The Jewish Power Blog: Zionism and Choice

Growing up in a Chicago suburb in the 1960s in a Reform synagogue, I imbibed a sympathy for Zionism, an attachment to Israel, and a gut-level disapproval of the other synagogue in our community that belonged to the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism.  My parents, as well as mentors and teachers at the synagogue and at the Reform summer camp I attended, fostered in me a Jewish identity from which a belief in and fascination with the state of Israel were inseparable.  I spent a [formative!] semester of high school as an exchange student at the [Reform] Leo Baeck School in Haifa, and later worked and studied in Beersheba and Jerusalem, before finally making aliyah in 1990.

I still believe in and am fascinated by the state of Israel, but over the years I have come to understand that the simple overlap of Jewish and Zionist identities is not so simple after all.  For one thing, there have always been – and still are – many Jews who reject that overlap and who do not see the creation and maintenance of a modern Jewish state as an aspiration or commitment implied by their identity as Jews.  Not just the diaspora Jews in our day who are appalled by Israeli government policies and behaviors, and who thus seek to avoid being (or feeling, or seeming) complicit in them; but also the Orthodox communities – and secular/universalistic ones like the socialist Bund (prior to the Holocaust) or Israeli communists – who reject a Jewish state in principle.  I had no idea, in my suburban bubble, that the “classical Reform” rejection of Jewish nationalism was probably the least of the anti-Zionist streams within Judaism.  Growing up, I never met a Bundist – or a haredi.

Moreover, Zionist identity is a pretty slippery concept, and is used by different speakers to refer to very different things:

1. Simply the belief that there should be a modern nation state defined as a Jewish state (which of course leaves open for debate the definition of “Jewish state”).
2. The belief that the government of the state of Israel represents and speaks for the entire Jewish people, and that all Jews have an obligation to support the state materially and politically – or ideally by immigrating.
3. The belief that the state of Israel is a stage in the fulfillment of the prophetic promise of national restoration.
4. The belief that the diaspora is destined to disappear, and that the future of the Jewish people will be only in Israel.
5. The belief that the biblical promise of “from the river of Egypt to the …Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18) is to be taken as a policy directive in our time.

Clearly, definitions 2-5 are not universally accepted and are the subject of healthy and sometimes strident debate; in each case, some Jews (Israelis and others) say yes and some say no.  But definition #1 represents a different category. Until 1948, it too represented a legitimate proposition for debate.  However, since that year there has in fact existed a modern Jewish state.  The Zionist dream has been fulfilled.  The state has sovereignty, power, allies, enemies, interests, achievements, deficiencies – and generations of native-born citizens.  The Jewish nation has “returned to history” and is responsible for its actions, as any normal nation.  We are done with Jewish victimhood identity.

Apropos the current discussion regarding who is a legitimate partner in Israel’s coalition government, the criterion of “Zionist” seems irrelevant.  If you are a citizen who pays taxes, obeys the law, and votes in the election, what’s the deal with a Zionist loyalty test?  Who decides who passes it?

Nevertheless, it seems that definition #1 is still the subject of controversy in the world today.  Why?

Some still say that Judaism is a religion, not a nationality, and therefore Jews have no legitimate claim to statehood.  The problem with this argument is that all national identity is essentially “an imagined community,” and it is not clear that anyone has the authority to tell a group of people claiming nationhood that their claim is illegitimate (as various Israeli leaders have told the Palestinians over the years).

The more challenging argument is that the state of Israel, by its very existence in its present location, denies the Palestinian nation the possibility of fulfilling their right to statehood.  The Jews and the Palestinians both claim historical roots in the Land of Israel/Palestine, and both have “proofs.”  They both gave rise to secular nationalist movements at the beginning of the twentieth century, seeking national self-determination in that land (ruled for the preceding 2,000 years by foreign empires).  In 1947, the United Nations tried to solve the conflict by dividing the land into two states.  Both sides have now, after almost 80 years of war, rejected that idea of partition in favor of parallel zero-sum “from the river to the sea” demands, unattainable without the denial or destruction of the Other’s aspiration to national statehood.

There are three scenarios on the table for resolving this, all of which have advocates whose Jewish identity is unimpeachable:

1. Rejecting the Zionist ideal, dismantling the Jewish state in order to create in the land a democratic, egalitarian, pluralistic state – binational or non-national.
2. Continuing the status quo of eternal conflict, wherein whoever is the more powerful at any given moment will deny the Other’s right to self-determination in the land.
3. Partition, restorative justice, and a “truth and reconciliation” process.

The Zionist rebellion against Jewish powerlessness means to accept that we have the power to choose.