There is a well-known line from The Terminator: “Come with me if you want to live.”
It works because it is neither poetic nor subtle nor inclusive. It is a direct statement of reality in moments of mortal danger, spoken when hesitation has serious consequences. Jewish history has always understood this kind of language instinctively.
Survival was never theoretical, and neither was the choice to act. Today, much of American Jewish leadership has forgotten how to speak this way, even as the circumstances that once required it have returned.
At the American Zionist Movement Biennial, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, one of the most prominent and emblematic voices of the American Jewish liberal establishment, offered what he presented as guidance for this moment. His keynote, delivered under the banner “Zionism: Many Visions, One Dream,” was eloquent, learned, and compassionate.
It reflected deep pastoral concern and intellectual confidence. It was also a refined expression of a Diaspora theology that no longer matches the world Jews are living in. If American Jews adopt this worldview as their operating system, they will be structurally unprepared for the realities already here.
“Support for Israel does not come with a moral blank check.”
That sentence initially seems responsible. It demonstrates ethical seriousness and restraint and aligns well with American moral discourse. However, in practice, it functions as a permission slip, a way to turn solidarity into a conditional agreement. It redefines commitment as temporary and turns peoplehood into a bargaining chip. In moments of real pressure, that distinction becomes crucial.
This is not just a personal disagreement; it is a civilizational debate about what endures under stress and what falls apart.
Cosgrove's importance here isn't because he alone has power, but because he expresses the main assumptions of the class that do. He represents a common worldview shaped in an era of unprecedented Jewish comfort, institutional security, and American liberal confidence. This perspective worked when Jews believed history was settled and that acceptance was lasting.
Now, it's being applied, without enough adjustment or humility, to a global Jewish emergency. The disconnect between inherited assumptions and current reality is the real danger.
Cosgrove opened his AZM keynote with a reflection on punctuation, questioning whether “Zionism: Many Visions, One Dream” merits an exclamation point or a question mark. It’s a clever rhetorical device, but it’s also revealing.
Zionism, in his framing, isn’t a decision but an ongoing tension: an effort to balance identities, values, sensitivities, and critiques without ever concluding the debate. He highlights pluralism, humility, and the need to avoid rigid boundaries. This framing isn’t just rhetorical flair; it’s the main point. Zionism becomes something to be endlessly discussed rather than definitively practiced.
In his book For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today, Cosgrove develops a more systematic view of the same worldview. American Jewish identity is seen as defined by hyphenation, moral discomfort with power, and anxiety about nationalism.
Jewish ethics, in this view, are best maintained through restraint, self-interrogation, and skepticism toward sovereignty. Power is something that must be constantly qualified, bounded by humility, fear of “blank checks,” and an ethic of restraint, rather than exercised decisively. What emerges is a Judaism deeply concerned with moral posture and very uneasy with responsibility.
'To be good Zionists, we must be better Jews'
The line sounds noble, even inspiring. It gestures toward introspection, ethical seriousness, and spiritual depth. But it quietly reverses the original purpose of Zionism.
Zionism was not primarily born as a moral self-improvement project. It was a response to Jewish powerlessness. Jews refined ethics for centuries, through prayer, study, argument, and universal values, and pogroms, expulsions, and extermination still occurred. Moral excellence without power did not save Jews then, and it will not save them now.
This worldview might have made sense in Manhattan seminar rooms and Upper East Side synagogues, where Jewish life felt stable, and history seemed distant.
It does not make sense in a world where Jews are being targeted, harassed, threatened, and sometimes attacked, across continents.
It does not make sense on campuses in California, in schools in London, in synagogues in Paris, or in Jewish neighborhoods in Melbourne and Toronto.
It also does not make sense in Israel, whether on the streets of Jerusalem or in the south of the country, where young Jews were murdered at the Nova music festival for no reason other than who they were.
This worldview is not being tested just in theory. It is being tested in real time, with real consequences.
Last week in Australia, that gap became impossible to ignore. On a public beach in Bondi, one of the most open, relaxed, and supposedly safe Jewish-adjacent spaces in the Western world, Jews were attacked in broad daylight.
There were no geopolitical abstractions present, no policies to debate, no “context” to analyze. There was only visibility, vulnerability, and hatred.
The attack was not a Middle Eastern anomaly or a uniquely Israeli problem. It was a Diaspora reality, unfolding thousands of miles from Jerusalem, in a country whose Jewish leadership has spent decades insisting that restraint, integration, and moral clarity would suffice.
Bondi did not expose a failure of policy; it exposed a failure of imagination.
October 7 did not create this crisis. It exposed it, revealing the gap between a Judaism trained in moral discourse and a world that demands preparedness.
A worldview that views Jewish power as morally questionable, Jewish sovereignty as conditional, and Jewish particularism as something that must constantly be justified is not Zionism. It is the refined language of exile, updated for a liberal North American audience.
The irony is clear: the theology that claims to protect Jewish morality actually leaves Jews vulnerable in practice.
This is not a rejection of ethics, pluralism, or humility, but a rejection of treating them as substitutes for preparedness.
Cosgrove warns against what he calls “litmus tests,” arguing that unconditional support for Israel has harmed Jewish continuity and that Zionism must expand its tent to include dissent and discomfort. The problem is not critique. The problem is redefinition.
When Zionism is recast as an emotional attachment rather than a civilizational commitment, it loses its purpose. It becomes a mood instead of a foundation.
Zionism did not develop to address Diaspora discomfort. It emerged to end Jewish powerlessness. It was a rebellion against passivity, against elite accommodation, and against a rabbinic establishment that had become disconnected from the realities facing young Jews. This is the part the liberal Jewish world prefers to forget: Zionism was a revolt against rabbinic arrogance.
A Judaism that detaches ethics from peoplehood eventually detaches ethics from reality.
In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, Jewish leadership failed in two main ways. One group of rabbis believed that emancipation, enlightenment, and universal ethics would ensure Jewish safety. Another thought Jews should passively wait for the Messiah, rejecting political action as heresy.
These groups disagreed on theology, but both shared a dangerous assumption: that Jews should not act as a sovereign people in history. Zionism emerged as a rejection of both.
Young Jews saw what their leaders couldn't see. Herzl didn't ask for permission. Ben-Gurion didn't wait for consensus. The pioneers didn't consult rabbinic committees before draining swamps, forming militias, or declaring independence.
Zionism was born as a generational rebellion against leaders who were learned, sincere, and catastrophically wrong. The arrogance of that earlier rabbinic class wasn't cruelty; it was confidence, confidence that intellect could replace instinct and ethics could replace power. That confidence proved deadly.
Cosgrove’s AZM keynote exemplifies a modern form of that same hubris. It is the belief that refined pluralism can replace strategic clarity, that holding multiple views is itself a form of leadership, and that the world will respond to Jewish restraint with understanding.
It assumes that hesitation equals maturity and that power must always come with an apology. That is not humility; it is overconfidence in intellect as a substitute for reality.
This hubris becomes clear when Cosgrove discusses generational rupture. He suggests that many young Jews face “marginalization twice over,” first from antisemitism and anti-Zionism, then from an organized Jewish community that polices dissent.
He further argues that for a “liberal Zionist disillusioned by the Israeli government,” anti-Zionism can seem like a matter of degree rather than kind. Once anti-Zionism is seen as adjacent rather than opposed, the boundary that gives Zionism meaning already collapses.
That is not sociological insight; it is ideological surrender.
History is unforgiving in this regard. In 1492 Spain and in nineteenth-century Germany, Jews were integrated, cultured, and essential, until they were not. These are not identical events; they reflect recurring patterns of elite misjudgment.
Jewish leadership prioritized intellect over instinct, ethics over power, and acceptance over sovereignty. The communities that remained the most resilient were those with strong internal boundaries, a shared language, and collective defense instincts.
Cosgrove’s theology aligns with those failures. It replaces strategic clarity with moral sophistication. It substitutes universal language for national resolve.
Jewish survival is seen more as a matter of tone than force. The world does not judge intentions. It does not reward nuance. It only tests one thing: whether a people are willing and able to defend themselves. History does not wait for consensus.
When Jonah is asked who he is, he doesn't give a hyphenated or detailed answer. He simply says, Ivri anochi: I am a Hebrew. That is not theology; it is identity under pressure.
A Hebrew doesn't seek permission to survive. A Hebrew doesn't confuse moral worry with virtue. A Hebrew knows that ethics without action is just self-praise.
Rabbi Cosgrove presents a form of Judaism that is meant to be admired. The era we are entering does not value admiration. Instead, it values readiness. Follow this mindset, and history will judge you accordingly.
Come with the Hebraists if you want to live.
Adam Scott Bellos is the Founder and CEO of The Israel Innovation Fund and the author of Never Again Is Not Enough: Why Hebraization Is the Only Way to Save the Diaspora. His work focuses on Jewish sovereignty, Hebrew revival, self-defense, and rebuilding Jewish identity beyond institutional complacency. He has lived in Israel and writes widely on Zionism, Jewish continuity, and the moral consequences of power and powerlessness.