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Jewish Peoplehood Is a Mirage — But We Can Change That
Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
“Peoplehood” is the term du jour in the Jewish world, appearing in sermons, mission statements, and grant proposals.
It’s supposed to capture something both ancient and modern — the shared bond that unites Jews everywhere, regardless of denomination, practice, or geography. It’s the idea that even in disagreement, there is a deeper connective tissue — a sense of belonging to a people, not just a religion. It sounds nice, and maybe it even feels good to say. But what does it actually mean in 2025, when the Jewish world seems less like one people and more like a set of rival tribes, each convinced that it holds the true definition of Jewish authenticity?
There was a time when the concept of Jewish peoplehood felt self-evident. Jews saw themselves as part of something larger, bound by shared history, memory, persecution, and purpose. But that unity — born of necessity and survival — has fractured under the weight of modern comfort, politics, and identity. Today, we can’t even agree on what it means to be Jewish, let alone what it means to be one people. One group claims moral superiority because they keep kosher; another prides itself on rejecting ritual in favor of “universal values.” Some define their Jewishness through the lens of Zionism, while others recoil at the very word. We’ve turned Jewish identity into a menu of choices rather than a covenant of connection.
The divide over Israel exposes this most clearly. Many American Jews — particularly younger ones — struggle to separate their discomfort with Israel’s government from the deeper idea of Israel itself. Some reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state because they confuse it with a political administration they dislike. Others, equally passionate, view criticism of Israel as betrayal.
The result is a chasm so deep that many can no longer hold a conversation without suspicion or anger. How can there be “peoplehood” when one side waves an Israeli flag as a symbol of pride, while another side sees it as an emblem of oppression? When some Jewish college students feel safer marching with pro-Palestinian activists than standing beside their own community, something fundamental has been lost.
Even beyond politics, the fragmentation runs deep. Jews argue over who is “really” Jewish — by birth, by choice, by conversion, by practice. Entire denominations are dismissed as illegitimate by others. In one community, a rabbi’s ordination is honored; in another, it’s ignored. There are Orthodox Jews who see Reform Jews as heretics, and secular Jews who see Orthodox Jews as relics. We can’t even agree on the basics of Shabbat, kashrut, or what qualifies as antisemitism.
If we can’t find shared meaning in the fundamentals, what makes us think we can unite around something as abstract as “peoplehood”?
The truth is that peoplehood without shared purpose is just a slogan. It’s comforting, but empty. Real peoplehood requires a common standard — not of uniformity, but of mutual responsibility. You don’t have to keep kosher, but you have to respect those who do. You don’t have to love every Israeli policy, but you should care about the survival of the Jewish homeland. You don’t have to believe in God, but you should believe that Jewish continuity matters.
Too many Jews are content to curate their own version of Judaism, one that excludes anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into their worldview. We’ve replaced peoplehood with partisanship — Jewish identity as an expression of politics, rather than as a transcendent bond.
And yet, despite all this, there remains something stubborn and sacred about Jewish connection. It shows up in the moments that matter most — at funerals, at seders, at times of danger or pride. When Jews were massacred in Pittsburgh, or when hostages were taken in Israel, Jews across the spectrum felt it personally. For all our internal conflict, we share an instinctive empathy for each other’s pain and triumph. That reflex — to show up, to care, to feel bound by fate — might be the last vestige of real peoplehood we have left. But if we don’t nurture it, it won’t survive the next generation.
Maybe peoplehood shouldn’t be something we claim; maybe it should be something we earn. Not by declaring ourselves united, but by doing the work of unity — engaging across differences, listening with humility, and showing up even when it’s uncomfortable.
The Jewish story has never been one of sameness. It has always been one of argument, wrestling, and reconciliation. Peoplehood, if it is to mean anything at all, must be about choosing to stay in the conversation even when it’s hard, even when the other person drives you crazy, and even when you believe they’re wrong.
The challenge before us isn’t to define peoplehood. It’s to live it — to make it visible in how we treat one another, how we defend each other, and how we choose to remain connected even when we disagree. Because without that, all the talk about peoplehood is just talk.
Steve Rosenberg is the Principal of the Team GSD and the author of the book: Make Bold Things Happen: Inspirational Stories from Sports, Business And Life.
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University of Michigan will have a leader who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court
A civil rights attorney who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court and made social media posts viewed as pro-Hezbollah and antisemitic, has won his bid for the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
Michigan is one of a few states in which voters play a direct role in choosing university overseers. As a regent, Amir Makled (D) will help oversee expenditures at the university where his clients, the student protesters, were arrested. The position is unpaid and carries an eight-year term. Democrat Paul Brown won the other seat up for election, maintaining the board’s 6-2 Democratic majority.
Makled beat out Republican challenger Lena Epstein, who is Jewish and previously identified as a “Jewish Messianic believer of Christ,” but recanted the statement and later said she was “100% Jewish.” Mainstream Judaism does not accept Messianic Jews because they believe in the divinity of Christ and try to convert Jews to Jesus.
Epstein told the Forward in an April interview that the Democrats had handed her an opportunity to win the seat by endorsing Makled, who was facing intense scrutiny. In one of his controversial posts, Makled called Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a “martyr” after he was killed by Israeli strikes in 2024. He lost an endorsement from Service Employees International Union for the posts and later deleted them.
In the regents race, voters picked up to two of six candidates, with the top two winning. Makled received 25.6% of the vote while Brown received 27.2%. Epstein received 22.2% while her fellow Republican Michael Schostak received 22.6%.
Makled’s election comes as part of a wave of Democratic Party wins, including in Michigan, which elected as Senator Abdul El-Sayed (D), who also faced severe backlash for statements related to Israel and Gaza and for appearing alongside streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric.
Israel played a major role in the rhetoric surrounding Michigan’s midterms. But voters, including 60% of Jewish voters that voted for El-Sayed according to early exit polls, favored sharp critics of the Jewish state to candidates in support of it.
The post University of Michigan will have a leader who defended pro-Palestinian protesters in court appeared first on The Forward.
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This grandson of Holocaust survivors is headed to Congress. The ADL has concerns about his antisemitism record.
The election of Daniel Biss, a Jewish critic of Israel, to an Illinois congressional seat Tuesday has sparked a public feud between the Anti-Defamation League and the liberal Zionist group J Street over whether the ADL remains a credible voice in the fight against antisemitism.
After Biss, the former Jewish mayor of Evanston, Ill., won his seat Tuesday night, the ADL Midwest took to social media to express “serious concerns” about Biss’ “approach to antisemitism.”
J Street, which had endorsed Biss, hit back, noting that Biss is the grandson of Holocaust survivors and calling the ADL’s statement “a shanda,” the Yiddish word for disgrace.
“It is hard to read this statement without wondering how far the ADL has drifted from the organization it once was – a gold standard in our community for standing up against bigotry, hatred and discrimination,” J street wrote on X.
Biss, who speaks Hebrew and spent childhood summers in Israel, was elected with 75% of the vote in a district where 11% of the electorate is Jewish.
“It saddens me to watch the ADL, once a preeminent civil rights organization, devolve into an entity that traffics in fear, intimidation and extremism,” Biss wrote in a statement to the Forward. “This kind of rhetoric does nothing to keep the Jewish people safe—in fact, it undermines that very cause.”
The ADL has long faced scrutiny from critics who view the watchdog group as labeling too broad a swath of Israel criticism as antisemitic, while less forcefully condemning antisemitism when it comes from the political right.
“Our statement speaks for itself,” an ADL spokesperson wrote in an email to the Forward.
In its statement, the ADL pointed to a specific set of concerns involving Biss’ record as mayor of Evanston, Illinois, the college town home to Northwestern University.
Biss did not provide Evanston police support that Northwestern requested after reported “antisemitic conduct” at the Gaza war encampment on campus in April 2024, the ADL said, “raising serious questions about whether the safety, dignity, and equal access of Jewish students were treated with the urgency they required.”
Biss has defended his decision not to dispatch police to the encampment, writing in response to a congressional inquiry that forcibly clearing the protest would have gone against police department advice and suppressed “constitutionally protected speech.”
The ADL also said that Biss “dismissed scrutiny of his response as a politically motivated attack fueled by AIPAC, rather than substantively addressing the concerns raised by Jewish students and community members.”
Biss made opposition to AIPAC a central theme of his primary campaign for Congress after the hardline pro-Israel lobbying group spent millions opposing him and supporting another candidate, state Sen. Laura Fine.
In an interview with the Forward in March, Biss said it was “absurd” that AIPAC opposes imposing any conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel. “And then try to enforce it with millions of dollars of dark money, is certainly bad for democracy and bad for our politics here in America,” Biss added.
At the same time, Biss faced pressure to his left on Israel in the primary, defeating Kat Abughazaleh, a Palestinian-American who has characterized Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide. Biss, who has described himself as a progressive Zionist, declined to use the word genocide, despite repeated calls from Abughazaleh to do so.
In a March op-ed in The Nation, Biss wrote that he believed he was one of AIPAC’s top targets partly because “I’m the grandson of Holocaust survivors. My mother is Israeli. My extended family lives in Israel. AIPAC knew that they couldn’t dismiss me as anti-Israel or antisemitic.”
The ADL also criticized Biss for supporting the repeal of an anti-BDS law, which bars Illinois from investing public pension funds in companies that boycott Israel. That position, the ADL said, “raises additional concerns about his willingness to stand against efforts to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.”
In an April Substack post explaining his position, Biss said that he personally opposes the global movement to boycott Israel, but he does not believe the government should “stop people from using their economic agency to advocate for their values.”
Biss will succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Jewish lawmaker who represented the district for nearly three decades and was also an outspoken critic of AIPAC.
The post This grandson of Holocaust survivors is headed to Congress. The ADL has concerns about his antisemitism record. appeared first on The Forward.
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At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration
On Wednesday, two senior citizens, Robert Zimmerman, 85, a Jew originally from Minnesota, and Robert Prevost, 71, a Catholic of Chicago, had a brief meeting at the younger man’s office in central Italy.
Sources on the scene report that Zimmerman was in town for business and Prevost, who goes professionally by Leo, had recently cited Zimmerman’s work in the preface to a book about nuclear disarmament.
Both men dressed in uniform, looking a bit Spy Vs. Spy, with Zimmerman in a black hoodie and Prevost in white with a small white skull cap. The confab was brief, a bulletin from Prevost’s workplace reported, consisting of “greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges.”
Prevost gifted Zimmerman with prayer beads, and Zimmerman presented Prevost with a copy of his memoir, published under his pen name, Bob Dylan.
While Zimmerman was raised in a Jewish home, he had, for a time in the late 1970s to early 1980s, converted to born-again Christianity, confounding many.
The post At the Vatican, two elderly men — one Jewish, one Catholic — exchange gifts and mutual admiration appeared first on The Forward.
