“Do you expect most of your donors to come from the political right?”

The question caught me off guard. After more than 20 years in public-facing roles in the Jewish world, I’ve been asked just about everything. But this question, posed during an interview about my new position as executive director of IDF Widows and Orphans USA, landed differently.

Courtesy/IDF Widows and Orphans

A mother and daughter hold a memorial candle inscribed with a name in an undated photo.

I answered instinctively: The soldiers who gave their lives for Israel came from every part of the political and religious map. Why would the people who support their families be any different? I meant it then, and I mean it now.

But in the months since that interview, I’ve noticed something I didn’t anticipate. The most enthusiastic conversations — and often, though not always, the largest gifts — have been coming from donors who identify, or at least lean, right of center. 

I don’t ask people their politics, and I certainly don’t judge them; that is neither my job nor my interest. And yet, I work for an organization whose mission might arguably be among the least political in the entire Jewish world, caring for widows and orphans of fallen IDF soldiers, so the pattern appears worth noting because it suggests something deeper taking shape.

In Israel, IDF Widows and Orphans may be the closest thing the politically fractious nation has to a civic consensus institution. It is embraced across political parties, religious levels, ethnic groups and ideological divides. The work is seen as a basic moral responsibility — almost a given. No Israeli would imagine support for bereaved families as a political marker.

But in the United States, even responsibilities that once united us appear to be sorting themselves along partisan lines.

This is not because American Jews have lost their generosity. On the contrary: Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish communities across the country have shown extraordinary love and solidarity. They’ve been donating, volunteering, advocating, comforting, praying and giving with a fierceness that has truly moved me. Many have given, and continue to give, to IDF Widows and Orphans USA. Indeed, the need has never been greater: our organization is presently serving over 350 widows — 46 of them pregnant — and nearly 900 children, over 250 of them under the age of 5. I see the depth and impact of our supporters’ commitment every day.

But the pattern of which Jews feel most “at home” supporting this work hints at something new.

We have data points to help explain it. A 2024 American Jewish Committee survey found that 85% of American Jews believe U.S. support for Israel remains important after the Oct. 7 attacks, and more than half said they feel more connected to Israel or to their Jewish identity because of it. At the same time, Pew data showed wide denominational gaps in emotional attachment to Israel even before the ensuing war in Gaza — and those denominational identities often overlap with political ones. Meanwhile, partisan views of Israel have shifted dramatically among Americans. We are Americans too; it would be surprising if those currents didn’t touch us.

But must they reshape this?

Jewish life has always been full of argument: joyful, creative, sometimes agonizing argument. We don’t shy away from disagreement — we thrive on it, and even celebrate it in our teachings.

But historically, we also hold certain responsibilities above politics. Supporting bereaved families in Israel used to be one of them. It was the kind of thing that sat outside the arena of debate. The kind of thing we simply did because we were one people.

In recent months, standing in living rooms in Israel with widows and children whose lives have been shattered — families who never asked to become symbols of anything, families whose loss owes nothing to the left or the right — I’ve felt something dangerous creeping into our communal life: the sense that even this sacred responsibility is being filtered through ideological identity.

And that worries me far more than any fundraising trend.

Because this is not a question of policy. It is not a question of ideology. It is a question of identity.

It is a question of whether we still see one another as part of the same people — even when we disagree about Israel, or American politics, or the thousands of things Jews disagree about. It is a question of whether the pain of a widow in Haifa or a child in Be’er Sheva still feels like our pain, not the responsibility of someone else’s “side.”

If we begin to decide which parts of the Jewish story belong to us based on our politics, then we are in danger of something far more serious than a dip in donor diversity. We risk fraying the very fabric that has held us together through centuries of exile, struggle, return, and renewal.

I don’t pretend to know exactly where this trend leads. But I know this: The moment we allow the politics of the hour to determine which Jewish obligations feel like “ours,” we lose more than unity. We lose something essential to who we are.

And when I think back to that interview question — “Do you expect most of your donors to come from the political right?” — I realize that maybe it wasn’t really about donors at all.

Maybe it was about us.

Daniel Elbaum is the executive director of IDF Widows and Orphans USA.