Support for Israel is a key component of the religious identity of many Jewish adults ages 45 and older in the United States, but younger Jewish adults are more likely to prioritize other forms of connection, like celebrating Jewish holidays, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
That suggests the generational divide on Israel’s actions since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war in Gaza extends beyond politics to religious identity.
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“I pray for people in the land of Israel. I don’t need to pray for the state,” said Cameron Bernstein, a 27-year-old medical student in New Orleans. She was raised with strong ties to Israel, where she celebrated her bat mitzvah, but said that now “it doesn’t play a role in my life, more than another country with people I love.”
The survey of 1,022 Jewish adults from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that this split on support for Israel is particularly apparent among adults like her who identify as religiously Jewish. Jewish adults who are religiously unaffiliated but identify as Jewish in other ways tend to have less of an emotional connection to Israel in general.
Among the religiously Jewish adults — who make up 68% of Jewish adults overall — about 6 in 10 say that being Jewish is “extremely” or “very” important in their life, regardless of their age.
But about half of older religious Jewish adults say that supporting Israel is “extremely” or “very” important for their Jewish identity, similar to the percentage who say that about celebrating Jewish holidays. By contrast, only about 4 in 10 younger religious Jewish adults emphasize support for Israel, while about 7 in 10 say celebrating Jewish holidays is highly important.
Susan Boyer, 72, from Southern California, equates supporting Israel with supporting the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland in the Middle East.
Like many other Jewish Americans, the retiree believes Israel is an essential refuge against the possible repetition of large-scale massacres of Jewish people, like the Holocaust, especially as concern about antisemitism rises among Jewish adults.
“I’ve been defending myself as a Jew since I was a child ... getting mugged by girls in my classes for being a Jew,” Boyer said. “It’s invasive into your daily living that you have to constantly, constantly be defending yourself as a Jew, constantly making sure that nobody is redefining you or nobody is like insulting your land.”
To Ari Pollack, a 30-year-old arts fundraiser in Wisconsin, Israel’s military operations — especially in the last few years — provide fodder for antisemitism and thus make everywhere less safe for Jews.
“I’m personally pretty opposed to basically everything Israel’s doing these days,” said Pollack, who grew up attending religious school. “A source of a lot of frustration that I have for the Jewish establishment is that sort of dogmatic teaching of pro-Israel ideas that I’ve had to unlearn as an adult. And it’s part of what’s kept me away from, you know, attending regular synagogue services.”
Like about 3 in 10 religious Jewish adults under 45, Pollack says that Israel has committed genocide during the war in Gaza, a charge that Israel has vehemently denied. That’s compared with about 2 in 10 Jewish adults ages 45 and older.
The poll suggests that other elements of Judaism remain important to many younger Jewish adults. Americans under 45 who identify as religiously Jewish are more likely than older Jewish adults to say that marking or celebrating Shabbat or avoiding certain foods, like pork or shellfish, are highly important to their Jewish identity.
Phoebe Wapnitsky, a 32-year-old in Connecticut, also strongly opposes Israel’s military actions, which she perceives as unaligned with Jewish values.
“Standing against oppression, promoting social justice — those are the roles that Judaism plays in my life,” she said, adding that she felt disconnected from Israel even before the Oct. 7 attack.
Brian Ebarb, a 47-year-old attorney in Louisiana, also says his Jewish identity was about “action and community” — but those include supporting Israel.
“When the government makes mistakes, it should be criticized,” he said, but added that shouldn’t become an excuse for attacking an entire people. “The existence of the state of Israel is so precarious that we have to be careful and not allow criticism of Israel to become criticism of Jews worldwide.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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The AP-NORC poll of 3,040 adults was conducted June 11-17 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The poll included interviews with 1,022 Jewish adults. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points and the margin of sampling error for Jewish adults is plus or minus 5 percentage points.