In many Jewish families, generational rifts over Israel and Gaza News and features

PHILADELPHIA — Rabbi Lonnie Kleinman of Mount Airy was arrested three weeks ago at the U.S. Capitol for calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Shortly after his arrest was broadcast on Fox News, he received a text message from his father. He said he was deeply disappointed and that his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, would have been devastated if they were still alive, Kleinman said.

She and her father are not currently on speaking terms, she said.

“He’s acting from a place of wanting to protect the Jewish people and honor the legacy of his parents. And so am I,” said Kleinman, who is 32. “We’re just doing it in very different ways.”

Kleinman’s experience speaks to a growing generational divide that has become evident in Jewish communities across the city and country in recent weeks. National polls in recent weeks have found that younger Americans are far more skeptical of the Israeli government and America’s relationship with Israel than their older counterparts. In some cases, the differences by age were even more marked than the differences by party. A Wall Street Journal/Ipsos poll found that only 40 percent of respondents under 30 said the U.S. “has a responsibility to help Israel fight Hamas,” compared with more than 70 percent of people over 65 years old.

Even before the most recent violence, younger Jewish voters across the country were more critical of Israel than older ones. The Jewish Election Institute, run by prominent Jewish Democrats, conducted a 2021 survey of 800 American Jewish voters. The poll found that 38 percent of those under 40 — compared to just 13 percent of those over 64 — agreed with the statement “Israel is an apartheid state,” an analysis supported by the recent years by international and Israeli human rights groups, including Humans. Rights Watch, B’Tselem and Amnesty International.

In the Philadelphia area, which has one of the largest Jewish populations in the country, this generational disconnect has taken the form of grief, fury and broken conversations among loved ones who cannot see the crisis. Local stakes are being raised by a growing number of Jewish-led demonstrations against Israel’s escalating siege of Gaza.

Last month, Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 240 people hostage, most of them in the October 7 terror attacks, according to the latest figures from Israeli authorities. Since October 7, the Israeli army has killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza, including more than 4,100 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

At a protest and sit-in at 30th Street Station last Thursday, many of the activists, including Kleinman, wore black T-shirts that read “No in our name” and “Jews call for a cease-fire now.” Hundreds of young Jews, along with older Jewish activists and others, demanded a cease-fire call from the U.S. government.

“I was a chaplain in a hospital and I just thought, ‘what will happen to the hospitals (in Gaza) without fuel?’ No water?’” Kleinman said.

He grew up in a mainstream Jewish community in Tucson, Arizona; at home and in the youth group, he learned that Israel is a democracy under constant attack. When he turned 18, he studied in Israel on a gap year and spoke to Palestinians for the first time. Upon learning about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, he left Israel with the feeling that “people were being harmed and oppressed in my name and I didn’t even know it,” he said.

David Mandell, 55 and a member of the Rodeph Shalom synagogue, agrees with much of the criticism of Israel’s current government. But the bloodshed on October 7 brought fear and a familiar sense of dread to him, as did the ensuing public condemnations of Israel, in his view, uneven.

“Never far from the surface is the idea that a Holocaust or something like it could happen again. The attacks by Hamas were a reminder of that in Israel, and the world’s response was a reminder of that in world class,” Mandell said.

His two daughters, on the other hand, both under 20, “are much less forgiving of Israeli transgressions,” he said.

In interviews, Philadelphia Jews and their relatives described heated exchanges that veered from the academic—about the global history of Judaism and geopolitics in the Middle East—to the highly personal, touching on family memory. , trauma and obligation. Many families are experiencing what is effectively a microcosm of the heated debates playing out on college campuses, social media platforms, and workplaces.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar, 40, of Society Hill Synagogue, described the broad features of the debate among an older generation who see the Jewish people as perpetually vulnerable, even as they go through periods of relative stability and security, and sees Israel as the best. available protector of them, versus a younger generation less convinced that a formal nation-state is the way to provide security for Jews, and who see the Palestinians as the vulnerable population in need of protection.

There is, of course, a diversity of opinion within each generation, he added, and some families are very much in agreement between generations. Others, fearing an even more irreconcilable breakup, avoid the topic with each other.

Elya Piazza, 30, a rabbinical student who lives in Germantown and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies, joined the recent cease-fire protests organized by Jewish Voice for Peace at the United States Capitol, 30th Street Station, and the Statue of Liberty.

“Pretty much my entire adult life is spent learning our history and serving the Jewish people,” said Piazza, who also speaks and teaches Yiddish.

After being arrested at the Capitol, Piazza sent a message to his family group.

“Ideally I would have liked my mom to be proud of the work she was doing,” Piazza said. Her mother, Laurel Kallen, 70, responded to the message: “Glad to see you stand up for your ideals” with a heart emoji, along with an article about progressive Jews feeling abandoned by the left while the victims of Hamas attacks cry.

At this point, mother and son, both closely following the violence in the Middle East, barely speak to each other, each said in interviews with The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Kallen has a friend whose son doesn’t speak to his mother at all because of their disagreement, so Kallen has been hesitant to discuss the issue too much with Piazza, she said.

“It’s a fear I have, since they got so frustrated with me that they would cut off communication completely,” Kallen said.

In some families, intergenerational conversation is slow and difficult, but it is happening.

Zach Malett, 27, lives in West Philly and has spent the past few weeks trying to get his father to call his representatives and push for a ceasefire.

“I really think fundamentally that my Jewish upbringing made me a justice-oriented person, and I like to think that’s part of why I feel so strongly about it,” she said.

Zach’s father, Danny Malett, 57, said the two recently had what was supposed to be a brief daily phone conversation that ended up lasting nearly two hours. Danny Malett described himself as a “sandwich” generation between his own parents, who raised him with the belief that, basically, “without Israel, there would be no more Jews in the world,” and his children, who see Israel , at best, as a regional superpower imposing military control over a vulnerable population.

Recently, after difficult text conversations, Zach lent her two books to read about the history of the region.

“Would I read them on my own if I found them on a coffee table? I don’t know,” Malett said. “But Zach asked me to, and so I intend to keep the dialogue open.”

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