Samuel G. Freedman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of eight books, including "Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry." The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) At sundown on May 19, Jews around the world will begin celebrating the holiday of Shavuot. It marks the day in antiquity when Moses and his followers received the Torah at Mount Sinai. And, in modern times, Jews are urged to think of themselves "standing again at Sinai," renewing their covenant with God and each other.

The Jewish national movement of Zionism, a kind of secular religion, offered a parallel way of unifying Jews in the cause of creating and sustaining modern Israel. Though relatively few American Jews ever immigrated there, multitudes enacted their Zionism with financial support and political advocacy.

Samuel G. Freedman

This year, however, Shavuot will arrive as a painful travesty for the vast majority of American Jews. The events that unfolded in the Middle East on May 14 put an almost unbearable strain on the covenant between the two largest Jewish communities in the world, one in the United States and the other in Israel.

On that date, the 70th anniversary of Israeli statehood, Israel military forces killed more than 50 Palestinian protestors and wounded another 2,700 in a confrontation, as marchers tried to breach the security fence on the Gaza border. At about the same time, the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem turned into a virtual worship service for President Donald Trump.

In normal circumstances, a consensus of American Jews would have unreservedly cheered the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Jews of all stripes regard as the national capital despite international refusal to do so. In most other periods of terrorism, armed conflict or outright war, American Jews have readily rallied to the side of the Jewish state.

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