Rabbi Jay Michaelson’s recent essay in the Forward on Judaism and the war in Gaza is thoughtful and engaging, but it falls into the trap of oversimplification. His approach is to frame Jewish opinion through a single theological lens — universalism versus particularism — as if all arguments flow from that divide. By casting Jewish positions in neat theological terms, he reduces a tangled reality into a single axis. That may make for a tidy narrative, but it obscures the real forces at work in Jewish communities and misrepresents the debates consuming synagogues, families and institutions.
Michaelson suggests that Jewish attitudes toward Gaza can be explained largely by whether Jews view themselves as part of a universal faith or as a particular, even superior, people. There is some truth to that, but it ignores the lived realities of history, politics and memory that shape opinion more profoundly than abstract theology. The danger of this framework is that it flattens anguish into ideology and robs communities of the complexity with which they grapple.
Start with the Holocaust. For many Jews, support for Israel’s military power does not come from disdain for outsiders but from fear rooted in lived memory. The conviction that Jews must never again rely on others for survival is not elitism but necessity. This trauma shapes secular Jews as much as the Orthodox community, and it remains a powerful undercurrent in how many respond to Gaza.
Pragmatism also plays a role. Some Jews support military action not out of zeal but because they see Hamas as implacable and believe deterrence requires force. Others oppose the campaign not mainly for moral reasons but because they fear endless war erodes Israel’s legitimacy, fuels antisemitism abroad and blocks any path to peace. These are political judgments, not simply spiritual postures.
Generational divides complicate the picture. Older Jews remember 1967 and 1973 as wars of survival. Younger Jews, shaped by progressive politics, view Israel as the powerful party in an asymmetric conflict. That gap explains much of the rift between Jewish leadership and younger activists — a rift no theology can fully explain.
Nor can Jewish opinion be understood without global context. Soviet émigrés, Mizrahi families and Ethiopian Israelis bring experiences of persecution and displacement that inform their views of Israel’s security. These stories matter as much as the debates over chosenness that Michaelson emphasizes.
And, of course, American politics intrude. Jewish debates over Gaza often track partisan divisions in the United States, with conservatives aligning more closely with Israel’s right-wing coalitions and progressives adopting the language of social justice movements. The result is polarization that mirrors, and is magnified by, America’s political culture.
None of this is to deny that Judaism has long wrestled with the balance between universalism and particularism. But to treat that tension as the key to understanding Jewish opinion on Gaza is to miss the point. Jews are not choosing between compassion for all humanity and loyalty to their own. They are weighing memory, fear, pragmatism, politics and ethics — all in the shadow of an agonizing war.
What Michaelson overlooks is precisely what makes the current moment so painful. Jews are not caricatures of theology; they are human beings trying to reconcile survival with morality and loyalty with justice. That complexity cannot be captured by a simple binary. Any analysis that insists otherwise risks deepening the very divisions it claims to explain.
