Jewish leaders grapple: Engage or exclude extreme views?

The following article first appeared in the eJewishPhilanthropy newsletter "Your Daily Phil" on March 13, 2025. Do you build boundaries or a big tent? What’s a reasonable position and what’s beyond the pale? By allowing extreme positions, do you risk alienating the center?  

These are some of the questions that American Jewish leaders are facing in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks and amid growing polarization, according to a new study by Enter: The Jewish Peoplehood Alliance, based on surveys from 75 organizational leaders from last summer, which was shared with eJewishPhilanthropy's Judah Ari Gross.

Titled “American Jewish Leaders Holding Communities Together Post-October 7,” the survey includes responses from “high-profile professional and lay leaders of national level organizations in the American Jewish community,” including the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish Funders Network, the JCC Association of North America, Maimonides Fund and a number of Jewish federations and family foundations. The respondents did not include expressly Orthodox or Haredi organizations. (Disclosure: This reporter also completed the survey.)

The survey, conducted by sociologist Ezra Kopelowitz, found that this group was divided on how best to balance broad engagement with all elements of the Jewish community and a desire to set clear boundaries on what are and aren’t acceptable views. The plurality — 28% — favored engagement with right-wing and left-wing perspectives but not the extremes of either. Twenty percent favored engagement with everyone, from the far left to the far right, “believing that dialogue strengthens the community.” The same amount favored excluding the extremes to “prevent highly divisive voices from fracturing the community.” Nine percent favored engaging the extreme of their own position (left-wing groups including far-left voices and right-wing groups including far-right ones). And 23% favored a “mixed or situational approach,” depending on the specific context. 

“The balancing act between inclusion and boundary-setting remains a defining challenge for leaders committed to sustaining community cohesion and constructive engagement Jewish peoplehood that recognizes political diversity,” Kopelowitz wrote.

This divide could also be seen in how these leaders considered the Jewish participants in the anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses last year. Though a large majority of the respondents — 88% — believed that many of the protesters involved were antisemitic, that changed when asked about the Jewish demonstrators, with 14% of leaders strongly agreeing and 33% somewhat agreeing that Jewish protesters are, “also, in effect, antisemitic.” Meanwhile, 6% strongly agree and 40% somewhat agree that “many Jewish students in the protests are Jewishly engaged.” There was an even split among the respondents on what to do with these Jewish anti-Israel protesters, with 37% advocating outreach and 37% opposing outreach; the rest “neither agree nor disagree.”

In addition to shedding light on the views of these leaders as it relates to communal discourse, the survey also offers some insight into their demographic and ideological makeup. Of the 75 respondents, 62% identified as male. A large majority — 91% — were over 40, and 85% identified as Ashkenazi. The plurality — 33% — identified as Conservative, twice as high as the next most common responses, “just Jewish” (17%) and Orthodox (16%). Just 14% identified as Reform, despite this being the most popular denomination among people in this age range.  

Zohar Mandel, associate director of strategic partnerships at Enter, who oversaw the study and the organization’s overall “Peoplehood Pulse Surveys,” told eJP that the idea behind the survey was to document the current moment in the Jewish community. “It is an interesting time to know what's happening to that [leadership] tier,” she said, noting that Enter is following up with further surveys.  

While the study focused on what is happening within the American Jewish community, there are implications for how Jewish communal organizations interact with Israel as well. Would a Jewish federation or other organization engage with far-right Israeli figures and groups or with anti-Zionists? “We didn’t get into that here, but that’s also a question,” Mandel said.