October 8 Jews: The New Jewish Awakening After October 7

Something unmistakable happened on October 8, 2023—the day after Hamas’s attack on Israel. As the shock settled in, Jewish students, professionals, and ordinary families looked around and realized the political and cultural landscape had shifted beneath their feet. The sudden appearance of pro-Palestinian rallies, campus encampments, and celebratory rhetoric left many Jews feeling blindsided. And as this disorientation spread, something else stirred: a deep ethnic re-awakening not seen in decades.

Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, was the first to give this moment a name. In coining the term “October 8th Jew” in an essay for the Times on the day’s aftermath, he wrote that “On Oct. 8, Jews woke up to discover who our friends are not.” A year later, Stephens sharpened the definition. “October 8 Jews,” he explained, are those who suddenly realized “how little empathy there was for us in many of the spaces and communities and institutions we thought we comfortably inhabited.” His call to action was blunt: Jews must “stop being embarrassed, equivocal or defensive about Zionism” and “exit the institutions that have disserved us.”

This awakening was not limited to columnists or pundits. Silvio Joskowicz of the World Zionist Organization described the October 8 transformation spreading across the Diaspora. He noted that Jews “previously distant from Judaism or Israel … felt an acute need to reconnect after the attacks,” identifying three groups: those whose bonds to Judaism intensified; “disillusioned idealists” who felt betrayed by liberal allies; and those searching for new communal ties after losing faith in traditional institutions.

Reform rabbi Josh Weinberg captured the emotional breadth of this moment by highlighting that “The ‘October 8th Jew’ is not only the Israeli survivor or mourner, but also the Jew in Boston, Nebraska, London, or Buenos Aires who woke up to existential reality.”

But while the framing was new, the phenomenon was not. Jewish life had seen a nearly identical rupture before—in June 1967, when the Six-Day War triggered what many describe as the first modern Jewish awakening.

On the morning of June 5, 1967, Rabbi Irving Greenberg remembered sitting “fearful that the Jewish people would face extinction for the second time in 25 years.’ When asked whether Israel might be wiped out, Greenberg’s response captured the raw terror of the moment: “They’re not going to wipe out Israel, and if they do, there’s going to be a sign up: The shul is closed.” There could be no Jewish faith after a second annihilation; the stakes were existential.

Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg later observed that the 1967 crisis united American Jews with “deep Jewish commitments as they have never been united before.” The war awakened Jews “previously untouched” by ethnic consciousness and transformed Israel into a global focal point of Jewish emotional loyalty.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel described the aftermath as a “new Jewish awakening… part of that miracle, a part of the Jewish victory.” Those who believed Jews were paralyzed by fear, he wrote, “clearly underestimated us.”

This awakening was not confined to traditional or right-leaning Jews. M.J. Rosenberg, then a left-wing anti-Vietnam War activist, recalled becoming “consumed by the threat to Israel,” shifting from casual interest to total obsession. Afterward he joined AIPAC, explaining: “The thought that Israel might be destroyed consumed me. It changed my life.” The war convinced him that “I will support no movement that does not accept my people’s struggle” in response to rising leftist pro-Palestinian sentiment.

J.J. Goldberg, former editor of The Forward, wrote that the 1967 victory marked “the end of one era and the beginning of another,” when Jews gained “pride in being Jewish” and felt Israel’s fate as their own. Scholars Steven Cohen and Leonard Fein later explained that 1967 shifted Diaspora Jewish identity “from integration to survival.” Israel’s fight for survival became “a symbol… of a new Jewish identity.”

What 1967 revealed was simple. Moments of crisis activate dormant ethnic consciousness, even among Jews who are perceived to be highly assimilated. Solidarity hardens. Identity intensifies. Fear becomes belonging. And in 2023, the same script re-emerged—with new actors, and a new generation discovering an old truth.

The post–October 7 awakening extended far beyond political conservatives. Israeli actress and noted liberal Zionist activist Noa Tishby described on Instagram how “the Jewish DNA has woken up.” In another post, she confessed, “I’ve always been a Zionist, but never militaristic… liberal, never overly jingoistic. Until October 7th.” For her, October 7 did not change her worldview—it revealed something deeper, older, and instinctive.

This instinctual activation showed up in data as well. The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) tracked what it called “the Surge” in Jewish involvement. It found that 43% of Jews in America sought to engage more deeply in Jewish life by March 2024. Further, 31% were still more engaged 18 months later, in March 2025—an extraordinary level of sustained ethnic mobilization. This was not a fleeting emotional wave. It was a structural shift.

Just as in 1967, Jews who felt fully integrated into Western liberal society suddenly rediscovered vulnerability—and, with it, their Jewishness. The sense of existential precariousness hardened political attitudes, reshaped communal life, and renewed mass identification with Israel across previously disengaged segments of the Jewish population.

As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water.