‘I resigned from my synagogue because I disagree with its stance on Israel’

Sharon, 41, who ultimately left the Masorti shul due to its “wishy-washy” stance on Israel and Zionism, is among a steadily growing faction of disenchanted Jews who are leaving their synagogues over political differences, part of an exodus spurred by community responses to October 7. And the problem is flaring on both sides of the aisle: while staunch Zionists are leaving shuls that purportedly equivocate too much, critics of Israel are leaving shuls that do not sufficiently acknowledge Palestinian suffering.

“Frankly, I felt shame about what Israel was doing,” says Carrie, 66, who left her United Synagogue (US) shul last year when she felt its leadership failed to provide upright “moral guidance” on Israel and its conduct in Gaza. “I was born in the Fifties, and I was brought up with very distinct memories of the Holocaust, which shaped my understanding of how you treat people and also gave me my passion for fighting racism.”

During her shul’s 2024 Yom Kippur service, Carrie says the congregation was issued pamphlets outlining the Jewish connection to Israel with “no mention of Palestinians, as if they didn’t exist”. Disturbed by this omission, she requested a meeting with the rabbi, who “basically said that Israel didn’t go far enough after October 7, that they should have cut off aid and food for Palestinians entirely”.

“That is not part of the Jewish values I know and identify with, which say all life is sacred,” Carrie says. “And a religious leader should be a voice of morality.”

The United Synagogue, which has largely refrained from taking a political stance on the conflict and did not respond to recent requests for comment, released a survey to its members last month to better understand their views on Israel. In September, a US spokesman said they were aware of their members’ “diverse views on Israel” and wanted to determine “whether, and to what extent, they think that the United Synagogue should be reflecting what our members think more publicly”.

The results have not yet been released. 

Regardless, Carrie is now in the process of joining a Reform synagogue, whose leaders preach “a whole different perspective on Jewish teachings, and also a recognition of what was going on in Gaza”.

Sarah, 29, also felt her Liberal London shul’s “one-sided” stance on Gaza went against the Jewish teachings with which she had been raised.

“It felt like the rabbi was able to speak very powerfully and with great clarity on the facts of Israelis being targeted and antisemitism at large, but then didn’t afford that privilege to what was happening to Palestinians,” says Sarah, who is also a member of the Jewish group Na’amod, which advocates for the end of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Sarah says she has always felt “deeply Jewish” but in recent years has been attending shul more for a sense of community than religious worship. That sense of community has faltered, however, in the wake of October 7, as her critical take on Israel’s war conduct began to clash with that of her congregation.

“I’ve been called a self-hating Jew, and I’ve lost friendships over this,” Sarah says.

As a young person feeling ostracised from her community, she’s far from alone. New research by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), which analysed British Jewish views on antisemitism, Israel and Jewish life two years after October 7, found that 30 per cent of 16 to 29-year-old Jews said they “do not feel very well accepted” or “do not feel accepted at all” by the Jewish community. Of those respondents, 75 per cent cited their views on Israel/Zionism as the prevailing reason.

The study also noted an increase in anti-Zionism or critical views of Israel and Zionist ideology over the past three years, especially among younger Jews. Forty per cent said the country’s war conduct in Gaza has weakened their attachment to Israel, and 51 per cent say it directly clashes with their Jewish values.

Earlier this year, Sarah and another member of her synagogue wrote an open letter to their rabbi expressing their feelings of ostracisation. “It basically said that as the younger generation who’s grown up here, we just don’t feel listened to or represented, and you are losing us – we’re joining other synagogues or we’re leaving synagogues completely, which is really sad because we still want to be included in Jewish life,” Sarah says. “We wrote that we wanted to have respectful, public conversations among people who may disagree, but also that we wanted him to address the issue in his sermons.”

According to Sarah, 29, other young people in the synagogue signed the letter, which they sent to the rabbi ahead of the High Holy Days this year. She says the rabbi responded warmly, thanking the signatories for sharing their concerns and vaguely promising to talk about the issue on the bimah.

“Then the High Holy Days came around, and his sermon was disappointing,” Sarah says, explaining that while he mentioned the importance of having difficult discussions, “he didn’t acknowledge the roughly 70,000 Palestinians now dead”.

When he approached Sarah and her family after the sermon to ask their thoughts, “he actually admitted that he felt Israel was committing crimes against humanity, but he didn’t feel able to say that up on the bimah”.

“It was really shocking,” Sarah says. “He told us that he wanted the shul to be a safe space for everyone and didn’t want to lose people, which I totally get; there are people in our congregation whose children are soldiers in the Israeli army.

“But there are respectful and safe ways that we can disagree, and I think we need our leaders to be able to facilitate that. And right now, they’re really not,” Sarah says.

She isn’t the first disaffected shul-goer to suspect that her rabbi holds one belief publicly and another in private.

For Mandy, 54, her rabbi’s oscillation and equivocation after October 7 was the main reason she left her Progressive synagogue in December 2023 – though for the opposite reason to Sarah’s.

“The stance the shul took was a little bit cowardly – it was always ‘let’s pray for peace’, whereas I thought this was the time to unconditionally condemn this terrorist organisation,” Mandy says. “When I spoke to the rabbi one-to-one, it was fine, but then I’d go to shul after and what was being said from the pulpit wasn’t reflective of what we discussed in private.”

Mandy, a lifelong secular and “firmly Zionist” Jew, joined a synagogue for the first time several years ago so her son could have a bar mitzvah, and chose her shul for its socially liberal values.

But after October 7, she felt that the “kumbaya” mentality espoused by many members of her Progressive community was “naive”, and believed her rabbi’s public equivocation on the matter of Israel came from a place of fear.

“In a synagogue, you should be able to say what you think, and that includes the rabbi,” Mandy says. “Obviously it requires a certain courage; I know I change my approach to the subject slightly when I’m with non-Jewish friends, because you play to your audience a little bit. But when my rabbi stood on the bimah and just went along with what was probably the majority view of my shul, I not only felt unrepresented, I came out feeling really frustrated.”

Rabbis from Orthodox denominations declined to comment on how they address the divisions in their congregations.

However, a spokesperson for the Masorti movement said: “Masorti Judaism is Zionist. Within that, we acknowledge that there are many shades and flavours of expressing love for the land, people, and state of Israel.

“We encourage and empower such diversity, believing that our passion for Israel is stronger due to its wide-range of expression.”

Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy, the Co-Leads of the Movement of Progressive Judaism, said in response to our request for comment: “Within the Jewish community, we know people hold profoundly different views on Israel. That diversity is not a weakness of our community, but its strength.

“Our task is to model what it means to disagree well, to argue with integrity, to listen with compassion, and to stay in relationship even when it’s hard - because when we do this, Jewish life is at its best,” they said.

London-based David, 65, has also noticed a discrepancy between Jewish leaders’ private and public views, the latter of which purport to be the most representative among British Jews. That there exists such a consensus, David believes, is a fallacy.

“If there is indeed a singular British Jewish community, its view is very wide: from very strong right-wing Zionists to liberal Zionists and, beyond that, non and anti-Zionists,” David says. “So I don’t think any singular organisation can determine that it’s the voice of British Jews, nor should it try to be.”

Last year, David stepped down from the Board of Deputies after more than a decade, disillusioned by what he felt had become an “obsolete” attempt to speak on behalf of a tensely divided community. This point was driven home in the BoD leadership’s response to the Financial Times letter debacle earlier this year, when 36 deputies signed an open letter condemning Israel for breaking a ceasefire in Gaza and calling for an immediate end to the violence.

The BoD answered by distancing itself from the signatories of the letter, sanctioning the 36 dissenting deputies on the grounds that they had given the impression they represented the views of the board, and thereby of British Jewry. David, who is close to two of the signatories and agreed with the letter’s message, was astounded.

“Most of the things that were said in that letter were, as far as I’m aware, what the leadership of the board would have all believed,” he says. “There is this knee-jerk reaction within British Jewish organisations in general whereby if somebody says something critical of the Israeli government and does so publicly, they immediately want to run for shelter and disown the person. Whereas they could just back up their people, say ‘we accept there are other views, we can’t take a single view, so we just have to weather it’, and that’s it.”

However, a Board of Deputies spokesperson called it “a democratic organisation that proudly engages across the broadest spectrum of views from British Jewry of any communal body”, adding that if our interviewees wish to get in touch, they “would of course be happy to consider their perspectives too”.

David is considering leaving his Reform synagogue over its handling of the BoD issue, which has rippled out to impact Jewish organisations across the country – with some proclaiming the BoD doesn’t speak for them, and others huddling closer under its banner.

“These spaces have become too toxic for real dialogue to take place, so I don’t think there’s any way back from where we are,” he says, pointing out that left-wing Jewish groups that are critical of Israel – like Na’amod – are still considered “outside the tent” for the BoD.

The result is an ever-widening schism within the Jewish community, which is reflected in British Jewish voting patterns, too; a JPR study recently found that Jewish support for central Labour and Conservative parties plummeted from 84 per cent in 2020 to 58 per cent in 2025, with disaffected British Jews turning instead to either the left-wing Greens or the right-wing Reform UK.

Synagogues and their leadership seem unprepared – or unwilling – to confront the growing divide, but some of the more staunchly pro-Israel shul-goers aren’t willing to put aside their differences either.

“I don’t feel the need to be fair about this,” Sharon says. “Israel’s not perfect – no country is – but for me all of that is a distraction. I personally think anti-Zionist Jews are as bad or worse than our enemies. I don’t know how you can engage with people who have internalised antisemitism and have suicidal empathy with the people that want us dead.”

While Mandy concedes that the only way to achieve Jewish unity is through “public, honest, robust conversations”, she adds that, like Sharon, she has no interest in speaking to Jews who don’t identify as Zionists: “I would call myself a left-wing Zionist, and I can have a conversation with a right-wing Zionist, but I really don’t care to speak to anti-Zionists,” she says. “I’ve had too many arguments.”

But those on the other side of the aisle, similarly unsure how to move forward with their diametrically opposed counterpart, believe there must be a way to find common ground.

“I feel really sad about the whole thing,” says Sarah.“But I do believe that people can talk to each other when they disagree and that we can reach a space where we might understand one another better.”

For Carrie, those difficult conversations “very much belong in synagogues and should be addressed by rabbis. Just like the Torah can be interpreted in many different ways, there are many different ways we can and should be able to interpret our relationship to Israel.”

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*All names changed for anonymity