(JTA) — For decades, liberal Zionism served the American Jewish majority as the ideological bridge between democratic and Jewish values: Support for Israel was based in, and justified by, a commitment to Jewish self-determination anchored in democracy, and animated by the promise of peace with the Palestinians.

On Tuesday night in Manhattan, a group of prominent rabbis and Jewish thinkers gathered to ask whether that bridge is now collapsing.

The conversation, held at B’nai Jeshurun in the heart of the famously Jewish and historically liberal Upper West Side, centered on what panelists described as a profound crisis in liberal Zionism — accelerated by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the devastating war in Gaza that followed, but rooted in decades of occupation, the rightward political drift in Israel and growing estrangement between American and Israeli Jews.

The panel brought together figures who have long wrestled publicly with Israel’s moral and political direction, albeit to different degrees: Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah; Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Manhattan’s Park Avenue Synagogue; Peter Beinart, the writer and editor who lately has soured on the idea of a Jewish state in favor of a single, binational state of Arabs and Jews; and Esther Sperber, an Israeli-American architect and Orthodox activist critical of Israel’s shift to the right.

Representatives of the Zionist right were not invited to sit on the panel, said moderator Rabbi Irwin Kula, because “that’s [not] where the crisis is.”

“We are living through the collapse of a paradigm,” said Kula, describing a polarized Jewish community shaken by grief, fear of antisemitism, and, especially for liberal Zionists, despair that their vision of two states for two people will ever come about. Kula, who championed pluralism as the president of the Jewish organization CLAL, said the question was no longer how big the Jewish tent should be, but whether it had already been “shredded.”

Throughout the evening, Kula resisted turning the discussion into a debate over one state versus two states or competing historical narratives. Instead, he pressed panelists to articulate the fears and “nightmares” driving their positions — a strategy meant to surface “vulnerability” rather than certainty. For the most part, the audience — 700 in the sanctuary, and another 1,000 online, according to the synagogue — held its applause and jeers, as Kula requested, lending the evening the hushed air of a memorial service.

Cosgrove, who recently referred to himself as a “liberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government,” framed his fears around internal Jewish fracture. Drawing on biblical imagery, he warned that American Jews were increasingly turning one another into enemies, and said that the role of pulpit rabbis like him is to make room in their congregations for disagreement.

“My primary fear, and that is my primary role right now, is that in a moment of time when the Jewish people don’t lack for external enemies, we are making internal enemies,” he said. “And I believe that the role of rabbinic leadership and all of leadership right now must be that we restrain ourselves from this need to call the other a ‘self-hating Jew’ or ‘self-hating Zionist,’ or whatever label you want to put on one side, and a colonial oppressor on the other side.”

Jacobs, whose organization has been outspoken in condemning Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank, said liberal Zionism’s credibility has been undermined by institutions that claim its mantle while abandoning their Jewish values.

For years, she said, major Jewish “legacy” organizations instructed American Jews that supporting Israel meant defending its government, ignoring occupation and silencing Palestinian voices. As Israel has moved further away from liberal democracy, that model has alienated young Jews, whose distancing from Israel was front of mind for a panel whose youngest members are in their 50s.

“You have a young generation who’s never known Israel without Netanyahu in the helm, or almost never known the possibility of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Jacobs said.

“Unsurprisingly,” she continued, that generation “looks around and says, ‘Well, if you’re telling me that Zionism means defending occupation and defending illiberal democracy, I want no part of that.’”

Jacobs suggested that most American Jews remain deeply connected to Israel while opposing its current government and supporting a two-state solution — a position she described as underrepresented in communal leadership.

In March, a Pew Research survey found that about 46% of Jewish Americans, or a plurality, said a two‑state solution is the best outcome. Polling by Pew and others also suggests that while a substantial share of young Jews still affirms the importance of Israel and the two‑state idea, they also tend to be less supportive of Israeli policy and more questioning of traditional Zionist approaches than older generations.

Sperber brought the crisis into the realm of family and faith. Speaking as an Israeli with relatives across the political spectrum, she described conversations that have become nearly impossible, even among her siblings in Israel who share religious language and deep attachment to the land.

She said her own activism as a founder of Smol Emuni, or the “faithful left,” grew out of alarm at what she called the celebration of power, vengeance and dehumanization in Israel discourse in her community of Orthodox and otherwise observant Jews. Their uncritical support of the current Israeli government and its hawkish policies is often justified, she said, through distorted readings of Jewish tradition.

“We hear a kind of admiration of power and vengeance and brutality that is using our Jewish tradition as its justification,” said Sperber. “People talking about the Palestinians as Amalek, a kind of mythical nation that is supposed to be destroyed.

“Our Judaism has been leached away from us, and we need to find a way to bring it back into a place that’s morally grounded in our Torah and in our kind of democratic and liberal” values, she continued.

What is needed, she argued, is not only broader inclusion but teshuvah — moral self-examination and repentance — a core Jewish response to catastrophe.

Beinart, a prominent journalist whose call for one state has placed him outside the liberal Zionist camp, described his own position as emerging from years of listening to Palestinians, including people in Gaza. He spoke of specific conversations that left him haunted by the scale of civilian suffering and fearful of being judged by future generations for silence or complicity.

“The most constructive role I could play is to nudge people a little bit to listen to Palestinians,” he said. Such conversations undermine assumptions about Palestinian intentions and force Jews to confront how “ethnonationalism in Israel-Palestine” contradicts their own ideals as Americans. The liberal Zionist promise — that one could affirm Jewish safety, democracy and equality simultaneously — has failed under the weight of reality, he suggested.

At the same time, Beinart — recently criticized by Zionists and supporters of the Israel boycott after his appearance at Tel Aviv University — acknowledged the cost of rejecting the Zionist idea of exclusive Jewish sovereignty: estrangement from the observant Jewish communities he once felt at home in, and anxiety about what that alienation means for his children.

“My nightmare is that I will continue to lose those relationships because I can’t find a way to communicate effectively with people who profoundly disagree with the positions that I’ve taken that I do it out of love for our people and then other people,” said Beinart.

Indeed, Cosgrove suggested that Beinart’s views have become so toxic in many parts of the Jewish community that it was a risk for a prominent pulpit rabbi like him to share the stage. “I’m concerned, because this is a public forum, that me sitting here quietly would signal my assent with anything that’s being said here,” Cosgrove said at one point, earning scattered applause.

Cosgrove agreed with the notion that American Jews could learn from Palestinian voices, but also said that critics of Israel should speak with Israeli soldiers and others “risking life and limb to make sure the atrocities of Oct. 7 never happen again.”

Repeatedly, the conversation returned to American Jews’ relationship with Israeli Jews — and to the question of responsibility across distance and disagreement. Even panelists sharply critical of Israeli policy rejected the idea of disengagement.

“We can’t try to create a Jewish community that has nothing to do with half of the [world’s] Jews,” Jacobs said, referring to the young anti-Zionist Jews who are severing their relationship with Israel, home to more than 7 million Jews. At the same time, she urged American Jews to stop using Israel as a proxy for Jewish identity and invest more deeply in Jewish life at home.

By the evening’s end, no roadmap had emerged for saving liberal Zionism — or replacing it. Sperber suggested Jews like her have a responsibility to continue to bring their “moral convictions to your Jewish community and the very broken country that we live in,” even in the absence of political solutions.

“The challenge is on us, those who still believe that Israel is a vital and important place that we care [about] and love,” she said.

The post Peter Beinart, Elliot Cosgrove and other Jewish leaders face off over the future of liberal Zionism appeared first on The Forward.

(New York Jewish Week) — Employees at New York City’s biggest Israeli bakery chain are seeking to form a union — and one of their top demands is “an end to this company’s support of the genocide happening in Palestine.”

As an example, they cited Breads Bakery’s participation in last year’s Great Nosh, a citywide festival of Jewish food held on Governor’s Island.

“The workers refuse to participate in Zionist projects such as fundraisers that support the ‘Israeli’ occupation of Palestine, baking cookies with the ‘Israeli’ flag, and catering events such as the Great Nosh, which are connected to organizations that donate millions each year to the IDF,” the union, which is calling itself Breaking Breads, said in a statement issued Tuesday.

The employees at Breads, a spinoff of a Tel Aviv bakery with six outposts in New York City, have teamed up with the United Auto Workers to form their union. They are alleging poor working conditions, low and unfair pay and a lack of “respect” from management.

But they also are calling on the bakery’s operators, CEO Yonatan Floman and founder Gadi Peleg, to end Breads’ ties to Israel. Both men are themselves Israeli, and Breads’ menu features items from across the Jewish diaspora that are popular in Israel, such as rugelach, challah, bourekas and its award-winning babka.

“We cannot and will not ignore the implicit and explicit support this bakery has for Israel,” Breaking Breads posted on Instagram on Jan. 1 in a statement that appeared in English, Spanish, Arabic and French. It said it had announced itself to Breads’ management days earlier.

“We see our struggles for fair pay, respect, and safety as connected to struggles against genocide and forces of exploitation around the world,” the statement continued. “There are deep cultural changes that need to happen here, and we need to see accountability from upper management.”

To form a union under federal law, at least 30% of workers must sign on. Now, if the bakery does not agree to voluntarily recognize the union, Breaking Breads can petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election to be legally recognized. It’s rare for unions to announce themselves at the threshold, as Breaking Breads did, more often waiting until at least twice as many workers join in as a show of strength and a safeguard against challenges.

A representative from Breads Bakery did not respond to a request for comment.

Breaking Breads declined to speak further with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and referred back to the press release.

Breads is not the first employer to face worker demands related to support for Israel. In November 2023, about a month after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, five employees at New York’s Café Aronne quit after learning of the owner’s public support for Israel; volunteers stepped up to help run the café.

In 2024, employees at a Detroit bagel shop either quit or were fired following a dustup with management when their concerns about work conditions merged with their criticism of Israel. Earlier this year, workers at Alamo Drafthouse, a movie theater chain, petitioned their employer not to show the film “September 5,” calling it “Zionist propaganda.”

And in Philadelphia, workers were among those who protested after the celebrity chef Mike Solomonov’s restaurant group, CookNSolo, donated to United Hatzalah, an Israeli rescue service, soon after Oct. 7.

Breads, too, staged an emergency fundraiser to benefit Israel shortly after Oct. 7. The bakery worked with the Israeli food influencer (and now bakery owner himself) Ben Siman-Tov to create heart-shaped challahs that sold for $36 to benefit Magen David Adom, Israel’s national organization responsible for emergency pre-hospital medical care and blood services. The bakery raised more than $20,000 amid a stronger-than-anticipated response.

Peleg and Floman also donated Breads’ signature black-and-white cookies to a bake sale fundraiser that raised $27,000 for Israeli food relief efforts in the wake of Hamas’ attack.

“What happened in Israel was an act of pure evil,” Peleg said at the time. “What we are doing is an act of pure good.”

Such fundraisers would be prohibited if the union succeeds in being recognized and negotiates a contract reflecting its demands. So, too, would the ability of customers to order Israeli flags on custom products, which Breads produces for private events.

Breaking Breads is explicitly positioning itself in the context of Jewish baking labor history. In its statement, it says it is the largest New York City craft bakery union since the 1920s, when Bagel Bakers Local 338 had roughly 300 craftsmen across the city. In the 1960s, Local 338 was nicknamed the “bagel mafia” after it prevented the Italian mob from entering the industry.

Breads Bakery employs 275 workers overall. In its statement announcing itself, Breaking Breads alleges a host of offenses, including deference to violent customers, failure to follow regular schedules for workers, and telling workers that they cannot speak Arabic in the cafes.

For some Jewish Breads fans, the union’s objections to expressions of support for Israel were surprising.

“I think it’s ridiculous to work for a Jewish-slash-Israeli-owned company and then be appalled by their policies and affiliations,” said Morgan Raum, a Jewish food influencer who has promoted Breads in the past.

Raum said the union’s boycott of events like The Great Nosh, for which she sat on the host committee, was especially galling.

The event on Governor’s Island last June drew 2,000 people and had a waitlist of another 2,000. It was not billed as a fundraiser for Israeli organizations, or as an Israeli food event — but some of its supporters and vendors are Israeli, and have fundraised for Israeli causes, such as supporting border communities after Oct. 7, providing trauma care, or providing rehabilitation and civilian reintegration services for injured Israeli soldiers.

Jewish Food Society, the Great Nosh’s lead organizer, did not respond to a request for comment on the Breads unionization effort. UJA-Federation of New York, which gave $500,000 to the event and also raised $800 million for Israel after Oct. 7, also declined to comment.

“I think it’s antisemitic to target the Great Nosh,” Raum said. “Tons of organizations and events are connected to organizations that donate or are affiliated with or support Israel. So it would be extremely hard to navigate anything, any event, any world in which you’re not doing so.”

The post Breads Bakery employees unionize, call for end to Jewish Israeli owners’ ‘support for the genocide in Gaza’ appeared first on The Forward.

Grzegorz Braun, member of far-right political alliance Confederation, speaks during a session at the Parliament in Warsaw, Poland, Dec. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Aleksandra Szmigiel

TikTok has removed six videos posted by a Polish far–right politician best known for provoking international outrage by using a fire extinguisher on Hanukkah candles in the country’s parliament, an anti-racism organization said on Wednesday.

Once viewed by many Poles as a fringe extremist, Grzegorz Braun has become an increasingly important figure in right-wing politics, with his Confederation of the Polish Crown party regularly polling in double digits.

Those numbers could give it a say in the formation of a future coalition, but Braun’s antisemitism and aggressive social media stunts have led the government to say his party may be banned, while the leader of opposition nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) has ruled out working with him.

Rafal Pankowski, from the “Never Again” Association, which advises social media companies on eliminating hate speech and flagged the videos to TikTok, said the films, including one about the Hanukkah candles, were just the “tip of the iceberg.”

“There is simply a whole lot of such material, such content, which is evidently saturated with hostility, primarily towards Jews and often also towards various other minorities … I think that the worst thing in all this is that there is this element of glorification, incitement to violence,” he said.

TikTok confirmed that it had removed certain videos for violating its rules on hate speech.

A spokesperson for the Confederation of the Polish Crown did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Braun has said he is trying to protect predominantly Catholic Poland from the influence of Jews and Ukrainians.

Pankowski said the “Never Again” Association had reported more of Braun’s films to TikTok.

From launching into an antisemitic tirade outside the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where Nazi Germany killed more than 1.1 million Jews, to tearing down Ukrainian flags or demolishing exhibitions about LGBT rights, Braun’s actions have outraged many Poles but have also generated significant publicity.

Braun, a Member of the European Parliament, has had his immunity from prosecution lifted by the legislature. Polish prosecutors have charged him with seven offences including public disorder and offending religious sentiments.