Hold Fast: Beyond Echo Chambers and Litmus Tests

​Judaism is not an echo chamber. ~ Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

Rabbi Buchdahl points to something that presses against my heart these days, especially when I think of my relationship with those closest to me: The need to be WITH each other, no matter our political differences when they come up. This is one such time. 

I share Buchdahl’s concerns about Mamdani, more for what his win legitimizes than anything. But this essay is not about Mamdani himself. It is about what David Horovitz, founding editor of the Times of Israel, calls “the dark practice of antisemites to depict Jews — and, in the decades since the revival of our ancient homeland was legitimized, to depict the Jewish state — as the source of all problems, global and, crucially, local.” [Times of Israel, November 5, 2025]

Anti-Zionism is a deeply established historical phenomenon* that has found fertile ground in today’s political and social climate. On an individual level, the movement demands Jews to pass a litmus test. Any community that makes this demand is not one you want to be part of. (And to be clear, I am not referring to criticizing, even decrying, Israel’s government, some of its policies, etc. That is not anti-Zionism, that is being an engaged citizen, human, and Jew.) 

For me, this has been a painful and difficult road, and also an eye-opening and in some ways an empowering one. It requires a constant grounding in knowing that my love of Israel does not mean I am trading my moral conscience. 

Quite the opposite: my love of Israel is integral to the foundation of my desire for and commitment to both the Jewish people’s thriving AND the commandment to care for and work towards justice for ALL people, including Palestinians and those right here next door in Springfield, Massachusetts and most importantly, the ones even closer in my own family. 

Beginning October 8 and right up until recently when I attended an event in Amherst sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and racial justice groups putting UMass, Smith, and Hampshire “on trial” for war crimes, I have witnessed a a continuous and growing environment of demonizing Israel in a *singular* way that makes “Zionists” equal to and at the heart of every evil thing – racism, power, war, and worst of all, Trump’s horrific crackdown on free speech specifically and democracy in general.  

It’s also true that antisemitism has been weaponized by the far-right, something the far left has seized on. Linking this to Jews calling out anti-Zionism is part of a very thick cross-hatch of issues that can make it feel impossible to move, much less breathe and find solid footing and true, spacious belonging that can accommodate a human wholeness that movements like Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) and SJP rigidly disallow. 

I dreamed a few nights ago about children in Gaza, haunted by their deaths. I will never stop criticizing governments that ignore the well-being of their citizens for their own motives, and there is no question in my mind – one of the few things I don’t have questions about, actually – that Netanyahu and Trump are iterations of the same evil.

It’s also true that so much as mentioning Hamas and pointing out the evils it has wrought on Israel and its own people has also become anathema in many progressive spaces – branded as deflection at best and defended as legitimate armed resistance at worst. 

The Israel-Gaza war could and should have ended sooner, and the trauma to both Israelis and Palestinians is deeper than I have words for. In the diaspora, a crushing casualty of this war is the way it has fractured Jewish communities and families.

Trump and Gaza have paved the way for anti-Zionism to become so loud, so normalized, and so insistent in progressive spaces that to say you stand with Israel can feel like a betrayal in and of progressive spaces. 

This is a trap. It can be a scary trap to step out of; the pressures are real. But anyone who will require you to declare hatred of Israel and/or Zionism, or expect you to slice them apart (i.e. Zionism is only a political movement) is not trustworthy or safe. Zionism is a sacred, cultural, land-based expression of yearning for a sovereign homeland where we, as Jews, can live, thrive, and bring the best and deepest of our values to life in ways that benefit not only ourselves but humanity. And it is inextricably linked to the well-being of Jews globally. 

This, of course, is part of what has become so muddled, the paradox being that the very notion of and need for Jewish safety has become a faultline for Jewish peoplehood and a source of fracturing and communal erosion. At the same time, I grow suspicious when the claim is that it is primarily Israel that has made Jews less safe, rather than looking at and calling out the very tangible ramifications of anti-Zionist rhetoric and demands. This is gaslighting 101, not unlike blaming a rape victim for what she was wearing. 

Trump and the horrors in Gaza have set the stage for these beliefs to spread like wildfire, so much so that you can buy a keffiyeh on Amazon or a cute baseball hat that says “Free Palestine” to wear on your beach vacation. The effect is that many Jews feel they must choose. 

You can be “too” Jewish, and you risk being associated with, or worse, complicit in, genocide and baby-killing. You can fly under the radar and keep your head down, distancing yourself from the nearly eight million Jews – mishpucha, am– who live in Israel. 

You can align with the place yourself – with a sense of complex and beautiful belonging – into the lineage and fabric of people who have yearned for home, made homes elsewhere in exile and diaspora, and had cycle after cycle of fitting in, thriving, being accepted, and embraced even, only to come up against the limitations and conditionality of that belonging. It can feel like a tightrope. 

Some even choose to root into loving Judaism and Jewish community while rejecting the connection and centrality of Israel. I admit I struggle to understand this every time I’m in services and reading the word “Yisrael” and “Yerushalayim” and references to the land, agriculturally, seasonally, and in terms of the rhythms and cycles of every aspect of our prayers, holidays, and daily life.

As Joanna S. Ballantine, who has been immersed in peace work since the early 1990s, notes, “Much of the delegitimization of Israel and Israeli Jews stems from a lack of understanding [if not an outright denial] of the archaeologically proven history of our indigeneity. Remember the Dead Sea scrolls, the city of David and cisterns under the old city and Masada? These are facts. Not fiction.” [Jerusalem Post, September 2012]

But this is not an entirely new trend. Many progressive Jewish groups have returned to a concept that originated in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century: Doikayt – “hereness” – that “resonates with today’s leftist American Jews who want to cultivate their Jewish identities separate from Zionism and are drawn to such histories of resistance.” [Moment Magazine, May 2024]

Here is what two such authors, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, conclude:

“Perhaps what is needed is a modern-day universalization of that concept: a commitment to the right to the ‘hereness’ of this particular ailing planet, to these frail bodies, to the right to live in dignity wherever on the planet we are, even when the inevitable shocks forces [sic] us to move. ‘Hereness’ can be portable, free of nationalism, rooted in solidarity, respectful of indigenous rights and unbounded by borders.” [The Guardian, April 2025]

I hear the appeal. Before October 7 and all that has followed, I may have championed this kind of language.

Now, I cannot read it without noting that Taylor was an original signatory of the 2024 manifesto, “Refusing Complicity in Israel’s Literary Institutions,” silencing and ostracizing Israeli writers at the very same time that many Israeli writers we protesting Netanyahu, calling for a return of the hostages and a ceasefire.  

This is an example of where anti-Zionism and BDS have become centerpieces of progressive spaces. In these spaces, there is no room for nuance, disagreement. On November 7, 2023 – just one month after 3,000 Hamas operatives raided southern Israel and committed acts of butchery and sexual violence that should have left no room for justification, Palestinian-American poet George Abraham, English Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College, wrote:

“If you’re reading this and you’re a US citizen, you’re actively committing a genocide right now in your passivity. If you’re not protesting and getting organized, you’re consenting to that genocide. This is not a matter of opinion or debate. Every single one of you. Regardless of how you voted. The masks are off. This is who you are. I dare you to prove me wrong… This is a time where we need to grow a collective spine and be braver and bolder.” 

Abraham is the writer in residence at Amherst College, and he was one of the judges of the Western Mass People’s Tribunal on October 25, 2025. Throughout the Tribunal, words like “decolonial urgency,” “imperialism,” “aristocracy,” “bourgeoisie,” “apartheid” “war profiteering,” “war mongering” and “racism” were rendered synonymous with Zionism. 

Combine this with author Hannah Moushabeck’s claim that “Palestine is the litmus test. It is at the center of liberation movements. Your inaction is action.” And the claim that “student protestors have never been on the wrong side of history.” And what you get is a movement where either you are “for” or “against” genocide. For Jews, the choice is more pointed: You are either a Zionist (and thus complicit in all of the evils) or you have seen the light and joined the righteous – and only – fight worth fighting.  

It is a seductive proposition, steeped in language of liberation yet masking a projection I found dizzying that day. I couldn’t help but hear the victim/hero narrative, one where there are good guys and bad guys, oppressed and oppressors, the chants of “SHAME!” from a frothed-up audience. I felt as if I was sitting in a meme come to life, where anyone with a different life experience and thus perspective, and certainly any self-identified “Zionist,” would be deemed an agitator, an outsider… and enemy. 

In a word, it felt like a cult. 

What was sad to me was the thought – a naive one, probably – that if a fraction of the hatred of Zionists was invested in working with those who wish to see strong democracies both in the US and abroad, imagine the difference we could make,  together.   

Well before October 7, Einat Wilf noted about the demand of BDS-driven spaces to renounce Zionism in order to receive acceptance. She also laid out the historical basis for such demands, which account to bullying: “The demand on young Jews to be less visibly and confidently Jewish as the price of social acceptance and toleration—which only found its most recent and visible expression in a Harvard Crimson editorial endorsing the boycott movement against Israel—is an ancient one.” [Tablet Magazine, May 2022]

This gets to the heart of my concerns, which have to do with the integrity, as in wholeness, of the Jewish people. It’s no secret that we aren’t a monolith. Never have been, never will be. Like any group, and perhaps even more so than some, disagreement and dissent are baked into our tradition. But these we pursue “for the sake of heaven,” i.e. inside a container strong enough to hold tension, contradiction, and the work of staying inside of a conversation that might conjure uneasiness. 

In the end, what all of this comes down to is my children, my hearts. חיים שלי – chayim sheli – my life, an expression I find so tender. To them I say: ​I am always with you. ALWAYS with you. Always WITH you. Always with YOU. Read it every possible way, forwards and backwards. 

The world feels upside down and inside out and my love for you is none of those. It is solid and liquid, everything everywhere all at once, ever moving and expanding and blanketing you in as much protection and peace as I can humanly offer. That is and always will be my center, my purpose, my biggest blessing. 

The rest? The rest is the stuff of life, of the world, of struggling with angels and sometimes even each other, because that is what Jews do. Apparently we do it well enough to have been around for many thousands of years, and I am very moved by the ways in which I see them continuing the tradition. 

Reaching this conclusion makes me feel uncannily like my mother, who used to write occasional long emails to me and my sisters when she couldn’t sleep. It gives me pause; should I keep my thoughts to myself? I used to feel burdened by her 5am missives. But now that she is nearly 82 and I am nearly 52 and my kids are at the early stages of creating and navigating their young adult lives, I see that her words, even when I bristled at them, were always heartfelt.

Maybe it is what parents do. We sit back and try not to interfere or meddle, not project or impose. But we also share, because that is how we transmit what is dear to us. Each generation will keep some and reject some, hopefully growing incrementally towards more healing and self-awareness than the one before. 

Before I started writing this, I thought I was going to comb through my 10 pages of notes from the Tribunal. What I realize now, upon concluding, is that it’s far more personal than a single disturbing event. It’s my best attempt at expressing my deep respect for my own kids’ grappling, feeling out the people and places that welcome them unconditionally, authentically and fully. 

It’s not about a politician, an election, a ballot, or any elected official, Those things come and go. My intention is not to persuade or dissuade, but to be as real as I can, to share MY authentic self with you, because anything less than that is less than you deserve, less than all of us deserve,  even when it might highlight our differences. 

In the words of Sarah Tuttle-Singer, “the most radical thing we can do in response is to stay connected. To remember who we are. To hold fast to one another, even when it’s hard.” [Times of Israel, November 5, 2025]

_________

* “Exposing antizionism’s genealogy reveals a single, continuous lineage: born of anti-Judaism, Nazism, and Islamism; later sanitized and systematized by Soviet propagandists; yet never shedding its original totalitarian roots—all directed toward the delegitimization of Jewish peoplehood. Nazi ideology portrayed Jews as global manipulators; Islamist rhetoric cast the Jewish state as a blasphemy; Soviet disinformation reframed Jewish nationalism as racism. Antizionism did not arise from moral conviction but from inherited projects of political, cultural, and theological Jew-hatred, adapted to modern vocabularies. Expose its roots, and its moral pretense collapses.”

“Exposing antizionism’s record of harm means telling the stories of the Jewish worlds it destroyed. In the Soviet Union, authorities criminalized Jewish identity and imprisoned those who refused to disavow it. Across the Middle East and North Africa, antizionist regimes expelled ancient communities, seized their property, and erased them from national memory. In Eastern Europe, party purges dismantled Jewish civic life in the name of “anti-imperialism.” Across these regions, the same logic held: antizionism punished Jews for asserting peoplehood or connection to Israel. Remembering these histories exposes antizionism as a system of hate.”  [Movement Against AntiZionism]