'zionist' contains multitudes
23 - 07/25 /17:57
~ By Rabbi Avi Shafran columnist for Ami Magazine ~
Am I a Zionist? Yes and no. Either answer is true. The word, something of a war cry these days, seems to have lost a clear meaning. In truth it has multiple. Teasing out each can help us understand Jews, antisemitism and the Middle East.
As a Haredi Jew—we dislike the too-often pejorative descriptor “ultra-Orthodox”—I don’t subscribe to the foundational principles of the Zionist movement that Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl founded in the late 19th century. That movement, which believed that Jewish nationalism—the creation of a political state akin to other countries—was the solution to antisemitism, resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.
Am I a Zionist? Yes and no. Either answer is true. The word, something of a war cry these days, seems to have lost a clear meaning. In truth it has multiple. Teasing out each can help us understand Jews, antisemitism and the Middle East.
As a Haredi Jew—we dislike the too-often pejorative descriptor “ultra-Orthodox”—I don’t subscribe to the foundational principles of the Zionist movement that Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl founded in the late 19th century. That movement, which believed that Jewish nationalism—the creation of a political state akin to other countries—was the solution to antisemitism, resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel.
Before Israel’s founding in 1948, many religious leaders to whom Haredi Jews looked for guidance opposed the establishment of such a state. They insisted that the return of Jews en masse to the Holy Land must await the arrival of the messiah predicted by the Jewish prophets. Herzl, an avowed secularist, didn’t fit the bill. These leaders also feared that a Jewish state wouldn’t cure but spur the hidden hatred of Jews, which always seeks some excuse to express itself—often violently.
In this sense, I am not a Zionist. I believe that the Jewish religion, not any political state, is the essential expression of Judaism.
Yet most of those religious leaders accepted the state as fait accompli and urged their followers in Israel to participate in its civil and political processes with care. Today, many of my friends and relatives live there, but really I consider all Jews family. I feel a strong connection with Israel and deep concern for the welfare and safety of its citizens.
So I am a Zionist—if one defines it as someone who accepts and supports Israel.
Then there is a third, newer usage of the word, which deserves to be retired: a slur aimed at anyone who supports Israel’s war against its enemies.
How Israel wages that war is rightly open to criticism, but it is subject, too, to reasoned defense. When someone angrily shouts “Zionist!” at those who offer the latter, that person is using the word to portray defenders of Israel as monstrous murderers. It is meant to defame as evil the belief that Hamas and other terrorist entities need to be destroyed.
When critics distort Israel’s goal of self-preservation into a desire for genocide, the accusers have gone from righteous protesters to ignorant haters. It isn’t surprising that they vent their animus by intimidating random Jews or attacking them or their synagogues. They are old-fashioned antisemites hiding behind keffiyehs.
Civilians suffer and die in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. That tragedy is intensified when you are fighting an enemy who hides behind human shields. Eradicating the engines of terror in Gaza requires attacking the places from which they operate: hospitals, schools and mosques.
But whatever one thinks of Israel’s actions, this twisted definition of “Zionist” as evildoer fails the basic purpose of a word: It reveals nothing about its purported subjects, and everything about their accusers. ~