This month, Israel's Ministry for Diaspora Affairs marked Diaspora Week by releasing a survey examining how Israeli Jews perceive their identity and their relationship with Jewish communities abroad. During the same week, rabbis and prominent Jewish leaders gathered in New York to redefine the core principles of the largest Jewish movement in the United States. Taken together, the Israeli survey and the resolutions adopted in New York point to a broader trend: within liberal Judaism, identification with the Jewish people is becoming more prominent than identification with religion or the nation-state alone.
The 2026 Diaspora Index surveyed approximately 1,200 Jewish respondents representing Israel's general Jewish population. Its findings indicate a dramatic rise in Jewish national identity. For the first time in a decade, 57% of Israeli Jews said they identify as Jewish before Israeli, compared with just 34% last year.
A record 87% reported feeling proud of their Jewish identity, up from 70% in 2022. Meanwhile, 66% described assimilation among Diaspora Jews as "a significant threat to the Jewish people," compared with 50% just two years ago. The sharpest increase came among secular and traditionally observant Jews, while the opposite trend emerged within the ultra-Orthodox community. Among secular Israelis, Jewish national affiliation climbed to 82%, up from 60% in 2022. Among the ultra-Orthodox, however, it fell from 82% to 56%.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog interpreted the findings as evidence that ties with the Jewish Diaspora are "a value of the highest order and an inseparable part of the state's national identity." Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli argued that the survey underscores the need for Israel to increase its investment in Jewish education abroad, describing it as "the foundation of Jewish identity, mutual responsibility, and the future of the Jewish people."
President Herzog also addressed, via video message, the opening of the Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism conference, held at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, one of the Reform movement's most influential congregations. The conference presented a decisive agenda aimed at placing Zionism and belonging to the Jewish people at the center of Reform Judaism, emphasizing that Judaism is not merely a religion but, above all, membership in a single people with a shared destiny.
"Our movement is, of course, a religious body devoted to God and the Torah," Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch said in his opening address. "But a large part of the Jewish world expresses its Jewish identity in secular terms, through a profound commitment to the Jewish people. Without Jews, there is no Torah. Jews do not derive their authority from rabbis; rather, rabbis derive their authority from the Jewish people. A Diaspora community that disconnects itself from Israel, where half of the surviving Jewish people live, has no future."
Speaking at the conference, author Dara Horn, who served on Harvard University Antisemitism Advisory Group following the October 7 attacks, argued that American Jewish leadership made a conscious decision in the mid-20th century to rebrand Judaism primarily as a religion. She said this shift, embraced even by liberal and humanist Jews, was intended to facilitate political integration into American society while distancing Jewish identity from racial classifications associated with Nazi antisemitism. According to Horn, however, that strategy came at the expense of the Jewish people's collective identity in the Diaspora.
"Jews are not a religion," she said. "Jews are a tribal people with a shared history, homeland, and culture. Jews are the People of Israel."
During the conference, delegates formally adopted a series of landmark resolutions affirming "unequivocally that the Jewish people, Reform Zionism, and a living relationship with the State of Israel are essential expressions of Reform Judaism and central to Jewish identity." The resolutions also explicitly called on the Reform rabbinical seminary to "cultivate and expect deep engagement with and commitment to the Jewish people, Zionism, and the State of Israel" among all candidates for ordination and professional leadership.
"We are living through a Herzlian moment," Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, declared, referring to the sharp rise in hostility and violence against Jews around the world. Calling for greater Jewish unity, he invoked the example of the Israel Defense Forces, where his son, Major (res.) Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed in combat in Gaza.
"There are no denominational divisions in our tanks or in our fighter jets," he said.
