Losing a Generation: Moral Clarity, Gaza, and the Soul of Judaism

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We are losing a generation of Jewish people and it's not because they don't care about Judaism, quite the opposite. But because legacy Jewish institutions—the very ones that claim to safeguard our tradition—have lost their moral clarity. In this moment of global suffering and devastating violence, especially in Gaza, too many of our institutions have failed to respond with the compassion, integrity, and prophetic vision our tradition demands.

Judaism, at its core, is not neutral in the face of suffering. We are a people who tell a story—over and over again—of liberation from oppression. We are the original liberation theology. We are commanded not to oppress the stranger, "for you know the soul of the stranger" (Exodus 23:9). We are told, explicitly and repeatedly, that justice is not optional. That pikuach nefesh—saving a life—takes precedence over almost everything else. Our rabbinic texts teach us that one who destroys a life, it is as if they have destroyed an entire world—and one who saves a life, it is as if they have saved an entire world.

And yet, too many Jewish leaders have gone silent. Too many institutions have prioritized political safety over prophetic responsibility. Too many are more concerned with who might be offended than with who is dying.

There is no justification for terrorism, no justification for antisemitic violence, and no justification for the taking of innocent lives—anywhere. But our moral compass must be strong enough to hold complexity. We must be able to condemn the killing of Israeli civilians and the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. We must grieve the hostages and grieve the children buried under rubble. Anything less is not moral clarity. It's moral collapse.

Young Jews see this contradiction. They see the gap between the Torah they've been taught and the silence of the institutions that claim to represent that Torah. They see Jewish leaders defending power instead of challenging it. They see a community that once said "Never Again" now hesitating to speak when "again" is happening—just not to us.

So they are walking away. Not from Judaism—but from a version of Judaism that has become unrecognizable to them. They are searching for communities rooted in justice, compassion, and truth. And when they don't find them in our legacy institutions, they build their own. Quietly. Boldly. Righteously.

And it's not just the young. In conversation after conversation, I encounter Jews of all ages—longtime synagogue members, community leaders, people who have given decades to these institutions—fed up with the lack of moral clarity. They, too, are questioning, searching, leaving.

We should not be surprised that a generation raised on prophetic values is unwilling to tolerate what feels like prophetic betrayal.

The answer is not to shame them. The answer is to listen—with the same radical attention our tradition demands when we hear the cry of the oppressed. To listen as if their moral distress might be calling us back to something essential we've forgotten.

The path forward requires returning to our sources—not just to justify our political positions, but to challenge them. We must open our hearts as wide as our ancestors did when they imagined a God who hears the cry of every oppressed person. We must reclaim a Judaism that is expansive enough to hold grief and outrage, complexity and compassion.

Because if we continue down this path of silence and selective empathy, we won't just lose a generation. We'll lose the soul of our tradition.

There is still time to return. To the Torah of empathy, compassion, and justice.

But only if we're willing to see the suffering of others—and let our hearts be broken like the tablets at Sinai.