At Beth El, a New Jersey Synagogue, a Deep Divide Over Israel | The New Yorker Highlight

This past October, a survey by the Washington Post found that forty-six per cent of American Jews supported the war in Gaza and forty-eight per cent opposed it. Thirty-nine per cent believed that Israel had committed genocide. Disagreements over the war have disrupted family dinners, upended friendships, and splintered congregations. Last fall, in a sermon delivered during Rosh Hashanah, Angela Buchdahl, the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue, in Manhattan, declared that she had never been more afraid to talk about Israel, for fear of offending some worshippers. “I want to tell you about my unconditional love for the Israeli people and our beleaguered homeland, still desperately struggling to bring its hostages home, still trying to eliminate Hamas terrorists that not only refuse to lay down their arms but intentionally trap their own people in a combat zone,” Buchdahl said. “But if I tell you these things, all of which I believe, some of you will stop listening and decide that I’m no longer your rabbi.”