Eschatology and denial
Nationalism as a religious belief.
I want to add something to the “zionism is Judaism” essay I wrote earlier this month.
The debate on whether or not zionism is a fundamental part of Judaism and Jewish identity has been raging nonstop since October 7th. The issue isn’t purely academic. The way the debate has played out…and really the only reason the debate exists at such high levels is because the issue is being weaponized against critics of Israel and American foreign policy.
A lot of anti-zionist Jews argue that zionism isn’t synonymous with Judaism or Jewish identity. And they might be right as far as a purely cultural identity goes. There’s long been a secular diasporist tendency among us Jews…it’s been very marginal for more than half a century but has recently made a slight comeback. But in terms of the Jewish religion, as things stand now, I think the case for separating out Judaism and zionism is much weaker. The truth is that the belief in a Jewish nation — a nation that sits on land that Israel more or less occupies today — is central to Judaism and has been going back 2,000 years. This ancient nationalism or ancient zionism — however you want to call it — has always played a key part of the religion and has featured in daily prayers and rituals.
Even the religious “anti-zionist” Jews — like the ones you see at Palestinian solidarity rallies burning their Israeli passports — believe in a type of ancient Jewish nationalism. They believe in the idea that Jews should control their own state in the Holy Land. Where they part ways with other explicitly zionist Jews is that they reject the secular nature of the current Jewish state and they object to the fact that Jews went to Palestine and formed the nation themselves. Their approach to this religious nationalism is messianic. They’re waiting for their god to come down and grant them ownership of the land, to restore them to it. So they might oppose the existing state of Israel but biblical, god-ordained zionism is still a central part of their religious belief system. Put another way: They dream of getting control of Israel and of running a Jewish theocracy there, with god’s blessing of course. They’re just waiting for that blessing.
Get ready for the Messianic Age!
Then there are the religious zionists…the ones running around doing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and trying take over the Temple Mount and do sacrifices there…the ones that people Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich represent. Their idea is that the Hebrew god is using secular zionists as tools to bring on the messianic age and when the job is done, the secular Jews will be pushed aside and a true theocracy built on pure Mosaic law will be established in the Holy Land. And that’s what basically is happening right now in Israel — the theocratic zionists are taking over.1 Then on top of everything else it seems like the religious “anti-zionism” of traditional Haredi Judaism is weakening…and merging more religions zionists in Israel.2
I say all this to make a point: Whatever strain of Judaism you follow — religious zionism, religious anti-zionism, mainstream zionism of the Orthodox and Conservative and Reform sects — they all have a similar core: the belief in a Jewish state roughly encompassing the territory that Israel occupies today. Sure there is a minority of practicing progressive and leftwing Jews who reject zionism from a political perspective. They try to re-interpret the ancient nationalism of the Torah in whatever way they can, downgrading its significance. But they are a minority as far as things go…and a reviled minority, too. They’re hated by the larger Jewish community…there’s even talk about taking away their status as Jews away from them…to excommunicate them.
The reason I point this out is that we’re seeing a lot of litigation and rule passing that’s weighing in on this issue of zionism and Jewish identity. Some of it has already been happening. Tump started pushing those buttons in 2019.3 Last December Congress passed a resolution saying that zionism is synonymous with Jews and so to oppose it as antisemitic. A few months later Congress passed another bill that directed the Department of Education to classify criticism of Israel as antisemitic and to make Jewish zionists a protected category (but the bill hilariously died a quiet death in the Senate after some Christian Republicans got angry that it would potentially ban them blaming the Jews for killing Jesus).4 Then just recently, in a case involving UCLA, a federal judge deemed that supporting Israel is a religious belief — “religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel,” as judge put it.5 NYU, Columbia, and other universities are also beginning to classify zionism as a protected class on their own initiative.6 Similar laws and efforts are working their way through the system on various levels.
These efforts are gonna continue moving along. And they’ll probably succeed, too. More and more we’ll see the codification of zionism as a protected religious practice.
Jews who believe that Judaism and Jewish identity is not synonymous with zionism might be outraged and concerned by this. And they should be. We’re in an environment where non-Jewish lawmakers and bureaucrats are defining the definition of what is and isn’t properly “Jewish.” But they’re working off something that already exists. And the truth is that zionism — a belief in a Jewish supremacist ethnostate — is currently at the of core of Judaism and Jewish identity for the majority of Jews in America…and in Europe and Israel, too. You can hate it, you can try to ignore it, you can hope that things change in the future. But it won’t make it go away.
No doubt a lot of high powered attorneys on AIPAC’s retainer are right now in some corporate high-rise in Midtown pouring over the Torah and the Talmud and huddling with various scholars and rabbis…cobbling together a vast argument that proves zionism is Judaism. And really it’s not a difficult argument to make. I made it…and I think I’m fairly convincing. So you can bet it’ll sail through the courts and various legislative bodies…
—Yasha
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