When Joshua Leifer’s new book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, was ready to go to press, he feared he wouldn’t be invited to speak about it in synagogues. Instead, to his unaccountable surprise, a Brooklyn bookstore canceled an event because it featured Leifer and a Zionist interlocutor. In his book, Leifer argues that American Jewry is in decline because of the collapse of the non-Orthodox denominations, its abandonment of its labor-movement Lower East Side roots and entry into the bourgeoisie (fulfilling the hopes of those Lower East Side Jews for their children), and its strong ties to Israel, which he finds morally bankrupt.

Allan Arkush, in his review of “this sometimes exasperating yet frequently insightful and elegantly written book,” notes how greatly Leifer misunderstands the connection to Israel:

On the basis of his account, it would seem that American Jews paid scant attention to Israel before the Six-Day War. But then “everything about American Jewish identity changed in the flash of an Israeli Mirage fighter jet scraping over the Sinai Desert,” as Israel quickly and decisively defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

Leifer underestimates, to begin with, the extent to which the Holocaust was on American Jews’ minds at the time. He says nothing at all in his book about the impact of the horrifying testimony in the nationally televised Eichmann trial in 1961. . . . Eichmann, and [Leon Uris’s novel] Exodus, and concern for their own relatives and friends in Israel were foremost in the minds of large numbers of American Jews in May and early June of 1967 as they watched the siege of Israel grow more threatening and read about bloodthirsty marches through Arab capitals calling for its annihilation, while the world failed to come to Israel’s aid.

I remember well how more than a thousand deeply worried people congregated in the social hall of our synagogue in the evening of June 5, 1967, who roused themselves to volunteer unprecedented sums for Israel. I know that what they (and others like them all over the country) were soon to feel was not merely a burst of pride at the exercise of Jewish might but an almost incredulous sense of having this time finally escaped the noose.

Yet, writes Arkush, despite “his focus on Zionism and Israel, Leifer’s more fundamental concern is with American Judaism, which he wishes above all to wrench free from the liberal capitalist culture that he argues has weakened, if not ruined, it in all of its forms, with the partial exception of separatist Orthodoxy.”

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.