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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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Israel’s opposition has the numbers to defeat Netanyahu. Will it let him survive anyway?
According to exit polls, Israel’s opposition appears to have achieved something remarkable: a parliamentary majority of up to 70 seats, including the Arab parties, over Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies. In almost any other parliamentary democracy, such a result would be understood as a decisive victory for the forces seeking a change of government. Yet Israel may be heading toward the extraordinary spectacle of an opposition that wins a commanding majority and nevertheless allows the incumbent to remain in power.
The reason is a political taboo: several opposition leaders have promised not to form a government dependent on the support of Arab parties, even though virtually every plausible path to replacing Netanyahu requires precisely that.
And if the exit polls are right, those Arab parties have almost doubled their Knesset representation, to perhaps 18 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. This happened because of a huge increase in voter turnout among the 20 percent of Israelis who are Arabs.
In past elections, almost half the Arabs stayed home on election day, compared to participation levels of around 80 percent among Jews. The surge appears to have been driven by despair over the perceived hostility of the Netanyahu government, and anger over ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has displayed inaction and indifference about the lawlessness that bedevils the Arab sector.
The two Arab parties – Ra’am and the United Arab List – have already offered to back Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief who heads the largest opposition party, Yashar.
This landscape presents the wider opposition with a real dilemma. Its leaders may end up breaking their most important promise to voters — to remove Netanyahu from office — in order to honor a secondary promise not to form a governing coalition with Arab parties and depend on the safety net they offer. That promise should have been no more than a white lie to reassure wavering Jewish voters who in the past supported the right. Sticking to it would be a spectacular case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
In his speech to supporters after polls closed Tuesday, Eisenkot promised to use the results to set up a government. “The Israeli public voted to end Netanyahu’s rule as the prime minister of Israel,” he said. “It’s my personal duty to do everything to bring about the will of the people.”
If Eisenkot and the rest of the opposition now show resolve, a minority government supported from outside by Arab lawmakers is one possibility. A coalition that includes at least Ra’am, the pragmatic Islamist party that participated in Israel’s 2021 governing coalition, is another. Defections from the right could also help assemble a government. These also should be considered, as long as those joining it are not given the power to block essential reforms or perpetuate the policies that voters sought to reject.
None of the options are clean and simple. But the notion that Arab parliamentary support renders a government illegitimate is neither a democratic principle nor a reflection of Israel’s political history.
Indeed, a look at that history reveals something that Netanyahu’s long dominance has helped obscure. Since the political upheaval of 1977, Likud victories have generally depended on ultra-Orthodox support, while victories by the non-Likud camp have repeatedly depended on Arab votes.
In 1984, Shimon Peres managed to force a parliamentary tie with the help of six seats held by Arab parties. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin’s victory yielded a majority of 61 seats only when five Arab lawmakers were counted. In 1999, Ehud Barak won a landslide in the direct election for prime minister, but his reliable parliamentary bloc numbered only 60 seats, including 10 Arab lawmakers. The addition of right wing parties enabled him to govern.
The pattern continued in 2006, when Kadima’s victory was widely perceived as decisive, even though its assured parliamentary bloc numbered just 60 seats without additional Arab support. And in 2021, Yair Lapid’s success in assembling a government that ended Netanyahu’s 12 consecutive years in power depended on a parliamentary alignment of 61 lawmakers opposed to Netanyahu, including 10 Arab representatives.
With the notable exception of Ra’am in 2021, Arab parties generally did not become formal coalition partners. Peres formed a national unity government with Likud – and Rabin, his majority secured via the Arab parties, formally brought in the religious party Shas. In all these cases the Arabs’ parliamentary support for the opposition helped prevent Likud from forming a government and made alternative coalitions possible. In some cases, Arab lawmakers then supported the government from outside, while politicians from the traditional right-wing camp eventually crossed political lines to join the governing arrangement.
Against that historical background, the 2026 result should be understood as an extraordinary opportunity for Israel’s liberal and anti-Netanyahu forces. The central question is whether their leaders will recognize it or miss the opportunity.
Netanyahu remains the prime minister under whose watch the catastrophe of Oct. 7 occurred. His government has resisted the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the attack. His coalition has advanced measures widely criticized as threats to democratic institutions, while presiding over an increasingly polarized society.
Another term for Netanyahu and his present allies could deepen Israel’s institutional deterioration, social divisions and strategic vulnerability. For critics who believe the country is already approaching a dangerous democratic and societal crossroads, the stakes are difficult to overstate.
There is also a striking inconsistency in the argument that relying on Arab support is somehow beyond the bounds of legitimate politics.
Netanyahu himself explored the possibility of forming a government with the support of Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, in 2021. That possibility collapsed largely because Bezalel Smotrich, now one of Netanyahu’s most prominent far-right partners, refused to accept it.
The time has come for Israel to show some appreciation for its Arab citizens, who constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population. They work, study, pay taxes and participate in the country’s civic and economic life. They vote in national elections and elect representatives to the Knesset. There is no coherent democratic justification for treating those representatives’ mandates as inherently less legitimate than those of Jewish lawmakers.
To be sure, Arab political parties hold positions, particularly on the Palestinian question, that many Jewish Israelis find deeply objectionable. Some of those disagreements are profound, and coalition negotiations involving Arab parties inevitably raise difficult questions about national identity, security and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But ultra-Orthodox parties also hold positions that many secular Israelis regard as fundamentally incompatible with their vision of the country, including on religious authority, military service and civil liberties. Far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition have promoted policies that critics see as far more damaging to democratic norms than anything the Arabs might do.
There will undoubtedly be pressure for a national unity government, possibly from Washington. President Donald Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu, seems likely to pressure Eisenkot to agree. The machinations might include restarting the war with Iran. Eisenkot should resist it all.
Israel’s declaration of independence promised equality. Israel’s opposition has a golden opportunity to keep that promise.
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A watch party without Netanyahu? Supporters tried to project cheer
(JTA) — JERUSALEM — Forty-five minutes after Israeli channels released their first exit polls, a silence had washed over the Likud election watch party held at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem.
Supporters had waited in anticipation for the exit polls to appear on the screen. When Channel 14 — which had a broadcast desk stationed in the corner of the room — first showed its poll, a cheer circulated through those in attendance. But as everyone looked down at their phones to track the results from the other channels, the mood became increasingly subdued.
Supporters hoping for a strong Netanyahu victory were disappointed by polls showing that his Likud party did not have enough support to form a governing coalition.
They had hoped to celebrate the moment with Netanyahu, who, in the end, did not show up.
The initial exit polls, released at 10 p.m. as polling stations closed, showed Likud as the largest party. However, neither it nor its committed coalition partners had gained enough seats for a parliamentary majority that would allow it to form the next government. Channel 12 had Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, which at its height had 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset, dropping to 50, with the opposition parties at 53 across the network projections.
The Central Elections Committee hopes to finish counting the votes by Thursday. By law, the official results have to be published by Nov. 4.
The historic turnout in the election, billed by many as the most consequential in Israel’s history, stood in stark contrast to the empty convention center hall. It appeared that only the most dedicated of Bibi fans had decided to make the trip to the watch party. Three hardcore supporters held up a blue and white Likud flag while chanting “Malach Bibi,” meaning “King Bibi,” with a crowd of journalists pushing past each other to get footage.
Every two minutes, the Likud jingle echoed through the hall on a loop, and a string of AI-generated Likud election videos played on the screen. The lectern sat empty, and Netanyahu had not issued a statement in the wake of the first results. Netanyahu, along with Likud MKs, had been expected to address supporters in the hall had there been a clearer mandate; instead, journalists gathered, snacking on refreshments while waiting for more Likud supporters to show up.
Yossi Levi, 71, a pensioner from Eilat, made the long drive to Jerusalem to show his support. He said that for his entire tenure as prime minister, Netanyahu has had to fight the 120 members of the Knesset for his survival, and that he “thankfully” had so far always come out on top.
Levi recalled his time working on the Likud security team when Netanyahu first began his career and paused the interview to shake hands with Netanyahu’s head of security before returning to his story. Whether or not Netanyahu was able to form a coalition, he said, his support would remain unwavering.
That appeared to describe the crowd on Tuesday night: those who had stood by Netanyahu as he ascended to the heights of Israeli electoral power, and who were standing by him now, as his bloc appeared to shed 18 seats in the Knesset.
Boaz, who lives in the city center of Jerusalem, described the mood as not exactly disappointment “but something in the middle,” as the results did not yet indicate a clear winner or loser and adding that it was now time for coalition politics to begin.
Holding a blue-and-white Likud flag and milling about the lobby alone, he did not project confidence but insisted that he would stay at the event in case any of the party’s parliamentary members decided to show up.
With few audience members in attendance, the event center gave the appearance of something of a crashed party. By 11 p.m. Jerusalem time, the hall had begun to empty, with both supporters and those there to cover the event deciding to leave the scene.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jewish treasures stolen by Nazis 88 years ago come home, thanks to an Arizona synagogue
(JTA) — What could one purchase with boxes of Crisco, bags of coffee and cartons of cigarettes in chaotic postwar Germany?
For Moishe Saksenhaus, a young Holocaust survivor from Belarus, the answer was: two Jewish ritual textiles, hundreds of years old.
The seller said he’d stolen them himself from a burning Berlin synagogue on Nov. 9, 1938 — the November Pogrom, commonly called Kristallnacht.
Moishe brought those two items — a Torah wimple, or sash, and a parochet, or Torah ark curtain — with him to America, taking them out of their suitcase only on special occasions. After Moishe’s death in 1993, his family donated them to his synagogue, Temple Chai in Phoenix, Arizona. They remained on display there until the building was deconsecrated in 2026. The congregation moved to a new location in nearby Scottsdale this spring.
Last week, nearly 88 years after Kristallnacht the two items made their way back to Berlin.
In a ceremony at the site of the New Synagogue Berlin Foundation-Centrum Judaicum museum and archive, on Oranienburger Strasse, Associate Rabbi Bonnie Koppell of Temple Chai handed them over to Berlin Jewish Community president Gideon Joffe.
“There were people who felt individually attached to the items” in Phoenix, Koppell told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone interview before her trip. “But ultimately, I think everyone realized that they belonged in their home. If the people from whom they were stolen wanted them back, that was where they belong.”
The handover took place Oct. 22 in the presence of Joffe, Rabbi Gesa Ederberg, historian Rabbi Andreas Nachama, members of the Berlin community and 29 visitors from Arizona.
“It’s been a very moving and touching journey, for both our guests from the United States and for these historical items,” said Nickolai Todorov, a Berlin Jew who accompanied the U.S. visitors as a tour guide. “It was just a special thing to be an eyewitness to.”
Rabbi Bonnie Koppell, left, and Sandy Koppell examine the Torah curtain (parochet) and Torah wimple during the handover ceremony at the New Synagogue Berlin–Centrum Judaicum, Oct. 22, 2026. (Nicolai Froundjian)
The large parochet is embroidered with the text of the Kiddush, the Jewish blessing over wine, in versions for the Sabbath and holidays. Along the lower edge of the text is what might be the signature of the artist, in Hebrew: “This handiwork of mine is not to bring me honor, rather to bring merit for the multitudes in accord [with the biblical verse] ‘And Yitzchak went out to pray at the field’ — Yitzchak Itzik ben C’harad Yehuda Leib z“l [of blessed memory] from Rivnitz,” a town in Moldova whose small Jewish community dated back to at least 1800.
The highly decorated wimple, which would have been used to bind a Torah scroll, bears a blessing for a child named Yitzchak “Itzik” ben Kavod Ha-rav Gistori, likely embroidered in honor of his brit milah, or ritual circumcision.
A spokesperson for the Berlin Jewish community, an umbrella for several congregations of various denominations, told JTA in an email that its experts had been unable to confirm which pre-World War II synagogue the Torah curtain came from, but that it would be added to the Centrum Judaicum collection. There are plans to display the wimple at the community center on the site of the former Fasanenstrasse synagogue.
Sol Saksenhaus, 72, a retired special-ed teacher, is one of those Arizona congregants who felt sad to let the objects go. It was his father who had bought them, protected and carried them across the ocean to his new home in America. Sol and his brother had grown up with these objects, which had taken on an aura of sacredness.
But they are “being given back as a sign of love from our community, to light them up again,” he told JTA in a telephone interview from Phoenix. “I can live with that, and I know my parents in heaven can live with that, too.”
Sol’s parents, Moishe and Rosa Saksenhaus, had escaped the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewers, and joined with partisans to commit acts of sabotage against the Germans. The Soviets eventually deported them to Siberia, where their first child died. After the war, Moishe and Rosa made their way back west, following American army lines and ending up in a Displaced Persons camp in the town of Feldafing, Germany.
Moishe, street-smart and multilingual, got a job translating for the U.S. military in Traunstein, Sol related. His father told him he became involved with black market activities, such as collecting British Army bicycles and having them sent to Palestine.
“My dad may have had a little bit of a reputation as one of the go-to guys, that if you wanted something, my dad knew how to get it,” Sol said.
Which may be why this particular German man approached him one day.
“He said he was a medical doctor. He kept approaching my dad with pictures” of the Jewish objects, Sol recounted. His father recalled the man’s name as “Ahgar.” He’d complained about conditions under American occupation: “’We don’t get anything; we’re on limited rations,’” the man told Sol’s father. “My dad said he was arrogant, and that he wanted the stuff he used to have from before.”
“He threatened my dad: He says, ‘I was part of the patrol that went into the temple’” on Fasanenstrasse in Berlin. He claimed to have taken the two items during the raid, and threatened to destroy them if Moishe did not procure Crisco, coffee, flour, cigarettes and cigars.
“My dad pretty much told him to ‘get the f–k away. I can’t look at you.’ But the guy was persistent. And the trade happened.”
Moishe Saksenhaus brought the objects to the U.S. when he and Rosa emigrated. “He cherished them, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with them,” said Sol. On rare occasions his father would show them to the family. “When that thing came out, it was like opening the holy ark… I kind of like froze, and just watched the emotions” on the family’s faces.
Sol’s father died in late 1993. There was a rise in Holocaust denial at the same time, Sol recalled; Deborah Lipstadt’s book, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” was published that June. It was also the year that Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List” came out, sparking new interest in the Holocaust and its legacy. His mother and aunt decided to donate the tapestry and wimple to Temple Chai, to help with Holocaust education. Before handing the tapestry over to Rabbi William Berk, then the temple’s spiritual leader, Rosa Saksenhaus tore the swastika off an old tag on the tapestry. “This is not going into a temple like this,” she told her son.
The centuries-old Jewish ritual textiles, stolen during Kristallnacht in 1938 and traded after the war to a survivor for coffee and tobacco, are returned to the Berlin Jewish community during a ceremony at the New Synagogue Berlin–Centrum Judaicum, Oct. 22, 2026. (Nicolai Freundjian)
Sol recalled that Berk sent the items to an expert at the University of California in Los Angeles, who determined they were from the 16th century. Berk, who moved to Israel with his family in 2007 after more than two decades with the congregation, could not be reached for comment.
And so the tapestry remained hanging on the synagogue’s north wall. Rosa died in 1999. In 2006, Bonnie Koppell was installed as associate rabbi. In 2022, Rabbi Emily Segal took on the role of senior rabbi.
Two years ago, Sol brought a friend to see the wimple and the tapestry.
“I had seen these objects in our sanctuary for 30 years, knowing only that they had been ‘rescued’ during Kristallnacht,” recalled Joan Neer, assistant to Koppell, who heard Sol’s story for the first time that day. “In reality they were brutally taken,” she said.
The encounter “ignited my curiosity and set me on a journey to uncover their story,” Neer told JTA in an email. The more she learned, the more she became convinced: “It would be great if we could return them to the Jewish community in Berlin,” she wrote to Koppell and synagogue president Debbie Berkowitz.
“What began as a simple conversation in my office has become a journey of discovery, connection, and restoration,” she said.
Once the Berlin community said yes, the task of packing and transporting the objects began. The large tapestry was wrapped in artisanal paper and shipped.
“We had an AirTag on it, so we watched it sitting in the Cologne airport,” said Koppell. “And then it got moved to the customs building.”
“Then we got word that they wanted €5,000 [$5,567] in [customs] tax. And that if we didn’t pay it, they were sending it back in five days.”
The German Jewish community stepped in and used its tax-exempt status to get the package released, she said, adding that she carried the wimple in her hand luggage.
“We have come to remember, to learn and to return something that has traveled a very long road,” she told the Berlin Jewish community on Oct. 22. “This time, they are going home.”
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