The Beckermans' Passover argument started as they recalled the "Ten Plagues."

Gal Beckerman of Brooklyn, who works in the New York offices of the left-wing Israeli party Meretz, was visiting family in Los Angeles for the holiday. And at the point in the service where participants spill drops of wine to remember the ancients' anguish, Beckerman offered a modern and, for some Jews, controversial suggestion: to remember the Palestinians, too.

"I made the point that we need to remember the suffering of even those who are committing harm upon us," said Beckerman, 25. "I got booed, basically."

Concerns about spiraling violence in the Mideast has taken on heightened intensity, as local Jewish families - many with personal ties to Israel - debate the latest bloodshed in the Holy Land.

Some, like Beckerman's parents, who were born in Israel, see Israel's recent incursion to the West Bank as necessary for the Jewish state's survival. Others, like Gal Beckerman, who was born in the United States, see it as overly aggressive and even immoral.

"It was a pretty tough argument," Beckerman's mother, Batia, said in an interview from Los Angeles. "He's a little bit more naive than I."

"We came from the left," she added, but she said of the Israeli army's position in the West Bank: "At some point, it needs to be done."

The protracted crisis also has strained other family relations.

Emmaia Gelman, 27, of the Bronx, a founder of Jews Against the Occupation, recalls a visit a year ago from a cousin, a soldier in the Israeli Army. It was tense. "Every time I looked at his hands, I just felt blood," Gelman said.

"I certainly understand the need for security," said Gelman, who organized a demonstration outside the Israeli consulate in Manhattan yesterday against Israel's recent actions. There's a difference between providing security and setting oneself up as a "violent oppressor of another group in the name of security," he said.

Elizabeth Wilson of Washington Heights said her relationship with her father has sometimes been strained by their disagreements over the Middle East.

An observant Jew, Wilson is critical of the Israeli government. Her father, who escaped the Nazis but lost members of his family in the Holocaust, is unbending in his support.

"Due to our family history, Jewish survival is very important to him," Wilson said. Describing her own view, she said: "I believe in the Jewish commitment to justice to all people."