Within Jewish congregations, disagreements about Gaza and the term “Zionism” are stirring fierce debate. An inside look at one synagogue in crisis. Plus:

• How to poison an ocean
• Ben Lerner and the impossible interview
• The N.B.A.’s tanking crisis

Eyal Press A contributing writer who covers politics and social justice

Like many Jews, I get queasy whenever I hear someone attribute a thought or an opinion to “the Jews,” as though the Jewish people are a monolith. Lately, about a certain subject in particular Jewish people are all too often assumed to be of one mind: Israel. The assumption is a fallacy, revealed by the growing ranks of young Jews who have joined groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and by a Washington Post poll which found that as many American Jews opposed the war in Gaza as those who supported it. Indeed, a deep rupture has formed within the American Jewish community over Israel and, by extension, over Zionism.

In the course of the past two and a half years, this rupture has created increasingly tense conditions inside synagogues and other Jewish institutions. For a piece in this week’s issue, I examine how these tensions played out at Congregation Beth El, a synagogue in South Orange, New Jersey, where a sign greeting visitors stated “We Stand with Israel,” and became a flash point of controversy.

Some of the people I interviewed for the story, including Beth El’s senior rabbi, had, since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israeli communities along the Gaza border, intensified their commitment to Zionism and to Israel. Others, appalled by the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza, no longer identify as Zionists. The conflicting feelings aroused by the war came to a head last fall, when a member of the congregation decided to display his own sign, near the synagogue’s, reading “Starvation Is Against Jewish Values: Our Support of Israel Cannot Be Unconditional.” He was threatened with arrest and with banishment from the synagogue. And yet, some other members supported his act; a few even came out to stand alongside him. It’s a clash that encapsulates the deep, complicated schism among Jewish people right now.

The lack of unity is clear. Far less clear is whether synagogues like Beth El—which also has a “Big Tent Judaism” sticker on its front door, nodding to a movement that sought to welcome those who were previously excluded, such as interfaith couples and queer people—will be willing to accommodate the differences that have arisen since the war in Gaza began. “For this generation, and for me,” one Beth El member told me, “Big Tent Judaism is about divergent views on Israel.”