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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll be doing segments about Passover and Easter and the world situation this week. Passover first today because it comes first. It starts at sundown tomorrow night. Good Friday is this Friday, and Easter is this Sunday. We'll address those later in the week. With respect to Passover, The New Yorker has a very thoughtful article this week about the divides within Jewish congregations, within Jewish families as Passover approaches, over the way Israel is fighting its wars in Gaza and now Lebanon.

What will the conversations be like around many families' Seder tables on a holiday that celebrates freedom from oppression, freedom of movement, and the founding of Israel, the Promised Land, as a refuge for the Jewish people? The article cites, for example, a Washington Post poll just a few months ago that found 46% of American Jews supporting the war in Gaza and 48% opposing it, basically, a 50/50 split in the American Jewish community.

The article quotes from a sermon back on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, last fall by Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan. Now, I found a video of it, and I'm going to play the quote to help set this up. Play the clip. Then we'll talk to the writer, Eyal Press from The New Yorker, and take your calls about your families and your congregations. This runs a minute and a half. Again, it's Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and her Rosh Hashanah sermon at the Central Synagogue. Listen to both halves of this as she acknowledges different worshipers within her own congregation who might fire her as their rabbi if she says what she really thinks.

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: I want to tell you about my unconditional love for the Israeli people and our beleaguered homeland, still desperately struggling to bring its hostages home, still trying to eliminate Hamas terrorists that not only refuse to lay down their arms, but intentionally trap their own people in a combat zone. If I tell you these things, all of which I believe, some of you will stop listening and decide that I'm no longer your rabbi. I also want to tell you how my heart breaks over the civilian deaths and tragic suffering in Gaza, the shattering destruction of Palestinian homes and cities.

I want to denounce settler violence in the West Bank and the rhetoric from far-right government ministers who talk about annexation of the West Bank and expulsion of Gazans instead of ending this war and bringing our hostages home. If I tell you these things, all of which I also believe, some of you will stop listening and decide that I'm no longer your rabbi. This Israel conversation is ripping our community apart, not just here at Central, but across the Jewish world, among friends within families. It's been the most painful experience of my rabbinic life.

Brian Lehrer: Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan, in her Rosh Hashanah sermon last fall. With that, we welcome New Yorker magazine writer Eyal Press, who cited that sermon in his article called At Synagogues, Tensions are Boiling Over: Disagreements About Gaza and Zionism Have Divided Congregations. Eyal, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Eyal Press: Thanks so much, Brian. It's great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Jewish listeners, you're invited to call in and reflect on the tensions you may be experiencing in your congregations. Rabbis, congregation members, are you experiencing this kind of tension? If so, are you able to have productive conversations about it? Are you able to resolve it in any way? Is anyone changing anyone else's mind? Are any of you literally deciding that your rabbi is no longer your rabbi because of their positions on Israel or Gaza or Zionism today, one way or another? If so, what then for you and for them?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or maybe this is happening for you outside of a synagogue, elsewhere in your Jewish life, maybe in your family. We know there's a lot of this divide by generation, right? There's been a lot of talk about that, but not just by generation. One woman from Congregation Beth El in Maplewood, in the article, describes herself and her husband in this context. She says, "We're in a mixed marriage on Israeli politics." Does that sound like you and your spouse, too?

Again, if you're experiencing this kind of tension, are you able to have productive conversations about it within the family, with your husband or wife or parents or kids? Are you able to resolve it in any way? Is anyone changing anyone else's mind? What's the heart of the moral question or moral questions you're grappling with? 212-433-WNYC. Any Jewish Americans, rabbis, anyone else, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Eyal, let's start with that clip of Rabbi Angela Buchdahl. Did you report it out on Central Synagogue enough to know how divided that particular Manhattan congregation is on how Israel is conducting these wars?

Eyal Press: No, I didn't. I have to say, I did reach out to Rabbi Buchdahl. She declined requests for an interview, I think probably because she felt her sermon speaks for itself. I did focus intensively, as you mentioned, on a synagogue in New Jersey called Congregation Beth El, located in South Orange. I should say and emphasize that the division I found there is not unique to Congregation Beth El by any means. It's playing out across the Jewish community, as Rabbi Buchdahl's sermon suggested.

I wrote the article, really, with two ideas in mind. One is that so much attention had focused in the media on the protests after the Gaza war, the pro-Palestinian protests. One of the striking facts about those protests, which came out here and there in the news coverage, is that there were Jews on college campuses who were deeply upset and offended by these protests. There were also Jews on college campuses who were participating in those protests. That's not a secret, but it tells you something about how divided and fractured the Jewish community was getting and has gotten.

The other reason I really wanted to delve into this is the mistaken perception, and I think the dangerous perception, that Jews are a monolith, that they speak in one voice, that they all hold the same views when it comes to subjects like Israel and Zionism. That has never been true historically. It is less true today in the American Jewish community than perhaps ever before. We should be talking about it and understanding why.

Brian Lehrer: I did read through your article, so much of which is about Congregation Beth El in the Maplewood, South Orange area. I will say, it took some time. If one were to print this article, I see it would print at 41 pages. Well, for one thing, Rabbi Buchdahl didn't want to comment to you. Rabbi Buchdahl, maybe you're listening and want to call in and describe what the next steps would be after that sermon, right?

Can you bring together factions of your congregation, or maybe you've taken more of a stand on one side or another yourself? Rabbi Buchdahl, if you're listening, or any other rabbi, any other Jewish American. On Congregation Beth El, the rabbi there, Jesse Olitzky, I think it's fair to say, based on my reading of your article, clearly took a side. A congregation member, Nathaniel Felder, who you profile, who was protesting Israel the way it was conducting the war in Gaza, was very frustrated, even though the leadership was progressive on other things at that congregation, like ICE and immigration. Where would you start to tell the story of Congregation Beth El?

Eyal Press: Yes, I think that captures the background well. Rabbi Olitzky, with whom I spoke, is a very progressive guy on a lot of issues, on ICE, on civil rights. He's participated in an interfaith group in New Jersey, where folks work together on those issues. On the issue of Israel and Zionism, I think it's fair to say that after October 7th, his sense of attachment and feeling of the inclination to defend Israel and to worry about Israel and to highlight the plight of Israel intensified. He's not alone in that.

One of the theses of the article is that there had been a soft liberal Zionism, a place where people who were slightly more conservative and slightly more liberal could meet and not necessarily argue. That October 7th and the Gaza war has really shattered that. You have one group that has felt a heightened attachment to Israel and a heightened fear of anti-Semitism, a belief that it's worse now than it's ever been. Therefore, we need to stand with "our people."

At the same time, you have a lot of Jews. They're not just Jews in their 20s. They're parents. They're Jews in their 40s and 50s. They're people like Nat Felder, who were, at first, concerned initially both by the-- Of course, they felt horror at the October 7th attack and sympathy for people in Israel they knew, but immediately felt concern for Israel's response that it would be brutal, that it would be indiscriminate, that many innocent Palestinians would die and suffer. Those concerns escalated as the course of the war intensified.

Nat Felder, I opened the piece by describing the point he came to. This was last spring when reports were surfacing that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza. Nat, who is someone who has a lot of family in Israel, and his grandfather made aliyah, left his home in Long Island, went to Beersheba, lived there for a year himself. All of this is in the piece. He could not remain quiet when he would pass the sign in front of the synagogue that said, "We stand with Israel."

Meanwhile, what he saw as a policy of starvation was unfolding because that same grandfather taught him that the most important thing about being Judaism was adhering to certain basic moral precepts. The most important of all was protecting human life. He wrote to the rabbis. He wrote to them several times actually, asking that the sign come down or that some sort of congregation-wide email be sent.

When this didn't happen, he took matters into his own hand. He made a sign of his own, and the sign said, "Starvation is against Jewish values. Our support of Israel cannot be unconditional." He made the sign. He stood in front of the synagogue. That's the point of departure for the peace and what unfolded and how things got to that point, not only at Beth El, but, again, at a lot of other congregations.

Brian Lehrer: We'll come back to Congregation Beth El and some of what you describe. They undertook there to try to hear various points of view from within the congregation. If I'm reading your article correctly, it wasn't very satisfying to a lot of the people there. Here's an example. This is maybe a meta example of how deep this divide runs, even the fact, Eyal, that we're doing this segment, and I guess by extension that you published this article, that The New Yorker published this article right now. Listener wrote, shortly before we went on the air, The Brian Lehrer Show, "How Gaza and Zionism are dividing synagogues. Great story idea, but right at the start of Passover? Nasty mistake." Even raising the topic and its relevance to this week starts to get some people ticked off.

Eyal Press: Absolutely. It's not surprising at all. If we'd done this in the fall, people would have said, "On the eve of the High Holidays, how can you talk about this?" If it were neither holiday, they might say, "How can you talk about this in a moment when anti-Semitism is rising?" I'd refer them to some of the voices in the piece. I quote Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove at one point. He's a controversial figure in the piece because he gave a very divisive sermon criticizing Zohran Mamdani. In the quote I mentioned in the piece, he says his biggest concern right now are the internal divisions within the American Jewish community.

You can pretend they're not there. You can pretend it's never a good time to talk about them, or you can talk about why they have formed. I have to say I was inspired and moved by the stories shared with me by the members of this congregation, who, as you rightly note, many of them are very frustrated and have been very frustrated because they're at a synagogue where they feel that their sense of belonging is harder to feel because their perspective on the war in Gaza and on many of these issues is not represented in the same way that the other side's is.

Brian Lehrer: We played that clip of Rabbi Buchdahl from Central Synagogue in Manhattan, saying if she expresses one half of what she believes, some of her congregants will say, "You're no longer my rabbi." If she expresses another part of what she believes, other congregants will say, "You're no longer my rabbi." Well, I think we have a call from somebody who literally did fire their rabbi and change congregations over some of this. Udi in Highland Park, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling in. Hi.

Udi: Hi. Thank you. My wife and I were members of a conservative synagogue for 20 years. We resigned after our rabbi gave a sermon about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and talking about how the shrieks of the people coming from the destroyed cities were the shrieks of the perpetrators, not the shrieks of victims. This was early on into the Gaza war when there were just 15,000 people who had been killed. I went up to him afterwards and asked, "Am I taking away from this what I think I am?" He said, "Yes," and he brushed away any concern about the humanity of the other side. We resigned after 20 years of being members.

Brian Lehrer: Do I understand correctly from my screener that you and your wife served in the Israeli Defense Forces?

Udi: Yes, we grew up in Los Angeles, moved to New Jersey, and we both served in the IDF.

Brian Lehrer: That's intense. Are you in contact with people back there and having conversations with them? So much of the Israeli public, from the polls I've seen of their supports, pretty much everything that the Netanyahu government is doing in Gaza and now Lebanon, do you still have relationships there with people you're in dialogue with?

Udi: Yes, we have family there, but I don't bring up the political situation because even those who oppose Netanyahu, my cousins in Israel, have marched against Netanyahu, but I think they're firmly in favor of what Israel is doing against Gaza. I listen to Israeli radio. You just hear that there's a very biased view. It's all about the hostages and the victims. There's nothing on Israeli radio, on Israeli media, about the other side and what they're suffering.

Brian Lehrer: Udi, thank you for your call and your perspective. Let's go right to another caller. Matt in Brooklyn says he's a rabbi, and this kind of divide essential to his existence now. Matt, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Matt: Hi. I told your screener the phrase I usually use. People have seemed to come around to it. The definition of politics is that if you disagree with me, it's called politics. If you agree with me, it's called Jewish values. I don't only say it actually to be funny. I think it's actually a really valuable or hopefully meaningful way of looking at the issue, because if, as a rabbi, I were to say to my congregants, "Oh, I just got back from the J Street conference," then they're going to say, "Why are you so involved in politics?" If a colleague says, "Oh, I just got back from the AIPAC conference," nobody's going to say, "Why are you so involved in politics?" There are just certain things--

Brian Lehrer: Right. JPAC is a progressive group, AIPAC is AIPAC, so depends what the reaction will be. Go ahead.

Matt: In that case, even people who actually probably do disagree with AIPAC, for example, will still not even see it as politics because we've come to see it as this kind of-- I guess you could say it's an Overton window type of thing, where we've come to see that as just a normal part of Jewish communal life, whereas the other one is "political," because so many people so vocally disagree with it. Yes, anyway, I wish I had something to say--

Brian Lehrer: How do you navigate this divide as a rabbi in your congregation? Do you try to move toward some kind of consensus or some kind of-- I don't know what the word is, maybe tolerance or respect for those with the other point of view than some of their co-congregants?

Matt: Well, I'd like to think I act with tolerance and respect toward all of them. To the point of your piece, I'm in a much more traditional synagogue than Rabbi Buchdahl. If I were to, for example, speak about keeping kosher, the importance of keeping kosher, the importance of keeping Shabbat, and then I found out that a congregant doesn't keep kosher or doesn't keep Shabbat, I don't think anyone would think, "Oh, I bet he doesn't respect them. I'm not going to feel welcome there. I hate him for saying this thing that disagrees with me," whatever it is. When it comes to this issue, people say, "Well, how come you're saying things that I disagree with?" Not just this issue, I guess. Politics in general really are this thing where, "How dare you have this position that isn't the same as my position?" Whereas on seemingly all other matters of Jewish life, that's okay.

Brian Lehrer: Matt, we really appreciate your call. Rabbi, thank you very much. A zissen Pesach to you. Stephen in Westchester, I think, is calling about a congregation where there's another type of approach to this that actually comes up in Eyal's New Yorker article. Stephen, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Stephen: Hi, Brian, thanks for taking the call. I was going to say that at least my congregation feels a little bit stymied because I feel like if the rabbi were to bring it up, I think they would lose memberships because I think some of the congregants are so entrenched in this bit of like a blind-faith approach to Israel and what they're doing. It's very interesting because it's the same people that would criticize what's going on in this country in terms of the government, but they don't really seem to criticize what's going on there.

Brian Lehrer: One thing you told our screener, and I want to see if I got it right, is that your congregation doesn't really talk about Israel because they don't want to divide themselves among themselves. The rabbi doesn't want to lose one group or another. How much are you experiencing that? Is that an accurate characterization?

Stephen: I would say Israel, in terms of what's going on there with Gaza and the West Bank and Palestinians. When I was going to Hebrew school, it was very much like a two-state solution, but I feel like the two-state solution hasn't been a real concept in 25 years. Maybe it should say 20 years.

Brian Lehrer: Stephen, thank you very much.

Stephen: They don't really take on it.

Brian Lehrer: Stephen, thank you. Well, that touches on something in the article, Eyal, that you wrote about, which is that a lot of rabbis, according to your reporting, will just avoid the topic. They'll talk about other Jewish issues, but they'll avoid Gaza, and now Lebanon, because they don't want to divide the congregation. Is that what you found?

Eyal Press: I think that's definitely one impulse. I think it's a reason that as the Gaza war got longer and longer and bloodier and bloodier and more and more divisive within the Jewish community, there were a lot of rabbis who just strained to avoid it. There's another factor at play in that, and that is that saying anything critical or perceived to be critical by a board member or a donor to the synagogue or a member of the synagogue is dangerous.

You can be branded a traitor if you do that, particularly if you're a younger rabbi. I heard in my reporting that younger rabbis who are more inclined to have more progressive views on this issue are the ones who are most afraid to speak out. I did speak with Rabbi Sharon Brous, the senior rabbi at a synagogue in Los Angeles. She talked about the discourse. She called this discourse "defend, deflect, and denounce."

If you dare to say anything about Israel and you're a rabbi, the folks who attack you, first, they'll defend Israel regardless of what it's doing. Then they'll say, "Why are you talking about Israel? Why aren't you talking about Sudan?" Then they'll denounce you as someone who's disloyal to your people. She has been denounced in that way several times. I think there's a great disincentive to say anything critical.

At the same time, and you heard it in these calls and I think it's a more general thing, American Jews, by and large, are liberal. They pray to what one scholar called the God of social justice, a God who believes in equality and tolerance. Love for Israel in the United States, which I think peaked in the 1970s and in the decades afterwards, was predicated on this notion that Israel was a country that sought peace with its neighbors, that integrated women into its army that could be wedded to that progressive ideology.

Well, Israel yesterday passed a law. The Knesset passed a law mandating hanging for West Bank Palestinians who will be tried in military courts. That's not consistent with progressivism. What's happening in the West Bank is not consistent with progressivism. The tension that I described in this article is not going to go away and, in fact, will very likely intensify in the years to come, particularly among younger people.

Brian Lehrer: Here are two texts that just came in that reflect pieces of the divide. One says, "Passover is when Jews are supposed to reflect on how bitter it is to be oppressed and how important it is to struggle for freedom. It's the perfect time to talk about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. People held captive, starved, many of whom are refugees from their land that they were driven from within living memory."

A very different text says, "I am a Jew in my 40s. I used to define myself as a moderate Zionist. After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023 and during the subsequent war, I have become a more radical Zionist. I am also an advocate of freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. In that sense, I'm willing to tolerate the views and expressions of views of Jews which are different from mine. What I do not have patience for is when people who have opinions that are strong but uninformed. The mainstream media is not a good source of information regarding Israel," this person writes, citing New York Times, CNN, et cetera.

"People who rely on these sources to inform them about what is going on over there and then think and speak as if they are well-informed do so in error." A couple of texts that came in back-to-back that exemplifies what's in Eyal Press's New Yorker magazine article. After the break, we'll play a clip from a journalist guest who was on the show last week from Lebanon, who raised a specific moral issue facing Israel and its supporters. We'll continue to invite your calls from your point of view, maybe specifically on that clip. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with New Yorker magazine writer Eyal Press and his article with Passover beginning tomorrow night. We're going to have an Easter and Good Friday and the world situation segment later in the week. Eyal's article is called At Synagogues, Tensions are Boiling Over. Here's one source of those tensions. Last week, we had journalist William Christou of The Guardian from Lebanon, where Israel is hitting what are widely considered civilian targets because Hezbollah uses that same infrastructure as civilian non-combatant Lebanese people do, as Hezbollah plans and stages attacks on Israel from across the border. The reporter gave this example.

William Christou: What we're seeing in those areas, there's a widespread targeting of medics, including through the use of double-tap strikes, which is when they strike somewhere, wait for paramedics to come, and then they strike the area again, hitting the paramedics in the process. What we saw in the last war, what we saw in Gaza, is that the point of this is to make it increasingly difficult for people to stay in those areas, to clear those areas out, so that Israel can fight their war easier. Human rights groups have warned against this, saying that it amounts to forced displacement.

Brian Lehrer: Jewish listeners, on that human rights group's argument as one side of it and Israel's argument on the other side of it, that without destroying that much civilian infrastructure, even killing people in the healthcare workforce, as we just heard there, without doing that, Hezbollah will be able to keep attacking. It's the right of self-defense. Jewish listeners, as we discuss these divides among American Jews as we head toward Passover tomorrow night, in the context of Jewish community divides, like The Washington Post poll that we mentioned at the top that found, basically, a 50/50 split among American Jews on whether they support the war in Gaza, what's your own answer to these moral questions?

How much killing of civilians is justifiable in the context of trying to protect your community from a military foe that is real and that is attacking you from within that community? On the Zionism question, which we'll get to in a little more depth with our guest, how much is national self-determination justifiable even when your group has Indigenous roots there and they were persecuted for 2,000 years everywhere else they've been? If you're setting up a country without equal rights, or any related question you want to address and that maybe you'll bring up your Passover Seder this week, 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692, to the theme of Eyal's article.

Eyal, you're right that even Zionism is now being perceived differently in the Jewish community, with more of a divide. For example, you give us some history, citing a broad unity among American Jews about Israel after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack by Arab countries. Most American Jews weren't Zionists in the sense that they wanted to move to Israel, you say, but they were glad that it existed overwhelmingly. Why do you cite that particular Arab-Israeli war as having been so galvanizing? What do you compare it to today?

Eyal Press: Well, I think it's just such a striking contrast with October 7th. The Yom Kippur War, the surprise assault launched by Arab forces on the Jewish holiday, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, stirs this pretty unified response in the American Jewish community that I quote the commentary editor, Norman Podhoretz, who didn't need any convincing. He celebrates the fact that this attack has, as he says, converted-- all American Jews have been converted to Zionism. Even the skeptical Orthodox Jews who thought that Zionism was a heresy were coming around.

He quotes Irving Howe, the editor of Dissent, a socialist who expressed distaste for nationalism, but admitted that he felt this astonishingly intense feeling for Israel when the Yom Kippur War broke out. Then you fast-forward 50 years to October 7th, and it's another surprise attack that punctures this air of vulnerability-- of invulnerability, I should say, in Israel. Would it galvanize the same unity? To the contrary. What it has done is sharpen the divisions, create deeper polarization, make Israel and Zionism more contentious subjects within the Jewish community. That's in part because the American Jewish community has changed. It's also because Israel has changed. I think that contrast is really striking.

Brian Lehrer: Again, some texts coming in that are on various sides of this. "If they don't want to be attacked, they should stop attacking Israel." Very simply stated. We're getting a few like that, I think, in contrast to those. Helene in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Helene.

Helene: Hi. This is just so pressing for me. I am a baby boomer, the essential baby boomer, born in 1946 to two parents who escaped from the Holocaust in 1939, from my father from Poland, my mother from Vienna, and leaving behind very, very many relatives. Tens of which died. At the same time, I grew up in Brooklyn in a very progressive family. What the Passover Seder means to me right now is talking about how to be a Jew in light of both prevalent anti-Semitism and what Jews are doing, Israelis are doing in the Gaza, destroying people.

That's not the Jew that I was brought up to be. Humanism was, in fact, the core of our ideals. What I was most proud of is that my parents did not bring us up as Holocaust Jews. They brought us up with optimism in our place in the world. We worked for all kinds of progressive things, but it's an unmixed feeling. I feel vulnerable as a Jew. I understand that the Israelis feel vulnerable.

At the same time, I don't support what the Israelis have done during this war in Gaza, and also have been much more informed in my later years about what the Jews did to take over the land of Israel and how much destruction and death and extrusion occurred. None of this is an easy resolution. Certainly, I don't take offense that The New Yorker article was written at this time. I can't think of a more important time for Jews and everybody to sit and talk about, "What is it that we want? What can we accomplish? Who are we?" Those are the most important questions.

Brian Lehrer: Helene, what would you say then if you were in dialogue with the listener who just wrote this text? Listener wrote, "I find the fact that the majority of Israelis, even those who were previously very sympathetic and supportive of Palestinians' rights, support the government actions. I find that persuasive in my support of Israel's actions. I don't believe that Israelis are uniquely irrational or immoral. Quite contrary. It's easy for us to tut-tut when we sit in our safe bubble. Quite different to feel the need to protect those who have brutally mutilated our innocent loved ones." What would you say to that listener?

Helene: I understand what came to mind as you were saying it. It's like asking the victim or the survivor of an attack, "Okay, my child is killed. You're asking me, should I put the perpetrator of that horrendous crime to death?" I understand. This is a country in fear. They've been attacked many times. They've had thousands of their soldiers die. This is not really where you can draw back and say, "Okay, who do I want to be in light of this? What am I willing to do to the end?"

I understand the fear. That's why I premised my comments. I don't have that absolute solution. There is anti-Semitism. The Arabs have attacked Israel multiple times, but the Jews have done incredible things to take over the land of someone else and to push them out. They have now conducted a war in a way that's killing many more than the people who are hurting them. I wish I had a magic answer. I don't think there's a magic answer, but I don't know that the fear of the Israelis is necessarily the answer to what we want to do because it goes beyond the war. What are we doing with Israel going forward? A democratic nation, it could never be.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much for your call. We really appreciate it, as well as to the listener who texted the words that we contrasted her with and invited her to respond to. Eyal, as we head toward the end of the segment, I'm going to read one more text, which, it appears, came from a member of Congregation Beth El at Maplewood, which is where the heart of your article is.

Listener writes, "I am a white Jewish woman in my late 60s and a member of the congregation reported on Eyal's article. I appreciate that a core aspect of our Jewish tradition is to wrestle and grapple with hard things. We are about the dialogue and the exchange and the learning. We remain in community with one another even when we don't agree with one another. After all, we are all and remain co-congregants, and that's something to be celebrated and amplified." I guess my closing question to you based on your deeply reported article is, where is this headed or might head going forward, or are people like our various callers and texters from various points of view destined to divide into political echo chambers like the country is doing to such a degree within the Jewish community in the United States?

Eyal Press: Well, it's a great question. I'm going to defer to Liba Beyer, one of the people I interviewed in the piece. She grew up in a super Zionist household. She is now openly identified as anti-Zionist. She is also a member of Congregation Beth El. One thing she mentioned to me, which I later saw, was that Congregation Beth El is a big-tent synagogue, meaning this is a movement that sought to open the doors of synagogues to LGBTQ Jews, to interfaith couples, really to broaden who feels accepted.

What she said to me was, "For me and for a lot of young people today, big tent means diversity and tolerance of diverse views on Israel and Zionism." I think that actually pinpoints the challenge for rabbis. Can you be tolerant not just through paying empty lip service or occasionally saying, "Sure, we'll welcome you in. Just don't expect any of your views to ever be articulated from the bema or in congregation-wide emails," but can you really be an equal part of this community, expressing your beliefs in dialogue with others, and not be tagged as disloyal or un-Jewish or somehow hostile to the congregation?

I think that's a challenge. The challenge will grow because as younger Jews grow up and become members or look for congregations, they have experienced these events, these formative deeply. They have watched the Gaza war unfold. They don't remember the Yom Kippur War. They don't remember 1948 as well as they remember the October 7th attack, 2023, and its aftermath, the destruction of Gaza. If there is no big tent in these communities, then it will be polarized, and they will split up. I think that's the really hard challenge that faces these institutions.

Brian Lehrer: New Yorker writer Eyal Press. He's also author of the book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, which came out a few years ago and won some journalism awards. Thanks so much for joining us on your latest article.

Eyal Press: Thanks so much for having me, Brian, and happy Passover to the listeners.

Brian Lehrer: Same from me to all our Jewish listeners. That's our pre-Passover segment about difficult discussions taking place within the American Jewish community. Later in the week, as we head toward Easter, we'll talk about American Christians finding different answers to the question, "What would Jesus say about immigration in particular and other Trump policies?"

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