People of the Books

In response to Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 invasion, Israel decimated its genocidal enemies on both its southern and northern borders, using techniques few people imagined were possible, including a beeper operation straight out of science fiction; survived not just one, but two massive Iranian missile attacks; responded by taking out Iran’s Russian-built air defenses without losing a single plane; and fought a multi-front war with an army of reservists. All in a state the size of New Jersey, while often defying the advice of an American administration which opposed what emerged as many of Israel’s most effective and successful military actions.

Perhaps equally remarkable was that, in the middle of an ongoing existential war, prominent Jewish public intellectuals and distinguished rabbinical leaders wrote thought-provoking books examining the implications of the war for Jews in both Israel and America.

In the middle of an ongoing existential war, prominent public intellectuals and distinguished rabbinical leaders wrote thought-provoking books examining the implications of the war for Jews in both Israel and America.

And perhaps most remarkable of all, the best of this extraordinary output of intellectual effort was a book written not by an Israeli, nor by a Jewish author, but by a non-Jewish American thinker, who recognized the war’s ultimate significance — not only for Israel and America, but for the world.

This essay discusses five of these books. There were more than five books in this category of exceptional intellectual and moral achievement, but these five will suffice to illustrate a post-Oct. 7 accomplishment arguably as significant as the extraordinary Israeli military response. 

The accomplishment presents a challenge that extends beyond Israel and the Jews.

Bernard-Henri Lévy’s “Israel Alone” analyzes the global response to Oct. 7, the virulent wave of antisemitism that followed, and “the most complex war effort that a democratic nation has had to mount in decades,” with terrorists hiding in tunnels below ground and, above ground, behind civilians in hospitals, schools, mosques, and private homes, with an international community demanding “a restraint that they have never expected from any other nation that has been similarly attacked and threatened with extinction” — and insistent demands that Israel produce the “day after” even before it had finished the “day of.” 

Lévy describes the way Israel fought its war, in a uniquely moral way, while being lectured by an immoral world:

Lévy describes the way Israel fought its war, in a uniquely moral way, while being lectured by an immoral world.

“In no other war have we seen an army … give the occupants a final chance to leave the area by saturating the area with leaflets, texts, phone calls, and empty rockets released by drones — all at the risk of giving enemy combatants time to flee or take cover while depriving themselves of the element of surprise, a strategic and tactical asset in any war. …

“I doubt that Israel waited for anyone — the friends who wish it well, the allies that left it alone on the front line of a fight that concerns them as well, or its enemies — to inundate it with pressure, entreaties, and admonitions before choosing to remain true to its code [of arms, which required such moral actions without the need for the hypocritical advice of the world].”

Levy is particularly incisive in his catalogue of the many institutions of the West that left Israel alone, including the United Nations, U.N. Women, feminist groups, the Red Cross, elite universities, their presidents and professors, the left wing of the Democratic Party, various prominent “progressives,” public intellectuals, and others. 

In a supreme test of their avowed principles, they were all found wanting.  

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, senior rabbi of New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue, argues in his book, “For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today,” that Oct. 7 was a historic “inflection point,” dividing “all that came before and all that came afterward.” It necessitates, he wrote, a “new vision for American Judaism and American Zionism.” 

Citing a Pew study showing that nearly half of all Jewish Americans consider themselves “Jews of no religion,” Cosgrove warns that the American Jewish connection to Israel might be “paper-thin,” challenged by the gulf between the longstanding Jewish liberalism of America and the mugged-by-reality conservatism of Israelis, who watched offer after offer of a Palestinian state — in 2000, 2001, 2008, 2014, and 2020 — produce only war after war against the Jewish one. 

Cosgrove concludes that the connection between Judaism and Zionism needs to be reinforced: “to be good Zionists, we must be better Jews.” The phrase is reminiscent of Louis D. Brandeis’ historic assertion in 1915, when he became the head of the nascent American Zionist movement, that “to be good Americans, we must be better Jews; and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.” 

Brandeis believed a Jewish state would provide not only a refuge for the Jews living in Russia and Europe in existential stress, but also a lifeline of a different sort for the American Jews, who were living in relative security but lacked a self-confident identity. “We Jews of prosperous America,” Brandeis wrote, “above all need its inspiration.” 

Zionism eventually produced a double miracle in the 20th century: both a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland, and a vibrant diaspora in America.

Zionism eventually produced a double miracle in the 20th century: both a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland, and a vibrant diaspora in America, whose confidence grew as Israel was established, survived multiple wars, and succeeded. As Daniel Gordis has written, the existence of Israel “transformed even the lives of Jews, like those in America, who chose not to make their lives in the Jewish state.”

Cosgrove sees a need for a “new American Zionism” with a renewed Jewish identity, since that of the past century is slipping away, a casualty of assimilation, intermarriage, and arguments over Israel. He calls for a “Marshall Plan” to remedy American Jewry’s “deficit of memory,” since few American Jews know Jewish history before the establishment of Israel (or even Israeli history before 1967). He suggests “a dose of humility” for American Jews — a recognition that an elected government, seeking to exist in a very rough neighborhood, has the right to make decisions contrary to the sensibilities of Jews living in security far away.  

Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz, senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, has published a spirited account of his own Zionism, in a book with a provocative title: “The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews.” Like Rabbi Cosgrove, Lebovitz writes that “Oct. 7 was an inflection point in our Jewish experience in America.” 

The call embodied in the title of Lebovitz’s book is not for a divided political loyalty, but rather the retrieval of the neglected half of American Jews’ dual heritage, derived from both a history extending back 3,500 years and from what Israel has achieved in modern times. He is inspired by the response of Israel’s new “greatest generation” – the one that stepped up en masse after Oct. 7, even as Israel’s government fell down on its job that day: “Most of all, we must draw inspiration from the young Israelis, the young soldiers, the young teachers, and young volunteers, who stepped forward and filled the dark void of October to protect a Jewish tomorrow.”

“Most of all, we must draw inspiration from the young Israelis, the young soldiers, the young teachers, and young volunteers, who stepped forward and filled the dark void of October to protect a Jewish tomorrow.” – Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz

There is a lesson from this relating to American youth, discussed by Gordis in a talk last month with Christians visiting Israel on whether the West still believes in itself: “America has to figure out a way to raise future generations of Americans,” he told them, “who believe in themselves and in their country … with the same passion that we have now discovered that we’ve been able to raise generations of Israelis who believe in and love this country.”

As the epigram for his book, Lebovitz uses the words Moses addressed to the tribes of Reuven and Gad, who sought his permission to live on the east side of the Jordan River while the other 10 tribes crossed over to fight for their land: “Will your brothers go to war while you live here?” The two tribes received permission to remain on the east side, but only if they would support their brethren in their fight across the river. 

Lebovitz writes that this biblical injunction is relevant in this century to Jews living securely in America — to support those fighting for their lives in Israel, because Jews are a single people, not a people with different souls in different places. In “this Oct. 8 world,” he argues, there are mutual obligations as old as the Jewish people itself.

Quoting from Brandeis’ landmark 1915 speech, Lebovitz asserts that there is no division between American and Jewish ideals. Addressing the issue of dual loyalty, Brandeis had asserted that there was: 

“No inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry. The Jewish spirit, the product of our religion and experiences, is essentially modern and essentially American. Not since the destruction of the Temple have the Jews in spirit and in ideals been so fully in harmony with the noblest aspirations of the country in which they lived.”

Brandeis is known to American Jews as one of the most distinguished justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. But his influence on Zionism was arguably even more historic, since he devoted not only his name but his time, efforts, and substantial wealth to it, in the years both before and after he joined the court. He gave the movement a legitimacy in America that no other public figure could have provided. He thought Zionism was not simply a charitable effort for others, but rather one central to the mission of Jews in the world.

A century later, as Lebovitz’s book demonstrates, Brandeis’ wisdom is still relevant.

The title of Elliott Abrams’ book —  “If You Will It: Rebuilding Jewish Peoplehood for the 21st Century” — comes from Herzl’s most famous aphorism, written half a century before the establishment of the Jewish state: “If you will it, it is no dream.” 

Abrams warns that “the existence of a united American Jewish community strong in its support of Israel is a myth,” and that, even before Oct. 7, Israel had become a divisive issue in many communities and congregations. American Jews, he writes, “may no longer have the luxury of living in a country where there is no significant antisemitism and where the official ties with Israel are strong and unbreakable.” The divergence of views between Democrats and Republicans is startling – and widening. 

Abrams’ book is a valuable analysis of the statistical status of American Jews, and a prescription for the course he recommends for reversing the current trends. He argues that for many American Jews, a universalist concept of Tikun Olam has been substituted for a vanished religious commitment, and that “an immersive Jewish environment … is gone today for all but Orthodox Jews.” When half of all Jewish Americans no longer regard Judaism as their current religion nor are raising their children as Jews, they are statistically Jews, but virtually lost to the Jewish community.

When half of all Jewish Americans no longer regard Judaism as their current religion nor are raising their children as Jews, they are statistically Jews, but virtually lost to the Jewish community.

Abrams’ concluding chapter – “What Is to Be Done?” – is a valuable roadmap forward, including extended suggestions regarding synagogues, schools, and summer camps. He also emphasizes gap years and other travel in Israel. He argues that “a relationship with the Jewish state is an essential aspect of Jewish peoplehood, without which no diaspora community can thrive – or perhaps even survive.”

In 2009, George Gilder followed “Wealth and Poverty,” his classic book on capitalism, with “The Israel Test,” in which he asserted that the miniscule Jewish state was the “central issue in international politics.” The accomplished editor Anne Mandelbaum reshaped the book into a second edition in 2012, and the third edition — published in 2024 — updated its statistics and analysis, with a new introduction by Gilder. In the new edition, Gilder contends that there is now “no more important test for Americans.” 

Gilder writes that most experts — “advocates and critics of Israel alike” — are “blind to the Israel test.” Critics believe Israel “is deeply flawed but commands a colorable case for continued existence …. provided that it improves its behavior.” Advocates marshal “mountains of evidence that Israel is ‘not guilty’ of charges only a madman, a delusional academic, or a U.N. human rights expert could have brought in the first place.” The entire debate, Gilder writes, misses the salient truth: “Israel is hated, above all, for its virtues.” 

Israel has become a major source of Western technological and economic supremacy, while standing on the front line against military and ideological efforts to destroy the West. It is, Gilder writes, “not only the canary in the mine shaft – it is also a crucial part of the mine itself.” Israel is “not a dispensable Jewish ‘best friend’ …. [but] an indispensable strategic ally” of America. The Israel test is whether America can demonstrate the same moral and intellectual strength.

In a chapter titled “Games of War and Holiness,” Gilder portrays Robert Aumann, Israel’s 2005 Nobel Laureate in game theory, who with his “blackmailer’s paradox” analyzed Israel’s predicament as a rational actor in an irrational world: If two people try to divide $1,000, and the first adamantly says he won’t accept anything less than $900, the second may argue endlessly that this is not right or fair, but ultimately conclude that $100 is better than nothing — and accept the deal. 

Aumann’s “game” demonstrated that only if the second person says, “I too won’t accept anything less than $900,” is there any chance for an even split. “To survive as a nation,” Aumann said, “we have to reclaim our belief in the holiness of our cause” – or lose the game. 

In the 20th century, Israel was the result of the alliance of Americanism (the civil religion of freedom and democracy) and Zionism (the movement for a free and democratic Jewish state). America also brought freedom and democracy to Japan; restored it in Germany; preserved it in South Korea; and facilitated it in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it removed tyrants and held multiple free elections, before leaving.  

Israel was the result of the alliance of Americanism (the civil religion of freedom and democracy) and Zionism (the movement for a free and democratic Jewish state).

In his 2023 book, “American Breakdown,” The Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker noted that in the 20th century America helped liberate half the planet from history’s most dehumanizing ideologies, but that in the 21st century America has retreated, “in the grip of a modern ideology that disowns its own genius, denounces its own success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood, [and] embraces societal self-loathing.”

The stunning rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism on American campuses is part of a broader intellectual and cultural decline in America, whose future may depend on whether an exceptional nation can reclaim its belief in its own cause and find the will to defend it in the world – whether it can, in other words, pass the Israel test. 

These five books – and others written since Oct. 7, including David Friedman’s “One Jewish State,” Victoria Coates’ “The Battle for the Jewish State,” and Brendan O’Neill’s After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilization – present issues as important as the extraordinary military aspects of the war. The books are essential reading for an existential exam. Above all, we citizens of prosperous America need their inspiration.

Rick Richman is a resident scholar at American Jewish University and author of “And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel” (Encounter 2023) and “Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler” (Encounter 2018)..