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The Real Threat Is Within: What a New Survey Reveals About Jewish Communal Life
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
American Jews are facing a storm of external pressures. The past two years have brought a surge in antisemitism; ugly and sometimes violent protests on campuses; hostile city streets; and, abroad, the horrifying October 7 Hamas attack and the brief but intense Iran–Israel war.
For most observers, it would seem obvious that these external threats are the greatest source of stress for Jewish communal leaders and professionals.
After all, these are the people tasked with defending, educating, and sustaining Jewish life in turbulent times. But a striking new report tells a different story — one that should give the Jewish community, and anyone who cares about civic health, pause.
The Hope Study, released this month by M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, surveyed nearly 950 Jewish professionals across North America and flips traditional thinking on its head.
The report’s findings are sobering. Fewer than one in four respondents reported that they “often” feel hopeful about the future of the Jewish people (24%), a stark contrast with 82% in the general US population.
For the very individuals whose mission is to build that future and who work on the front lines of the Jewish communal world, hope is now the exception rather than the norm.
The most surprising result, however, is what these professionals say is sapping their hope. It isn’t antisemitism. It isn’t the war in Gaza. It isn’t rising security costs or declining synagogue membership.
The single most cited factor is internal communal division — the tensions, mistrust, and open conflict that have erupted within Jewish organizations themselves. As one respondent put it, we are “watching our community tear itself apart.”
This revelation fundamentally upends the common narrative.
For decades, Jewish life in America has been organized around the assumption that our gravest challenges come from outside forces: hostile governments, terrorist groups, bigots, or indifferent neighbors. The classic response has been to mobilize against those external enemies, rallying Jews of all backgrounds in a show of unity. But The Hope Study suggests that this framework no longer matches reality. The greater danger today may lie within our own splintered community.
A Fracture Beneath the Surface
The divides are most visible around Israel. The data show just how deep that fissure runs. A slim majority of Jewish communal professionals (55%) see their connection to Israel as a vital source of hope and meaning, but more than a quarter (26%) say Israel is not important to them at all — the highest rejection rate for any source of hope measured.
That rejection rate is staggering; it means that even within the ranks of Jewish institutions, there is no consensus on whether Israel matters. In staff meetings, classrooms, and boardrooms, this divide lurks beneath every conversation about programming or public messaging.
These tensions extend beyond geopolitics. Generational differences, ideological disputes, and conflicting visions of Jewish identity all play a role. Professionals describe being “caught between competing factions” and “unable to navigate constituency expectations.” This is not just about policy disagreements. It is about who gets to define what Jewish communal life is and whom it serves.
Leadership is supposed to guide communities through such conflicts, but here too the findings are troubling. Executives report higher levels of hope than staff (mean 2.94 vs. 2.77 on a 1–5 scale), a gap that creates a potential leadership blind spot. Many leaders simply don’t see how dire things feel to those on the ground. It is hard to solve a problem you don’t fully perceive.
The consequences are real. When staff feel unsupported or unheard, they burn out, withdraw, or leave the field entirely.
Roughly 10% of respondents fall into what the report calls the “Struggling” category — low hope, low energy, and little sense of connection — with a large share identifying as secular/cultural Jews. If they disappear, the community loses not only workers but perspectives that broaden and enrich Jewish life.
The gender gap is especially striking. Women comprise 78% of the sample and report significantly lower hope than men (mean 2.75 vs. 3.01). This suggests that women may be bearing the brunt of organizational problems and the emotional labor of managing conflict. Any honest reckoning must take this imbalance seriously.
Why This Matters Beyond the Jewish World
It would be easy to dismiss these findings as an internal HR problem, a narrow crisis of a single faith community. That would be a mistake. The dynamics revealed here mirror the challenges facing American civic life more broadly.
Across the country — in churches and schools, political parties and neighborhood associations — polarization has grown so intense that external threats now often feel less destabilizing than internal mistrust.
Sociologist Émile Durkheim warned more than a century ago that societies depend on shared moral bonds; what he called the “collective conscience.” When those bonds weaken, even well-intentioned groups can splinter into factions. The result is exactly what this survey documents: bitterness, exhaustion, and the slow erosion of purpose.
For the Jewish community, this erosion is particularly dangerous. Historically, Jewish organizations have been exemplars of civic engagement. Federations, synagogues, day schools, and service groups have taught generations how to work together across differences, how to give and receive mutual aid, and how to participate in democratic life. If those very institutions now falter, the ripple effects will be felt far beyond the Jewish world.
The broader American story is similar. When our institutions become arenas for infighting rather than vehicles for collective action, we lose the very mechanisms that allow us to face external challenges together. Whether it’s antisemitism, terrorism, or the fraying of our social fabric, no group can respond effectively when it is paralyzed by internal distrust.
A Call to Confront the Real Threat
In moments of crisis, it is natural to fix our gaze outward. And there is no question that the external threats facing the Jewish people are real and relentless. Rising antisemitism, hostile campuses, violent protests, and geopolitical dangers demand vigilance and strong, decisive action.
But The Hope Study makes clear that these external dangers are only half the story and perhaps not even the most urgent half. A community that cannot govern and organize itself cannot defend itself. Ignoring the fractures within Jewish communal life will not make them fade. If anything, outside pressures will magnify them, turning every external attack into another round of internal recriminations.
History shows us what happens when institutions become brittle. Communities that lack internal trust crack under stress. They grow weak, reactive, and paralyzed. The rifts revealed in this report are not mere personality conflicts or abstract debates; they are corrosive forces eating away at the very foundations of Jewish civic and religious life.
Repair will not come through platitudes or surface-level fixes. It will require courage from leaders and from the rank and file alike. Leaders must be willing to see clearly and speak plainly, to set real boundaries and articulate shared ideals. They must foster spaces where hard truths can be spoken openly, not suppressed. Belonging must be rebuilt not as a marketing slogan or membership drive, but as a lived experience of mutual responsibility and solidarity.
Jewish history offers countless examples of resilience in the face of external enemies. The challenge today is to summon that same resolve inward. If Jewish organizations cannot restore their own internal cohesion, they will be poorly equipped to defend against external hatred and even their strongest outward defenses will ultimately ring hollow. This is why so many Jewish students on college and university campuses have felt abandoned and alone since October 7.
The choice is stark. Either we confront the true threat — the one within — or we allow our institutions to fracture beyond repair. The future of Jewish communal life, and by extension the strength of our shared civic life, depends on which path we choose. The time for evasions has passed. The time to act is now.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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At long last, a TV show captures the experience of multi-racial Jewish families like mine
The new CBS television series Boston Blue has achieved what I long thought impossible — something close to an accurate portrayal of a multi-racial Jewish-American family.
The show, which quietly debuted last month as a spinoff of the hit series Blue Bloods, centers around the Silver family — a clan of police officers and elected officials helping to maintain safety and order across Beantown. They include siblings Lena, who is Black, Sarah, who is white, and Jonah, who is bi-racial.
“We’re just one big happy kinda confusing family,” Lena declares in the pilot episode, as she explains that her mother married Sarah’s father — with Jonah arriving shortly thereafter. And by establishing the Silver family tree so early on, Boston Blue softens the audience up for its real wild-card: The Silvers are all loudly, proudly and unapologetically Jewish.
Their family reminds me of my own. And I think the show got just about everything about our experience right.
In the pilot episode, Detective Danny Reagan (Blue Bloods veteran Donny Wahlberg) arrives in Boston to care for his injured son — who happens to be Jonah Silver’s partner — and is invited by family matriarch, District Attorney Mae Silver, to the type of “family dinner” made famous by Reagan’s own family on Blue Bloods.
Which is how Reagan unexpectedly finds himself at a Shabbat dinner.
When Mae married Sarah’s father — District Judge Ben Silver — she and Lena converted to Judaism, Reagan learns. Jonah was raised in the faith. But Judge Silver was killed a year earlier, leaving Mae’s father, Rev. Edwin Peters, as the de-factor paterfamilias — a Black pastor at one of Boston’s oldest Black churches, kippah-clad and leading a family of Jews as they light Shabbat candles and recite traditional prayers.
It might all seem a bit far-fetched. Unless you know my own family.
We have white Jews, Black pastors, Asian uncles, Latino ex-husbands and mixed-race Jewish twins — that would be my sister and I. Separated on both coasts, it’s been awhile since we all came together for Shabbat like the Silvers. But if we did, our gathering would look a lot like theirs — minus the mansion on Beacon Hill.
This is what makes Boston Blue so refreshing and unexpected. The Silvers’ Jewishness never feels confrontational or contrived.
There are close to 1 million “Jews-of-color” in the United States today, but Boston Blue accurately understands that the family would still be an enigma to most American viewers. But rather than dwell on this potential narrative hiccup, the show’s writers cannily deployed it as a narrative device instead. These are folks who understand they must often explain their unique family dynamics, but ultimately have nothing to prove. They are both confident and casual in their faith.
As a Jew whom many other Jews often fail to recognize as one of their own, I’ve too often felt I’m not allowed to just be Jewish. So it thrills me to see the Silvers so matter-of-fact and well-adjusted in their Judaism — even if it’s only onscreen.
Two years after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s subsequent war with Hamas in Gaza, I went into Boston Blue worried about how Israel, antisemitism, Zionism and anti-Zionism might unfold within the show. Owing to the burdens of identity politics and intersectionality, Jews of color are often tasked with bridge-building amid these fractious and conflicted arenas.
Would they be forced to do the same on TV?
Former Law and Order star Ari’el Stachel — whose Israeli father is of Yemenite heritage — speaks of this duty in his new one-man show Other, now playing in New York. Stachel’s parents are both Jewish. But owing to his darker skin, he possesses a fluency in the optics of ethnicity that often sees him forced to field questions about cross-cultural discourse — even when, like me, he so often wishes the askers would just leave him alone.
I think Stachel would be satisfied by Boston Blue, whose showrunners aptly decided to keep war and hate away from the Shabbat table. Rather than try to shoe-horn the current political climate into the narrative, they avoided it all together. I, for one, was relieved: it’s a gift to see a family like mine onscreen, just being together, without being forced to try and solve all our myriad cultural problems at the same time.
I’ve always been leery of the entire concept of “Jews of color”; I worry it can impede us from understanding that all Jews are equally Jewish. So I was nervous heading into Boston Blue. For so long, so many in Hollywood have gotten our stories wrong at best, and been downright offensive at worst. They’ve tokenized and politicized and fetishized our experiences, while failing to actually humanize families like the Silvers and my own. But Boston Blue got it right — and it’s a step, long overdue, in the right direction.
The post At long last, a TV show captures the experience of multi-racial Jewish families like mine appeared first on The Forward.
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Mamdani: Israel immigration event at NY synagogue misused ‘sacred space’
(JTA) — Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s team has responded to a protest targeting an event promoting migration to Israel at an Upper East Side synagogue on Wednesday night, suggesting that the event was an inappropriate use of a “sacred space.”
The protest was organized by a group called Palestinian Assembly for Liberation has drawn allegations of antisemitism from Jewish leaders in the city. During it, participants shouted phrases including “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF” as well as insults toward pro-Israel counter-protesters like “f—king Jewish pricks,” according to reports from the scene. Police separated the protesters and counter-protesters but did not halt the demonstration.
“The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani’s press secretary, Dora Pekec, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
She went on, “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Pekec did not offer further comments about whether or why Mamdani believed the event at Park East Synagogue, a prominent Orthodox congregation, violated international law.
The event was organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, the nonprofit that facilitates immigration to Israel for North American Jews. The organization bills its open house events as a chance to “get your questions answered, learn about the process, and discover what life in Israel could look like for you and your family.”
The group is considered a semi-governmental agency in Israel, receiving funding from the Israeli government and works closely with its ministries. It does not assign immigrants to particular communities, but has showcased West Bank settlements — which most of the world, though not Israel or the United States, considers illegal under international law — in events and on its website as possible destinations for new immigrants. (Previous protests in New York and beyond have targeted events at synagogues advertising real estate for sale in the West Bank.)
The organizing group suggested that all of the Jews who have moved to Israel with Nefesh B’Nefesh’s support are “settlers,” a term that some pro-Palestinian activists apply to all Israelis, not just those living in the West Bank.
“Nefesh b Nefesh is an affiliate of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel, mainly responsible for the recruitment of settlers to Palestine from North America. Since 2003, they have recruited over 80,000 settlers of which over 13,000 served in the IOF,” Palestinian Assembly for Liberation said in an Instagram post advertising its demonstration, using an acronym by which anti-Israel activists refer to the Israeli army as the “Israel Occupation Forces.” It also called El Al “Genocide Settler Airlines.”
The demonstration is providing an early window into how Mamdani’s long- and deeply held pro-Palestinian views might influence his leadership of the city.
As a state Assemblyman, he sponsored legislation aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank that some, including critics of the settlement movement, decried as casting an overly broad net.
During the campaign, he initially declined to condemn the protest phrase “globalize the intifada,” drawing allegations of antisemitism. He later shifted to say that he would “discourage” the phrase’s use in New York City, saying that he had learned from a rabbi that many Jews interpret it as a call to violence against them.
Now, Mamdani’s response to the Park East demonstration offers a stark contrast to two robust condemnations of antisemitism he has offered up since being elected, after a swastika was painted on a Brooklyn yeshiva and after the words “F–k Jews” were painted on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Both times, he quickly offered a full-throated denunciation on social media.
This time, even as prominent Jewish voices in the city alleged antisemitism on the part of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Mamdani did not make a public comment himself. His office’s statement did not address allegations of antisemitism.
Mayor Eric Adams, who is in Uzbekistan after a visit to Israel this week, said in a statement that he planned to visit Park East upon his return to the city. Calling the rhetoric shouted there “desecration,” he suggested that the protest augured a grim future for the city under Mamdani.
“Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come for me today and you tomorrow,” Adams tweeted. “We cannot hand this city over to radicals.”
The event came the same day that Mamdani announced that Adams’ police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, would stay on once he becomes mayor. Tisch, who is Jewish, has previously criticized the conduct of pro-Palestinian protesters in the city.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has been staunchly critical of Mamdani and whose father is the longtime senior rabbi at Park East Synagogue, said he was distressed by how the police allowed the confrontation to unfold.
“What I find most disturbing is that the police, who knew about this protest a day in advance, did not arrange for the protesters to be moved to either Third or Lexington Avenues,” he said. “Instead, they allowed the protesters to be right in front of the synagogue, which put members of the community at risk.”
One of the demonstrators repeatedly shouted about the Nefesh B’Nefesh event attendees, “We need to make them scared,” according to video from the scene.
“This kind of intimidation of Jewish New Yorkers is reprehensible and unacceptable,” tweeted Mark Levine, the Jewish comptroller-elect. “No house of worship, of any faith, should be subjected to this.”
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, decried the demonstration as “reprehensible.”
“It is not a violation of any law, international or otherwise, for Jews to gather in a synagogue or immigrate to Israel,” he said.
“Using violent rhetoric and hurling antisemitic insults in front of a crowded synagogue was a direct threat to our community’s safety,” he added. “JCRC-NY reached out to city officials and we have confidence that the NYPD will thoroughly investigate this serious matter. No one should ever have to fear entering or leaving their house of worship and that includes our Jewish neighbors. We stand with the Park East community and with all New Yorkers who reject hate.”
In a statement from a spokesperson, UJA-Federation New York said they were “outraged by the demonstration outside Park East Synagogue.”
“We’ve been in contact with our partners at the NYPD, and they are taking this matter very seriously,” the statement reads. “Calls to ‘globalize the intifada’ and ‘death to the IDF’ are not political statements—they are incitements to violence against Jewish people. Every leader must denounce this heinous language, and the choice to target a house of worship makes it especially vile.”
The post Mamdani: Israel immigration event at NY synagogue misused ‘sacred space’ appeared first on The Forward.
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John Fetterman Says Saudi Arabia Should Join Abraham Accords in Exchange for F-35 Fighter Jets From US
US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) gives an interview in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 18, 2024. Photo: Rod Lamkey / CNP/Sipa USA for NY Post via Reuters Connect
US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told The Algemeiner that Saudi Arabia should officially normalize relations with Israel in order to receive F-35 fighter jets from the United States.
In comments made on Wednesday, Fetterman signaled that he would support Saudi Arabia purchasing the premier American fighter jet in exchange for an agreement to join the Abraham Accords, a series of US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states. The senator argued that Riyadh agreeing to establish diplomatic relations with Israel could help usher in an era of peace and stability across the Middle East.
“I do think it would be a significant breakthrough if they joined the Abraham Accords for that,” Fetterman, a staunch supporter of Israel, said when asked by The Algemeiner for his thoughts on Saudi Arabia potentially receiving the F-35 fighter jet.
Saudi Arabia does not officially recognize the state of Israel, although in recent years the two countries have increasingly cooperated behind closed doors.
“I hope that some peace emerges, and now I think there’s a way forward that might not [involve] a Democratic president,” said Fetterman, a Democrat known to buck much of his own party on various policy issues. “But I’m going to fully support that.”
The senator added that he will “always follow Israel through their security.”
US President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met for talks in Washington, DC this week to deepen US-Saudi ties across a range of areas. While at the White House, bin Salman promised to increase his country’s US investment to $1 trillion from a $600 billion pledge he made when Trump visited Saudi Arabia in May.
The two men also reached deals on civil nuclear energy, critical minerals, and AI technology while agreeing to a sweeping defense cooperation pact. They discussed the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, with the kingdom reportedly looking to buy as many as 48 in what would be a multibillion-dollar deal.
Trump said earlier this week that he plans to greenlight the sale. According to the White House, he “approved a major defense sale package, including future F-35 deliveries, which strengthens the US defense industrial base and ensures Saudi Arabia continues to buy American.” However, no further details were provided about the number of jets or the timeframe for purchasing them.
If the sale goes through, it will be a policy shift for Washington, which primarily sells the F-35 to formal military allies, such as NATO members or Japan. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has the elite fighter jets, in accordance with longstanding bipartisan policy for US administrations and the Congress to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region. Saudi Arabia’s acquiring them would at least somewhat change the military balance of power.
However, Israel has further enhanced its F-35s after purchase with superior features such as advanced weapons systems and electronic warfare equipment that the US has sought to incorporate. US officials have said the Saudi jets will not have these enhancements found in Israel’s F-35 fighters.
Despite the wave of deals, Saudi Arabia did not join the Abraham Accords, a key goal of the Trump administration. Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, said during his visit to Washington that Riyadh wanted official ties with Israel but that such a step would require actionable steps toward implementing a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
While speaking to The Algemeiner this week, Fetterman also lamented the anti-Israel sentiment emerging in Democratic politics, expressing concern that many of his party’s candidates for the 2026 midterm races are making opposition to the Jewish state a major pitch to voters.
“A lot of these races, it’s almost like [a] marquee anti-Israel kind of sentiment. I mean, that’s outrageous, and I’ve been disappointed by my party turning their back on that,” Fetterman said.
Many candidates in the 2026 Democratic primaries are running on explicitly anti-Israel platforms, especially far-left progressives. Longshot congressional hopefuls such as former New York state Rep. Michael Blake and left-wing podcaster Cameron Kasky, both of whom have launched campaigns in the Empire State, are attempting to differentiate themselves from other Democratic hopefuls by launching broadside attacks against Israel.
Breaking from traditional party orthodoxy, many insurgent Democratic primary challengers have condemned Israel for committing so-called “genocide” in Gaza and called for an immediate halt of all military aid to the Jewish state. This shift in support for Israel comes amid a nosedive in support for the Jewish state among Democratic voters. Several polls indicate that a supermajority of Democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.
However, in the two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Fetterman has emerged as one of the most vocal supporters of the Jewish state in the US Congress. The senator has repeatedly expressed disappointment and disillusionment with the Democratic Party’s increasingly hostile position on Israel, reaffirming his support of the Jewish state’s right to self-defense.