Politics & Power Quote by Norman Lamm

Lamm is doing something quietly radical for an American Modern Orthodox audience: he’s prying apart identities that often get packaged as one. “Modern Orthodox,” “religious Zionist,” and “pro-Israel” are frequently treated in public discourse as a single political bloc. His first move is to puncture that assumption without repudiating Israel itself. The phrase “at the present juncture” is doing diplomatic heavy lifting. It signals contingency, not rupture: this isn’t a permanent divorce from Israel, it’s a time-bound moral and theological discomfort with specific state actions.

The subtext is communal triage. Lamm is speaking as an educator and institution-builder who knows that loyalty tests can fracture communities faster than any outside criticism. By emphasizing “identify with what the Israeli government does,” he reframes dissent as a question of identification rather than allegiance. You can be committed to Israel’s existence while refusing to morally co-sign every policy choice.

The context is the disengagement from Gaza (2005), a seismic event for religious Zionists who viewed settlement not merely as politics but as a religious mandate. Lamm’s line acknowledges that for many, disengagement wasn’t a policy disagreement; it was experienced as the state turning its power against a messianic-inflected project. He’s also anticipating how American Jews get read from the outside: if Israel does X, “the Orthodox” must endorse X. His intent is to make room for principled dissent inside a tradition often caricatured as monolithic, and to remind listeners that religious commitment doesn’t abolish political conscience.