If you are an American Jew who has expressed concern over young Jewish adults’ connection to Israel at any point over the past 40 years, the following quote, taken from a summary of findings from a particular survey, will likely sound familiar to you:
American Jewish middle agers are significantly more attached emotionally to Israel than are the [young adults]. A higher percentage of [young adults] feels not attached, and lower percentages feel either very or extremely attached to Israel. One might argue that most of the survey was conducted while Likud was in power, and that the [young adults’] lower levels of emotional attachment to Israel are the product of their disenchantment with … Israel’s forsaking the democratic socialist tradition of the Labor party for what the (older adults) perceived as the assertive nationalism of Likud.
For my entire career, this is how much of the American Jewish establishment has spoken about what is described as Jewish young adults’ apathy toward, lack of interest in and alienation from the State of Israel. Most of this discourse hinges on findings from one survey question in particular: How emotionally attached are you to Israel? (The response options usually include some versions of the following four answers: not at all attached, not too attached, somewhat attached or very attached.) This question, originally written for the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey (sponsored by the organization known today as the Jewish Federations of North America), has appeared in the past 35 years on hundreds of other surveys, including later national surveys, local demographic studies in dozens of communities, political surveys and other surveys targeted to specific populations. The narrative of young Jewish adults’ disaffection for Israel stems from the fact that across these hundreds of surveys — from 1990 through 2025 — they tend to report lower levels of emotional attachment to Israel than their elders.
But does a lower aggregate level of emotional attachment to Israel actually mean that Jewish young adults are apathetic, disinterested and alienated? Not necessarily. In a 2012 article in Contemporary Jewry,[1] several of my colleagues at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies showed that alienation from Israel did not increase from one age cohort to the next; quite the contrary — if you compared Jewish young adults of 2012 against their elders when they were young adults, it appears that alienation from Israel has actually decreased across age cohorts. In other words, the Jewish young adults of 2012 were less alienated from Israel than their parents and grandparents had been when they were young adults themselves. The parents and grandparents had had many more years to visit Israel, to learn about Israel, to build relationships with Israelis and to make memories of Israel that reinforce for them a sense that Israel holds an important place in their lives. All things being equal, with similar opportunities, the Jewish young adults of 2012 might be expected to equal or exceed their parents’ and grandparents’ attachment to Israel when they attain similar age.
Unfortunately, all things are not equal. We have no way of projecting the impact of the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, on the emotional attachment to Israel for American Jews of all ages, and whether it will be similar to or different from the effects of previous developments, such as the 1967 Six-Day War, the development of large-scale peer-group educational tours of Israel (e.g., Birthright Israel, teen trips) or the continuous rightward shift of the Israeli government. Much of the rhetoric on the subject is evidence-free, reflecting the hopes, fears or political preferences of the speaker. I also worry that concern over predicting the future is eliding what is potentially a bigger problem: As a community, we are expending so much time, energy and resources based on findings from a survey question that may not be understood completely across the population of interest. Accordingly, rather than try to make predictions about the future,[2] I have focused on trying to understand how North American Jews interpret the standard survey question about emotional attachment to Israel.
As part of a larger study assessing how North American Jews interpret a series of survey questions about Israel,[3] 1,803 respondents shared their interpretations of this question. These interpretations were coded thematically, and a total of 21 themes emerged. Some of these fit traditional understandings championed historically by Zionism of many varieties: Israel as an important connector for Jews around the world; the safety net of the Jewish people; a center for Jewish culture; a center for Jewish religious observance or the historic center of the Jewish people. But what does it mean that 402 respondents, in evaluating potential obstacles that might affect their emotional attachment to Israel, cited the impact of the conflict and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as an obstacle to feeling attached? Or that 250 stated that their distaste for the Israeli government limits their sense of attachment to Israel? Or that 176 identified discrimination — not only against Palestinians but also against non-Orthodox Jews, Sephardim, Ethiopians and non-Jews — as a barrier to attachment to Israel? Or that 102 respondents mentioned apartheid or genocide,[4] 82 invoked settler-colonialism, and 46 cited Israel’s failure to make peace with the Palestinians as factors that get in the way of developing a sense of attachment to Israel?
Today’s young adults have both unprecedented access to information from sources on the ground, whose perspectives may conflict with those of the Israeli government, and unprecedented exposure to misinformation.
As a researcher trying to understand the full scope and diversity of North American Jews’ perspectives on Israel, I do not care about the factual accuracy of the views I am describing here; that is a task I leave to historians and advocates. My job is to try to identify the full scope and diversity of North American Jews’ perspectives on Israel and to understand why these diverse views exist, both the ones I share and the ones with which I disagree. An article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Jewish Education provides useful context for the interpretation of my data.[5] The authors studied the experiences of students on American college campuses in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Based on their reactions, the observed students fit into six distinct categories. Space does not permit me to describe the groups in detail, but the article is available for all readers through the link in the endnotes, and anyone who reads the rich descriptions of these groups and the narratives of some of the students whose experiences helped the researchers identify the patterns of responses to Oct. 7 will recognize that young American Jews did not arrive at their perspectives lightly.
Even when their views do not comport with those embraced in the early days of Israel by Mordecai Kaplan and other Zionist thought leaders, we should pay closer attention to their thought process. Their disillusionment with Israel is often not at all a reflection of apathy toward, lack of interest in and alienation from Israel. Quite the contrary, their views demonstrate great care for, interest in and engagement with Israel, while also reflecting deep concern over the decades-long and ongoing rightward shift of Israel’s government, which they perceive to have a preference to safeguard its own power over liberal democracy and basic human rights. In many cases, these young adults feel a profound sense of conflict between their abiding love for the Jewish people and the illiberal actions sometimes taken in their name by a country where most of them are not citizens but whose government sometimes claims to speak and act on their behalf. This conflict is not new, but today’s young adults are experiencing it differently from how their parents and grandparents experienced similar conflicts around the Six-Day War, the 1982 Lebanon War, or the First or Second Intifadas. Today’s young adults have both unprecedented access to information from sources on the ground, whose perspectives may conflict with those of the Israeli government, and unprecedented exposure to misinformation. Both color the way they interpret the present war; either can lead a given young adult to feel either a deeper sense of connection to or alienation from Israel.
These young adults feel a profound sense of conflict between their abiding love for the Jewish people and the illiberal actions sometimes taken in their name by a country whose government sometimes claims to speak and act on their behalf
The quote I presented at the beginning of this essay — about how middle-aged American Jews tend to be significantly more attached to Israel than young adults, and attributing the difference in connection to the mismatch between young adults’ liberalism and the Israeli government’s rightward shift — was written in 1994.[6] It used data from the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey to describe Baby Boomers’ apparent apathy toward, disinterest in and disillusionment from Israel — the same Baby Boomers whose strong connection to Israel is held up today as the example that (much of) the Jewish establishment would like Jewish young adults to emulate. American Jews are still overwhelmingly politically liberal, and the Israeli government is still shifting ever more to the right, though it is clearly farther to the right today than it was in 1994. Only time will tell if today’s young adults are the generation whose relationship to Israel is irretrievably broken, but history has a way of repeating itself. We have seen this story before, even in many of our own lifetimes. Whatever happens, we should put more effort into understanding the nuances in the viewpoints of contemporary young adults, as well as the complex factors that have led them to their current views and that may contribute to continued evolution over time.
[1] Theodore Sasson, Benjamin Phillips, Graham Wright, Charles Kadushin and Leonard Saxe. (2012). Understanding young adult attachment to Israel: Period, Lifecycle and Generational Dynamics. Contemporary Jewry, 32, pp. 67-84.
[2] Perhaps a personal bias, but I tend to find answers to all of life’s questions in Judaism and baseball, so it is notable that there is a famous quote commonly attributed to both Jewish Nobel laureate Niels Bohr and Hall of Famer Yogi Berra: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
[3] This research was partially funded by a grant from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Antisemitism Research.
[4] My data predate Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent and still-ongoing war. If I were to begin data collection anew today, I would not be surprised if more respondents used the terms apartheid and genocide to condemn Israel’s prosecution of the war.
[5] Jonathan Krasner, Cheryl Weiner, Meka Greenwald and Lance Rothchild. (2025). Between home and homeland: Jewish college students confront the Israel-Gaza conflict and campus divides. Journal of Jewish Education, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15244113.2025.2488844?src=exp-la#abstract
[6] Chaim Waxman. (1994). Religious and ethnic patterns of American Jewish Baby Boomers. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33, pp. 74-80.
