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The Israeli origins of Amitai Etzioni’s big ideas about community
(JTA) — “Although I was born in Germany, my formative years were spent in the early, idealistic days of the cooperative Jewish settlements, in pre-Israel, Palestine,” wrote Amitai Etzioni in his 2003 memoir, “My Brother’s Keeper.”
In writing about his early years in a cooperative settlement called Kfar Shmaryahu, the Israeli-American sociologist and polymath provided the origin story for the big idea that made him famous: communitarianism.
When Etzioni died May 31 at age 94, the obituaries noted how he came to Israel as a young refugee from Nazi Germany and fought in Israel’s war for independence. But few noted his early life in Israel shaped his life’s work. Nor did they note how far Israel had come — for better and for worse — in the years since he lived on a kibbutz, battled as a Palmach commando and studied at the Hebrew University.
Communitarianism is a social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of society, as opposed to the individual, in articulating the good.”[W]hile individual rights surely matter, these rights must be balanced with commitments to the common good — for instance, by protecting the environment and public health,” Etzioni explained.
He also held that the various liberation movements of the 1960s went too far in undermining authority figures and what he called “the accepted standards of upright conduct.”
Because it proposed a “third way” between liberalism and conservatism, communitarianism was also embraced — and ridiculed — on both sides of the aisle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were fans. Some labeled George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” communitarian.
Etzioni left Israel in his mid-twenties for a teaching job at Columbia University. He opposed the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race, activism that propelled him beyond the academy and into the role as a “public intellectual.” He taught ethics for two years at the Harvard Business School before launching into a hybrid discipline he called “socio-economics.” Hired by the Carter administration in 1979 as a senior adviser, he joined the faculty at George Washington University, where he taught international affairs for more than 30 years.
The theories behind communitarianism weren’t new, but Etzioni’s articulation came to wide public attention on the eve of the Clinton presidency, when, according to one profile, it was “supposed to be the Big Idea of the ‘90s, the antidote to ‘Me Generation’ greed and the cure for America’s cynicism, alienation and despair.”
“We need an awakening of values, of caring and commitment,” Etzioni told an interviewer in 1992. “The Communitarians are saying this is possible; in fact, it is inevitable.”
“It was as if I were growing up in a high school of communitarian theory and practice,” wrote Etzioni about his youth spent on an agricultural cooperative in Israel. (Courtesy of Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi)
Although communitarianism never did live up to the hype, Etzioni became a reliable commentator and theorist in a host of fields and causes, including just war, bioethics, national security and privacy.
Although he occasionally wrote about Israel, his roots there were rarely front and center in his work or public image. In his memoir he notes that a lot of readers thought he was Italian. (“Amitai” comes from the Hebrew word for truth; he took “Etzioni” from a folk tale about a boy who learns to protect nature from a tree – “etz” in Hebrew.)
In his memoir, however, he delves deeply into his youth in Israel. “In those days, the country was quite different from what it has since become,” he writes. “[I]t was strongly imbued with the spirit of community (from which the term communitarian arises); most people were dedicated to serving the common good and to erecting a home for Jews escaping Nazi-dominated Europe. It was in that pre-Israel that I first knew the high that one gains when serving a cause greater than oneself.”
His parents were among the founders of the small farming community; a young Etzioni would attend co-op meetings with his father, where members would debate how cooperative they needed to be – a question, he writes, that was never settled.
“It was as if I were growing up in a high school of communitarian theory and practice,” wrote Etzioni.
He also discovered the limits of that practice after a year as a teen on Kibbutz Tel Joseph. He found the kibbutz “excessively communal,” with little tolerance for individuality or privacy. Communitarianism itself would often be attacked on the same grounds: Etzioni would later have a fierce antagonist in the American Civil Liberties Union, which felt some of his calls for limiting privacy and suspending individual rights in the name of the common good went too far.
Etzioni wrote movingly about watching friends die in the fighting for Israel’s independence. Although he never wavered in feeling the war was justified, he lamented that the Jews and Arabs might have avoided the bloodshed had they agreed to the two-state partition that, in 2003, he still felt was inevitable. Nor did he regret Israel’s founding: “The Jewish people require a homeland to protect them not merely from physical annihilation, but also from cultural devastation,” he wrote in 1999.
But perhaps the most fascinating influence on Etzioni’s thinking was the year he spent in a Jerusalem institute set up by Martin Buber, the Vienna-born social philosopher. The formidable faculty included Gershom Scholem on Kabbalah, Yeshayahu Leibowitz on biology and Nechama Leibowitz on Bible.
Etzioni imbibed Buber’s ideas about “I and Thou” relationships – the “unending struggle between the forces that pushed us to relate to other human beings as objects, as Its, rather than as fellow humans, as Thous.”
Etzioni would call this “moral dialogue,” as in his definition of democracy: “[O]ur conception of right and wrong are encountered through moral dialogues that are open and inclusive. It is a persuasive morality, not a coercive one.”
Etzioni’s memoir and his obituaries recall a more hopeful political climate, when right and left could briefly imagine common ground around the common good. They also recall a different Israel, before it largely embraced the free-market economics of the West and let go of many of its communitarian values.
In 2013 Etzioni wrote about his own seeming irrelevance – he called it his “gradual loss of a megaphone” — after his brief flurry of influence. He had no regrets, nor loss of confidence: “Until I am shown that my predictions or prescriptions are ill-founded, or not of service, I will try to get out what must be said. I’ll keep pulling at the oars, however small my boat, however big or choppy the sea.”
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The post The Israeli origins of Amitai Etzioni’s big ideas about community appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America
On the National Mall Sunday, Christian worship music boomed from giant speakers as “Adonai” and other names of God flashed across jumbo screens behind a praise band. Pastors invoked America’s biblical destiny. Sadie Robertson, the Christian social media personality and granddaughter of Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson, preached from both the Old and New Testaments.
And then Rabbi Meir Soloveichik — the lone Jewish speaker at the planned nine-hour “Rededicate 250” rally called by President Donald Trump, billed as a national “jubilee of prayer, praise and thanksgiving” — stepped to the podium and began talking about Irving Berlin.
Soloveichik, 48, a scion of one of modern Orthodoxy’s most revered rabbinic families and a member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, used his remarks to offer a Jewish case for American exceptionalism, a contrast to the explicitly Christian vision of the nation’s founding that defined the day.
Recalling how Berlin wrote “God Bless America” as fascism spread across Europe and antisemitism consumed the continent, Soloveichik described the song as both a patriotic anthem and a prayer of gratitude from a Jewish immigrant who found refuge in the United States. The hymn, he said, represented “a plaintive prayer to God that America continue to be blessed.”
The four-minute speech fit squarely within Soloveichik’s broader worldview. A senior scholar at the conservative Tikvah Fund and rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, he has long argued that America’s civic ideals are aligned with traditional Judaism and biblical morality. His 2024 book, Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship, examines Jewish political leadership through the lens of faith and moral responsibility.
For Soloveichik, the connection between Judaism and American identity culminated in the Second World War. He noted that “God Bless America” was first broadcast publicly the day after Kristallnacht, when Nazis destroyed Jewish homes and synagogues across Germany. “At the very moment when darkness deepened,” Soloveichik said, “America raised its voice united in the song that Irving Berlin wrote.”
He added that “in the years that followed 1938, the prayer that is ‘God Bless America’ was carried by American soldiers who defeated evil, liberating Europe and the world.”
Then came the line that drew some of the loudest applause of his remarks: “It is a reminder, as hatred of Jews makes itself manifest again, that antisemitism is utterly un-American.”
Separation of church and state
The moment captured the complicated role Jews increasingly occupy within the Trump-era religious right: embraced as part of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, even as critics warn that the broader movement surrounding events like Rededicate 250 blurs the line between religious pluralism and Christian nationalism.
Rachel Laser, the Jewish CEO of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, denounced the rally before the event. “If President Trump and his allies truly cared about America’s legacy of religious freedom, they would be celebrating church-state separation as the unique American invention that has allowed religious diversity to flourish in our country,” she said in a statement. “Instead, they continue to threaten this foundational principle by advancing a Christian Nationalist crusade to impose one narrow version of Christianity on all Americans.”
Sunday’s event — part revival meeting, part patriotic pageant — was the centerpiece of the Trump administration’s religious programming tied to this year’s 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson were slated to appear alongside evangelical pastors, worship leaders and conservative Christian influencers. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance were scheduled to address the crowd by video, while Trump himself spent the weekend golfing after returning from an overseas trip to China.
“This is a recognition of the deeply embedded history and religious and moral tradition of the country,” Johnson said Sunday on Fox News, dismissing criticism that the rally blurred the separation of church and state. Those objecting to the event, he added, “want to erase the history of America.”
No Muslim speakers appeared on the lineup. Organizers promoted Trump’s declaration of a national “Shabbat 250” observance the day prior as evidence of interfaith inclusion.
One of the Sunday event’s chief promoters, Trump spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White-Cain, had reassured supporters beforehand that the gathering would celebrate America’s Christian foundations without “praying to all these different Gods.”
Soloveichik did not address those tensions. Instead, he closed by returning to the image of America as a nation uniquely capable, in his telling, of transforming a Jewish refugee into the composer of one of the country’s most enduring patriotic hymns.
“To sing this song,” he said, “is to be reminded that America’s story is unique.”
“GOD BLESS AMERICA IS NOT JUST A SONG. IT’S A PRAYER.” 🇺🇸🙏
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik delivers a powerful reminder that America’s love of liberty has always been tied to faith — tracing its story and why anti-Semitism is fundamentally un-American. pic.twitter.com/aKMg42nS2I
— Real America’s Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) May 17, 2026
The post At Trump’s Christian revival on the National Mall, one rabbi made a Jewish case for America appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel to Establish Defense Offices in Former UNRWA Compound
A man handles fallen cables at the Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as the headquarters is dismantled by Israeli forces, in East Jerusalem, January 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Israel’s cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to build a defense compound on the site of the recently demolished premises of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in East Jerusalem.
Israel in January demolished structures inside the UN Palestinian refugee agency’s East Jerusalem compound after seizing the site last year, in an act condemned by the agency as a violation of international law.
In a joint statement, the Defense Ministry and Jerusalem Municipality said the new compound would include the establishment of a military museum, a recruitment office and a defense minister’s office.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called the decision one of “sovereignty, Zionism, and security.”
UNRWA, which Israeli authorities accuse of bias, had not used the building since the start of last year after Israel ordered it to vacate all its premises and cease its operations.
A UNRWA spokesperson declined to comment on the Israeli plan.
The agency operates in East Jerusalem, which the U.N. and most countries consider territory occupied by Israel as it was captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel considers all Jerusalem to be its indivisible capital.
UNRWA also operates in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East, providing schooling, healthcare, social services and shelter to millions of Palestinians.
“There is nothing more symbolic or justified than establishing the new IDF recruitment office and defense establishment institutions precisely on the ruins of the former UNRWA compound — an organization whose employees took part in the massacres, murders, and atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7,” Katz said.
Israel has alleged that some UNRWA staff were members of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and took part in the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 Israelis and led to Israel’s war against Hamas.
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Palestinian Leader’s Son Wins Role in Abbas’ Party, Official Says
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, accompanied by his son Yasser, leaves a hospital in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, May 28, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
The millionaire businessman son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has won a steering role in his father’s political party Fatah, a party official said on Sunday, as a succession fight looms for control of the embattled Palestinian Authority (PA).
Yasser Abbas won a seat in elections for the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body, at its first general conference in almost a decade. Mahmoud Abbas, 90, will remain chairman, it decided.
The PA was set up as an interim administration under the 1990s Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group still internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people. The powerful Fatah party dominates both the PA and the PLO.
Abbas’ son’s foray into politics has fueled speculation that the president may be seeking to position Yasser, 64, to succeed him as head of Fatah.
That has drawn criticism from some Fatah officials, who say Yasser would be unable to unify Palestinians or help them chart a new political future after years without national elections or tangible steps toward statehood.
In the more than two decades since Mahmoud Abbas was elected to succeed Fatah founder Yasser Arafat, Palestinians have come to view the PA as ineffective and corrupt, something denied by Abbas, who has ruled by decree since his mandate expired in 2009.
In 2007, Abbas’ Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip were overpowered by Hamas militants who seized control of the enclave, a year after Hamas swept the Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Peace talks with Israel meant to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem collapsed in 2014, with expanding Israeli settlements since carving up areas slated for Palestinian statehood. The PA is also grappling with a financial crisis.
Yasser Abbas, who has never held an official role within Fatah or the PA, runs tobacco and contracting firms in the parts of the West Bank where the PA exercises limited self rule. Critics have long alleged that he and his brother Tarek have used public funds to help their businesses, allegations both men reject.
Among others to have won seats on the Central Committee are Majed Faraj, head of the General Intelligence Agency, and former militant group leader Zakaria Zubeidi, released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner-hostage exchange as part of a 2025 Gaza ceasefire.