The newest Jewish Federations of North America survey has already generated its share of anxious headlines: Only 37% of American Jews say they identify as Zionists. Seven percent call themselves anti-Zionist, 8% non-Zionist and 18% aren’t sure. Another 30% say none of the labels offered describe them.

And yet 88% say Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state.

One eye-catching, and perhaps unsurprising, finding in the survey is that younger Jews are more likely to declare themselves anti-Zionists. Only 35% of Jews ages 18-34 accept the Zionist label.

But look closer and another intriguing generational breakdown stands out: Contrary to conventional wisdom, older Jews are not more likely to identify as Zionists. In fact, only 33% of Jews ages 75 and older say they use the term to describe themselves.

Why would the youngest and oldest cohorts in the study have strikingly similar attitudes about the word “Zionism”? (The only demographic with a majority [55%] of self-identified Zionists was millennials between 35 and 44.)

The answer may lie less in changing attitudes toward Israel than in the long, complicated evolution of a word.

For Jews now in their late 70s and beyond, the reluctance to use “Zionist” may have roots in how the term was used — or not used — after Israel’s founding. Middlebury College sociologist Ted Sasson, a scholar in residence at the Israel-based Institute for National Security Studies, argues that even when Jews were celebrating the establishment of Israel, they remained anxious about their own standing as loyal Americans and used the label more sparingly than we might assume.

“Zionism was always a minority political movement among American Jews,” said Sasson, author of “The New American Zionism” (2014). “They came increasingly to support Israel, but as the most powerful Jewish community in the world mobilizing support as an act of faith and commitment and responsibility, but not one that they would describe as Zionist.”

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, left, American Jewish Committee head Jacob Blaustein and Israeli Labor Minister Golda Meir announce their historic agreement on Israel-Diaspora relations at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in August, 1950. (American Jewish Committee Archives)

That ambivalence about the ideology of Zionism was famously captured in the 1950 agreement between David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, and Jacob Blaustein, a leader of the American Jewish Committee. Blaustein pledged that American Jews would support nation-building in Israel with their dollars and advocacy; in exchange, Ben-Gurion said Israel would not interfere with American Jewish affairs, suggest Jews should owe their first loyalty to Israel, or, crucially, call for large-scale immigration of American Jews to Israel.

The Jewish establishment’s views on Zionism were exemplified in Max Fisher, a Detroit philanthropist and general........

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