethnicity and religion, which downplays “liberal Jewish values.” It views the well-being of the Jewish collectivity and privileging the Jewish majority in Israel as sacred. In the US, it often aligns

with socially and politically conservative groups. And the large middle – often in senior positions of responsibility in Diaspora communities – continues to work to sustain its allegiance to both Jewish ethnicity and liberal Jewish

values, insisting that Israel remain a liberal Jewish state.

This disaggregation seems to have effected a change in the cultural “tone” of public Jewish life. The Sacred Survival mode of Jewish identity combined the ethnic, religious, and liberal/universalist dimensions of collective identity. However, in doing so, it was aware of inherent tensions between them. Nevertheless, it was able to “hold” all three dimensions simultaneously, believing that in the final analysis they were mutually reinforcing. However, this simultaneous holding of different, even somewhat clashing dimensions evinced a sense of ambivalence and irony. This, of course, was primarily expressed in the arts, especially in literature and film as manifest in the work of Jewish writers and artists from Heinrich Heine to Philip Roth, Woody Allen, and Michael Chabon. It also shaped the feeling and experience of “regular” Jews in business, the professions, and Jewish communal leadership. This ambivalence and sense of irony resulted in an attitude of tolerance and openness to opposing opinions. People did not necessarily believe that they were 100% right and could concede that there may be merit to opposing opinions.

That sense of irony and ambivalence seems to have disappeared. People increasingly act and conduct themselves as if they are a hundred percent right and that the other side is not only wrong but morally suspect. This position feeds the de-legitimization of the other side that so many Dialogue participants (particularly liberals) reported to have experienced.

We believe the trends and processes currently underway point to a continuing disaggregation of the components of collective Jewish identity as understood in the later decades of the 20th century, and may constitute a significant challenge for Jewish leadership moving forward. There are multiple global and local factors influencing this development, which we believe merit considerable study.