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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 three profound Jewish lessons of Mamdani’s astonishing victory
Among pollsters familiar with the American Jewish vote, the events of Nov. 4, 2025 in New York City will go down as Opposite Day.
A CNN exit poll showed that Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor-elect, received just about 30% of the Jewish vote, while his opponents, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, together received a total of 70%. Those numbers are effectively the inverse of the Jewish vote in decades of national elections, which have usually seen the Democratic candidate getting between 70% and 80% of the Jewish vote.
Now, that stark divide is one that Jews, and Mamdani, will have to learn to live with.
For the majority of Jews who opposed Mamdani, there are a few primary lessons.
First and foremost: If you want people to care about your most important issues, you first have to address their most important issues.
Pro-Palestinian positions may have fueled Mamdani’s politics and established his early volunteer base, but they didn’t win him the election. The New Yorkers who voted for him “overwhelmingly” said cost of living is their top issue, reported CNN.
For most New Yorkers who hit the polls, questions about Mamdani’s attitude toward Israel Israel — and even concerns about antisemitism — paled in importance beside affordability.
Yet one tone-deaf Jewish leader after another pleaded with voters to reject Mamdani because of his highly critical attitude toward Israel. That stance, they said, could lead to attacks on Jewish New Yorkers.
Exactly why should economically besieged New Yorkers care?
Second, I suspect we will find out that a good portion of the Jewish voters who did opt for Mamdani did so not despite his stance on Israel, but because of it.
Most American Jews say Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians. Some 68% are unhappy with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Most can’t vote against Netanyahu, but they can vote for Mamdani, or their local equivalent.
The Jewish vote for Mamdani was a rebuke to the mainstream Jewish leadership that organized against the mayor-elect. That leadership didn’t speak for these Jews. Mamdani did.
It’s also surely true that some portion of Jewish Mamdani supporters voted for him while opposing his views and statements about Israel — what my fellow Forward columnist Jay Michaelson called the “No-Yes option”. These Jewish voters saw Mamdani, in the last months of his campaign, reach out to Jewish leaders, political opponents, business interests and others as a sign that he was open to compromise and bridge-building.
And third: While many in the Jewish community had good reasons to oppose Mamdani, they should be grateful for those Jews who supported him. There is a certain blessing in the fact that center-left Jewish leaders like outgoing Comptroller Brad Lander and former New York City mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger got behind Mamdani — because under his administration they will now be in or near the room where it happens.
These leaders, who have been slammed by some as traitors, sell-outs and self-haters for supporting Mamdani, now have the opportunity to help him make good on his promise to protect and serve Jewish New Yorkers.
Mamdani built reassurance on that front into his victory speech Tuesday night.
“We will build a city hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism,” he said, before pivoting to decry the Islamophobia he faced in the campaign.
But Mamdani himself has much to learn, too.
Tomorrow, when the party is over and the 34-year-old mayor-elect begins meeting with his transition team,what lessons should he draw from the Jewish vote’s split?
Above all, that “being overly controversial on Israel is not in his self-interest,” said Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College in Pasadena, Calif. “He needs to bring people together. He needs to focus laser-like on running the city and his affordability agenda.”
It’s one thing to be critical of Netanyahu, and another to say, as Mamdani has, that he would boycott the joint research center between Cornell University and Israel’s Technion based on New York City’s Roosevelt Island. He should stick to the former.
And as he works to fulfill his promise to make New York more affordable, Mamdani must also keep his promise to Jewish New Yorkers to keep them safe.
There will be special, if unfair, scrutiny of how this Muslim mayor relates to his Jewish citizens, and Mamdani could prove the fearmongers to be, well, fearmongering.
He must show he can rein things in, said Dreier, who served as deputy mayor of Boston in the 1980s under Ray Flynn. Flynn was feared by the business elite but left office with a 74% approval rating. “We ran a very progressive campaign,” Dreier said, “and then we had to figure out what we were going to give in, and where we could hold the line.”
And it’s not just New Yorkers and New York Jews who will be watching. Mamdani’s religion and views on Israel have made it inevitable that American Jews across the country will be either on board, or on edge.
Will Mamdani work to flip the Jewish voter exit poll numbers for his next race back to the familiar 70/30? That would seem to be the move for a young politician with a promising career ahead of him, and with a Jewish constituency that is predisposed to vote for the Democrat.
But say he leans into his radical roots and betrays his promises? That would leave a lot of Jews feeling politically homeless — at a time when the Republicans are opening the doors to explicitly antisemitic far-right figures like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens. The question of whether Jews still fit, politically, in the United States — and if so, where — is one that Mamdani will have a crucial role in answering.
“My rabbi has been on the job for three months and just gave a sermon about Mamdani,” Dreier said. “I mean, why the hell would a rabbi here in Pasadena care about who’s the mayor of New York?”
The post The three profound Jewish lessons of Mamdani’s astonishing victory appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani’s victory divides Jews one more way: Whether to say congratulations
Jewish leaders reacted with a mix of chill, optimism and resolve after state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel, coasted to victory in New York City’s mayoral election.
Many of Mamdani’s biggest critics commented on his victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But not all of them were willing to congratulate Mamdani, whose politics have exposed a deep rift in the Jewish community over Israel and antisemitism.
Mamdani’s refusal to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada,” his description of Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide and his admission that he would not attend the city’s annual Israel Day parade infuriated many of the city’s Jews, though others — especially younger Jewish voters — understood or appreciated what they saw as a principled stand.
Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, often emphasized that foreign policy was a secondary concern, but he was dogged throughout the campaign by remarks he made about Israel.
Exit polls by CNN showed 60% of the city’s Jewish voters backing Cuomo, who ran as an independent following Mamdani’s victory in the June Democratic primary.
Among the detractors declining to wish the mayor-elect well was Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who wrote on X that in light of Mamdani’s “long, disturbing record on issues of deep concern to the Jewish community, we will approach the next four years with resolve.”
A joint statement from several establishment New York Jewish institutions, including the city’s Jewish Federation and Board of Rabbis, also declined to congratulate Mamdani, who is the city’s first-ever Muslim mayor-elect.
“New Yorkers have spoken, electing Zohran Mamdani as the next Mayor of New York City,” the statement, which was also signed by the American Jewish Committee, Jewish Community Relations Council and ADL, in part read. “We recognize that voters are animated by a range of issues, but we cannot ignore that the Mayor-elect holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community’s deepest convictions and most cherished values.”
The groups added that they would work with “all levels of government” to ensure the safety of the city’s Jewish community.
Other Mamdani opponents took a friendlier tack.
Pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman, who had predicted a Cuomo win earlier in the day, appeared to extend an olive branch. After the election was called for Mamdani, Ackman wrote, “@zohranmamdani congrats on the win. Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
The Democratic Majority for Israel, a national organization, congratulated Mamdani but added, “We urge him to prioritize fulfilling his campaign promises to bring down costs, not foreign policy issues that are unrelated to the everyday lives of most New Yorkers.”
One pattern emerging from the reaction, particularly among Cuomo supporters, was to blame Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa as a spoiler who stayed in the race after even incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out. Cuomo supporters at his Ziegfeld Ballroom watch party chanted, “Shame on Sliwa.” But Sliwa’s votes, even if Cuomo had received all of them, would likely not have been enough to overcome Mamdani’s lead.
New York City controller Brad Lander, who campaigned for Mamdani and helped build bridges to parts of the Jewish community, celebrated at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre with the mayor-elect wearing a message to Cuomo on his T-shirt, “Good F—ing Riddance.”
The post Mamdani’s victory divides Jews one more way: Whether to say congratulations appeared first on The Forward.
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In a first, a ballot initiative to divest from Israel has won at the ballot box in Boston suburb
(JTA) — A municipal ballot proposal to divest from Israel went before a popular vote for the first time on Tuesday — and pulled off a decisive victory.
Question 3 won more than 55% of the vote in unofficial election results in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, as the Israel-divestment movement saw the elevation of its most well-known proponent in politics — Zohran Mamdani — to mayor of New York City.
Local pro-Palestinian activists claimed victory, with Somerville for Palestine — the group that gathered the signatures required to put the non-binding resolution on the ballot — posting a celebratory Instagram video alongside the Boston chapter of anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
However, as they were celebrating, the mayoral candidate best poised to enact the proposal in Somerville conceded his race to a rival who signaled he was far less likely to do so. Willie Burnley Jr., a democratic socialist who had endorsed Question 3, lost to fellow at-large city council member Jake Wilson, who did not.
A handful of other American cities have previously adopted Israel divestment proposals brought by their city councils. One of those is Portland, Maine, whose mayor publicly regretted backing divestment after hearing from local Jewish groups. An attempt last year to place a similar referendum on a Pittsburgh ballot failed after legal challenges to the signatures. Similar attempts to challenge the Somerville measure failed.
Home to Tufts University and several Jewish congregations, the four-square-mile Somerville has a population of around 82,000. Residents voted on whether its mayor should “engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine.” The local teachers union endorsed the measure.
Jewish groups opposed the measure, including the newly formed group Somerville United Against Discrimination, which ran TV ads against it. Brian Sokol, a Jewish IT manager and writer based in Somerville, implored his neighbors on Facebook to reject the measure — citing friends of his who were killed by a Hamas suicide bomber in Israel in 1996.
“I am not equating those in Somerville urging a Yes vote with violent extremists or terrorists,” he wrote. “But passing this ballot measure would unintentionally land Somerville on the wrong side of the deeper ideological rift.”
On the other side, a group of 84 local pro-Palestinian Jews endorsed the measure in an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper. Celebrating the recent ceasefire in Israel and Gaza but saying that Israel has continued to commit atrocities in the region, the authors pointed to local contracts with two companies, Hewlett-Packard and Lockheed Martin, that total over $2 million.
Somerville became a flashpoint in the fight over campus pro-Palestinian activism earlier this year when a Tufts graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was seized by ICE agents and put into deportation proceedings for writing an op-ed in the student paper urging divestment from Israel. A judge freed Öztürk while her deportation case remains ongoing.
The post In a first, a ballot initiative to divest from Israel has won at the ballot box in Boston suburb appeared first on The Forward.