Editor’s Note: Mijal Bitton, PhD, is the spiritual leader of the Downtown Minyan in New York City and a sociologist of American Jews. I have heard from many young Jews around America newly awakened to their Judaism. These young Jews have different backgrounds and political views, but they share the life-altering experience of deep disillusionment with previous professional or social homes. Young American Jews today are realizing that they, too, can be made to feel unwanted in their own homes. But for most of us American Jews, Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in their historical homeland.

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