Dual Loyalty – ouch! It may be the most sensitive of Jew-hating charges in America. It effectively accuses Jews not of balancing two loyalties, but of lacking significant loyalty to America, the land they should love. So many Jews have done so much to fit in – changing our names, breaking our noses, abandoning our traditions – while contributing so much to America. From Broadway to Hollywood, from Harvard to Stanford, from “America the Beautiful” to “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” from DC and Marvel comic books to Facebook, from Philip Roth to Betty Friedan, from Louis Brandeis to Henry Kissinger, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Steven Spielberg, and from Antony Blinken to Jared Kushner, we keep proving our love of America – while making great contributions to the Great Republic.
Yet too many fellow Americans don’t trust us. An ADL study in June 2024 found that 51% of Americans believe American Jews have “dual loyalty” to Israel. Students ask me how to respond to charges from people claiming to support the Palestinians, of being more loyal to Israel than to America. And Donald Trump’s claims that Jewish Democrats aren’t loyal to Israel or, more recently, that Senator Charles Schumer “is a Palestinian … He’s not Jewish anymore,” also resurrected this long-standing, versatile, oh-so-insidious charge – with a twist. Now, we have non-Jews policing the Jews, but always with tests of allegiance, doubts that Jews are trustworthy, accusations that we’re not really American, no matter how ardent our pledges.
This Jew-hating trope has a long and multinational pedigree. It exposes Jew-hatred as the “longest hatred,” and the most plastic hatred – endlessly moldable, artificial, and occasionally toxic. “Dual loyalty” charges originally had medieval Christians and Muslims calling Jews heretical tricksters. As nationalism arose, haters shifted, questioning Jews’ patriotism from country to country. This shapeshifting slur fits what should be our new definition of Jew-hatred: an obsessive dislike of individual Jews, the Jewish community, Jewish tradition and values, and the Jewish State, which exaggerates the Jews’ or Jewish entity’s significance and wickedness.
Traditionally, dual loyalty didn’t just question the individual Jew’s reliability or integrity – it treated “the Jews” as particularly deceitful and dangerous. The dual loyalty charge resonated in medieval Europe and Enlightenment France, in British-dominated Iraq and Nazi Germany. The libel often united Far Right and Far Left in shared Jew-hatred: even when “the Jews” look like “us” and sound like “us,” they just aren’t loyal to “us.”
And, tragically, just as Zionism didn’t end antisemitism, it gave new life to the dual loyalty charge. Now, with most diaspora Jews proudly loyal to Israel too – 80% of American Jews call themselves “pro-Israel” – Zionism seemed to validate the dual loyalty charge. AIPAC became “the Jewish lobby,” overstuffing into one putrid three-word framing many traditional antisemitic tropes about Jewish power, chicanery and disloyalty. When African Americans fought South Africa’s apartheid regime with particular passion, suggesting their deep attachment to the land in southern Africa, I never heard one accused of “dual loyalty.” Similarly, I never heard that slur launched against proud Irish Americans like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, or proud Italian Americans like Frank Sinatra or Lady Gaga.
In our sick historic moment, when Hamas supporters who burn the American flag try saddling American flag-waving Jews with this charge, at a time when facts don’t count, and American Jews feel targeted even by close friends and role models, my friend Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz offers a defiant, courageous, countercultural response. Embrace the charge, he insists. Of course Jews have dual loyalty, he argues – because that’s a good thing.
On one level, it’s an argument profound in its simplicity: what healthy personality doesn’t have not just dual loyalties, but multiple ones? These days we all juggle different identities and, yes, loyalties. Somehow, it’s okay to be a gay Catholic feminist with a Marin County vibe or a Black Baptist man with a Southern California sensibility, but American Jews and Zionists have their juggling licenses denied. Others speak of “identity” – and that’s celebrated. With Jews, identity becomes a competing “loyalty” – and that’s condemned.
It’s fascinating how this widespread and often quite benign phenomenon carries such a toxic charge. It reflects Jew-haters’ animus – what’s normal among others become demonized when those obsessive bigots target the Jews – and especially Zionists. But that sting also reflects a long-standing fragility in American Jewish identity that preceded Oct. 7 and is now magnified.
The dual loyalty charge is a guided drone striking at the heart of American Jewish identity and American Jewish aspirations. America’s great gift was this red-white-and-blue invitation to fit in – how dare we stand out, and how painful it is to be called out for standing out!
America’s great gift was this red-white-and-blue invitation to fit in – how dare we stand out, and how painful it is to be called out for standing out!
Reb Nolan, being Reb Nolan, goes much deeper. His learned analysis combines the Biblical literacy of a great rabbi with the historical sensibility of a great scholar, peppered with the boldness of a great leader.
Fed up with American Jewish apologetics, Lebovitz leans into the charge. He celebrates his loyalty to the Jewish people, to Israel – and to America. He writes: “I am a Jew grateful to have been born and raised here in America. I pledge allegiance to our flag of the United States of America. I also recognize my shared connection with Jews everywhere. The Jewish people is my ancestry, and it’s my extended family. As part of the Jewish people, I maintain a loyalty to the Jewish state, the State of Israel.”
“I am a Jew grateful to have been born and raised here in America. I pledge allegiance to our flag of the United States of America. I also recognize my shared connection with Jews everywhere. The Jewish people is my ancestry, and it’s my extended family.“
Doubling down on this analysis – and his deep uncomplicated love of America and Israel – Lebovitz crusades for dual loyalty. By (to use woke-speak) privileging and centering our Americanism and our Judaism, we make a powerful choice. He elevates those two identities “above all other identities, such as political leaning, gender orientation, sexual preference, and socioeconomic class. For American Jews, this reorientation applies to our American identity as well as our Jewish identity.”
In a highly partisan, achievement-enslaved American Jewish community, this may be Lebovitz’s most challenging, countercultural, argument. Many American Jews keep downgrading their Americanism, Judaism and Zionism in favor of all kinds of other identities: as one student told me: “My mother would be angrier if I married a Trump supporter than a non-Jew – and she’s a rabbi.” Lebovitz is correct to call them out – and to understand that welcoming them back home to the blue and the white intertwined with the red, white and blue is essential for our future, while mutually reinforcing their identity journeys.
Many American Jews keep downgrading their Americanism, Judaism and Zionism in favor of all kinds of other identities.
Lebovitz builds his argument on a bold foundation. First, he calls out the Tikkun Olam Jews who essentially took the idea of Christian charity and put a kippah on it. He’s all for advancing justice. But Democrats must stop confusing their party’s changing liberal agenda with our enduring Jewish tradition and sense of peoplehood.
“We must continue Tikkun Olam programming,” he writes, “but we now see that it provides a false sense of belonging to a greater universal effort — while frequently diminishing the particular nature of the Jewish people and the unique bonds Jews share with one another.”
This subversive insight should reorient American Jewry. Rather than pivoting our identity around getting ahead or helping others – neither of which he objects to – Lebovitz insists: “Our defining American Jewish mission must be to cultivate our sense of peoplehood.” In these perilous times, “We must see our fellow Jews as our family, as our priority.”
This insight is particularly important because Lebovitz fears that this new burst of American antisemitism reflects America’s “decline.” Buttressed by thoughtful opening chapters tracing historical patterns that began with the Bible, he admits: “As Jews, we don’t like to discuss it, but we all know that previous diasporas have come to an end.” While still believing in “the promise of America,” Lebovitz wants to raise a generation of proud American Jews ready to defend America’s best self without sacrificing their souls, bending over backwards, apologizing incessantly, or anguishing around the clock.
In short, Lebovitz wants to restore, renew and reenergize American Zionism. In his first two chapters, he critiques Jew-hatred, and assesses patterns of diaspora Jewish life charted in the Bible and still shaping our historical rhythms and destiny. He identifies six cycles in each diaspora’s life, starting with Joseph and the children of Israel in Egypt: “entrance, adaptation, success, new treatment, explosion, and aftermath.”
The third chapter of this short, punchy, accessible book describes the Jewish “double helix,” the “interdependent relationship between Jews in Israel and Jews in America.” That’s why ultimately, as I wrote when he asked me to blurb his book, “recognizing that loyalty to America and the Jewish people ‘means a loyalty to Israel’ shapes his illuminating, inspiring, much-needed, deeply Zionist, conclusion: ‘For us, the most significant preparation is required within.’” Echoing Theodor Herzl, summarizing the founder of the formal Zionist movement’s insight, Lebovitz notes: “A sense of our peoplehood will lead one to Zionism, and Zionism will steer one toward our critical value of Jewish peoplehood.”
This reorientation updates the vision of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Zionist leader Louis Brandeis. Because America and Israel share values, interests, and, sigh, many challenges today, being proud Jews makes American Jews better Americans. “True,” Lebovitz admits, “we can be loyal American patriots without loyalty to Israel. However, the concept of a singular devout nationalist loyalty serves us no more.”
The result is a clear, proud, unapologetic, Ani Ma’amin – I believe: “American Jews today should all live as American and Israeli — as global Jews of a single people. I am proudly loyal to America. I am proudly loyal to Israel.”
Similarly, I argue in my new book, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream,” that Americanism, liberalism, and Zionism rhyme much more than they clash. True, you ultimately must choose one home address – and readers can feel Lebovitz’s love of America occasionally colliding with his yearning for Israeli life. But, like most American Jews, Lebovitz has made his peace with his life choice. He works on strengthening both America and Israel, both his American patriotic identity and his Jewish/Zionist identity.
With that in mind, American Jewry’s agenda should be clear: “a commitment to supporting Israel, fighting Jew-hatred, and reestablishing moral clarity.” And this can be achieved by visiting Israel more often, learning Hebrew, standing tall as Jews even when it’s uncomfortable, and teaching our children how to be tough, proud Jews by setting examples for them.
The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was wrong – as was much of the American Jewish establishment: The Antisemite doesn’t make the Jew. Instead, Lebovitz shows, the Jew makes the Jew. That’s why devoting too much of our Jewish identities, our Jewish energies and, yes, our Jewish institutions and budgets to fighting Jewish hatred is doubly distressing. First, it’s futile: “Just as the heart cannot resolve heart disease, Jews cannot resolve Jew-hatred.” Second, it distracts us from our main mission, which involves building up ourselves, our traditions, our people, and our homeland.
American Jewry is at a tricky historical moment. The explosion of antisemitism feels like The Great Betrayal, a break with much of the progress Jews and non-Jews have made, especially since the Holocaust. And the so-called “Surge” in Jewish identity opens up great possibilities – while risking the danger of creating “Oct. 8” Jews only defined by our haters. As a leading congregational rabbi, Nolan Lebovitz has been navigating these tricky currents since Oct. 7. His book builds on some of the lessons many have learned, without forgetting that the most valuable identity building blocks for us, individually and communally, both predate and transcend the Hamas horrors.
So, yes, he calls for a new generation of tough Jews, calling out the by now well-established American Jewish obsession with “trying to shield” Jewish children from “bitter” realities – as Jews, as Americans, as emerging adults. And he bravely calls out the blindspots in both parties, and both extremes along Americans’ increasingly all-or-nothing political spectrum. We must condemn the antisemitism of the Right – which takes out hatred against “the Jews” on individual Jews. And we must condemn the antisemitism of the Left – which takes out hatred against Israel, the Jewish State, on individual Jews.
Lebovitz also worries about the ongoing legacy of President Barack Obama’s coolness to Israel. Obama “meddled within the organizational structure of the Jewish community,” by propping up J Street, which fully intended “to distance American Israel policy away from the wishes of Israel.” This led to even more fracturing of the Jewish community’s organizational and political consensus around Israel. More disturbing was his engagement with Iran’s “pro-terror” Jew-hating regime. This further polarized the Jewish community – and blunted America’s moral standing. Other factors, such as the spread of DEI programs branding “Israel as a colonialist power” and the charged debate around Donald Trump, weakened and confused American Jewry long before the horrors of Oct. 7. “Sixteen years of Obama, Trump, and Biden have wedged the American Jewish community into an unpopular middle in a political system in which nobody caters to the moderate middle any longer,” he warns.
Indeed, these are tricky times, with American Jews worried about their country, their homeland, their neighbors, their children. But building a community of Oct. 8 Jews is not the answer – that will keep us reactive and dancing to the haters’ drums. Fortunately, American Jewry is blessed with leaders, thinkers and role models like Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz, who don’t let others define us or our agenda. By embracing his spiritual, political and ideological vision, and following his example, American Jews will embrace Zionism, rebuild Israel, revitalize America, and save themselves.
Professor Gil Troy, a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, the Global ThinkTank of the Jewish People, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath” were just published.
