Jessie Sander had just started a job at a synagogue in Scarsdale. But then a blog post she had written was found.
Last summer, Jessie Sander had been on the job at a Jewish school in Westchester County for less than a month when a meeting with her boss took an unexpected turn. Was she comfortable working at a Zionist institution? he asked.
Her boss, Rabbi David E. Levy of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y., had come across a recent blog post she had written that renounced Zionism and sharply criticized Israel, Ms. Sander, 26, said in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 25. The rabbi had questions: Did she support Hamas? When she called herself “anti-Zionist,” what did that mean?
Ms. Sander, who is Jewish, explained her beliefs to the rabbi and said she would not discuss politics in her classes. The rabbi said he agreed with much of what she said and later praised her as a good role model for their students, Ms. Sander said.
Then, one week later, Rabbi Levy and Eli Kornreich, the temple’s executive director, fired her.
When she asked why, Mr. Kornreich said “it’s just not a good fit,” she recalled. “In the earlier meeting, I was like, ‘Wow, here’s a manager who gets it and says, ‘No one should fire you for your political beliefs,’ then at the next meeting it was, ‘Oh, except for me.’”
Rabbi Levy and Mr. Kornreich declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement to the community, Warren Haber, the synagogue president, said it “made this termination decision after much consideration and in accordance with WRT’s religious mission.”
Mr. Haber said the synagogue’s work was based on the religious principle of Clal Yisrael, which calls for “strengthening our commitment to Israel and the Jewish people of all lands and working to establish understanding and commonality among the various expressions of Judaism.”
The firing of Ms. Sander drew rebukes from left-wing Jewish groups and highlighted a generational divide over Israel among American Jews that is driving some of Judaism’s most delicate internal debates: What is the relationship between Zionism and Jewish identity? When it comes to Israel, should there be limits to what employees or members of Jewish institutions can believe or say?
Ms. Sander began her job at the school last July and was fired 15 days later. Since then, she said, she has worked four part-time jobs to support herself, none of which provide health insurance or other benefits.
Her lawsuit, which was filed before New York State Supreme Court in Westchester, accuses the school of violating labor law by firing her “because of her uncompensated lawful recreational activity, outside of work hours, off the employer’s premises and without use of the employer’s equipment or other property.” It seeks her reinstatement to her old job, plus compensatory damages.
Debate over Israel, including sometimes strong criticism of its policies, is not unusual at synagogues in the United States, especially those that follow the Reform movement. The Union of Reform Judaism, an umbrella group of Reform congregations, describes itself as a movement that “accepts and supports the foundational aim of Zionism: the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.”
At Westchester Reform Temple, rabbis have criticized Israel in the past. In his Rosh Hashana sermon in September, Rabbi Jonathan Blake criticized “extremists, cynical political officials and wealthy patrons” in Israel for promoting “a grandiose vision of Jewish totalitarianism in the biblical Holy Land.”
But their critiques never challenge the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, as opposed to a state whose structure favors no ethnic or religious group.
In the blog post, published on May 20 during last year’s conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, Ms. Sander and a co-author, Elana Lipkin, wrote that they embraced a position that “rejects the Zionist claim to the land of Palestine.”
The post continued, “Zionism is not equivalent to, or a necessary component of, Jewish identity.”
They also described Israeli actions against the Palestinians as genocide and accused Jewish institutions in the United States of spreading “one-sided narratives and propaganda” about the conflict.
Marc Stern, the chief legal officer of the American Jewish Committee, said Ms. Sander’s lawsuit may have little chance of success because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that religious institutions have broad leeway in employment matters.
“It seems to me a complete nonstarter that any court would say that some doctrine — whether Zionism or any other doctrine — is or is not part of the faith that a school wants to pass on to students,” Mr. Stern said.
“The plaintiff in this case is saying, ‘My individual right to speak is being infringed upon,’ and that may be true,” he said. “But that comes up against other peoples’ right to say, ‘We want to form a community of people that share one set of beliefs, so you’re not welcome here.’”
“You can go and find another synagogue, or form a new synagogue, but you can’t force other people to accept your views,” he said.
Ms. Sander said she grew up in a Reform congregation in upstate New York, where she was elected president of the youth group and her mother taught Hebrew school, she said.
She described her family as Zionist but said she began to question those beliefs as a teenager in Hebrew school, when her class read a short story that included a debate between an Israeli and a Palestinian character.
“The Jewish tradition involves questioning and wrestling with complex ideas, which is one of the things I love about Judaism and especially Reform Judaism,” she said. “We are constantly in dialogue with these ideas that are way older than we are.”
Ms. Sander’s views on Zionism reflect a growing shift among younger Jewish Americans. According to a major survey published last year by the Pew Research Center, slightly less than half of American Jews under the age of 29 described themselves as feeling an emotional attachment to Israel, compared with more than two-thirds of Jews over 65.
The survey also found that 27 percent of young American Jews said caring about Israel was not an important part of what being Jewish meant to them, a belief shared by only 8 percent of those over 65.
That dynamic has begun to assert itself in the city’s politics as well. During Israel’s conflict with Hamas last year, the mayoral candidate Andrew Yang walked back a statement of support for Israel that might have once seemed like political boilerplate after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, called it “utterly shameful.”
Rabbi Blake, in his Rosh Hashana sermon, identified that trend as a source of concern.
He cited a 2021 survey of 800 Jewish voters from the Jewish Electorate Institute that found 25 percent of respondents believed Israel was an “apartheid state” and 22 percent said it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
“In such an emotionally charged milieu, with such hysterical rhetoric framing the public conversation around Israel, is it any wonder that our students feel worried and confused?” he said. “We should all feel worried and confused. I know I do.”
Peter Beinart, a Jewish writer who argues in favor of creating a single democratic state in Israel and the Palestinian territories, said younger American Jews have seen “a different snippet of history,” resulting in different attitudes than their parents and grandparents when it comes to Israel.
“For older American Jews it was easier to see Israel as a David versus an Arab Goliath,” he said. But younger people “are more likely to see Israel as a regional superpower that is fundamentally confronting the Palestinians, who are a stateless population that lack in various ways basic rights.”
Mr. Beinart is one of 78 Jewish writers, academics and activists who signed a public letter in support of Ms. Sander. He said he thought Jewish institutions should welcome people who hold a wide range of views about Israel.
“What I think synagogues need to do is host these conversations,” he said in an interview. “They need to be places for people who have strong views and for people who, frankly, don’t know what they really think, which is also a lot of people.”
Ms. Sander, previously a public school special-education teacher in New York City, was hired to teach the Hebrew language and a leadership class at the Jewish Learning Lab, the educational arm of Westchester Reform Temple. She said she believed the conversation with Rabbi Levy about her political beliefs, held within the first few days of working at the school, was the reason she was fired.
At one point in the discussion, Rabbi Levy asked her if she was “calling for a second Holocaust,” Ms. Sander said. “I physically remember the feeling I got in my chest,” she continued. “That is when I realized the conversation took a more serious turn and was a conversation about my career and future employment.”
