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- [00:04]
A
You are listening to an art media podcast. The idea of abandoning Zionism to those who hate it, it feels to me like a violation of Jewish dignity. Something not dignified about letting our enemies determine what language we use to define ourselves. This was our term. No one gave us this term. This was ours. And now to abandon it because it's fallen into disrepute with our enemies.
- [00:37]
B
So we never retreat in Israel. Instead we do in Hebrew, shippur emdot la acho. We are improving our position backwards. Maybe we're just improving our positions. We're fighting a battle that we could maybe win. Maybe at some point. Dignity is overrated. Yossi. Foreign. This is Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, for heaven's sake, in collaboration with ARC Media. Today is Monday, April 6, and our theme for today is entitled the battle over the word Zionism. There's a lot of battles going on. There's a lot of wars. We're living with so many battles and so many wars. The war with Iran is continuing. Last 24 hours was. It's a hard day in Israel again. Our missile defense system was not as effective as we hope it would be. And four people were killed in Haifa when a house suffered a direct hit. And we had two cluster missiles fired at Tel Aviv. And even when we shoot them down, the pieces, the mini bombs fall all over in 10, 15, 20 sites. A lot of damage, a lot of damage. The war in Iran, we don't know where it's going. As we're taping, the Pakistanis have put forth a proposal, the Islamabad agreement, which would bring about an immediate ceasefire for 40 days with the opening of the Straits of Hormuz and then within two weeks beginning a process of negotiating, maybe not on all of the 15 points of the Trump plan, but maybe three or four of them. And maybe Trump will say Dayano about that. So we're watching that. But we wanted to talk today about another war that's happening parallel to this war, and parts of it are just as existential. There are people who, just as we have enemies who are trying to destroy us militarily, we also have enemies who are trying to delegitimize us through political force, through intellectual force, through public discourse, declare Israel as a pariah state. And through that seriously hamper our ability to function in the world. And as we know very often that danger could be far more precarious than missiles. And we've spoken about that in the past about anti Zionism and its Dangers. But today we want to talk about the battle over the word Zionism within the Jewish community. Not amongst our enemies, not amongst the small percentage of Jews who define and call themselves anti Zionists. What is it? According to the latest JFNA poll, 8% are non Zionists, only 7% are anti Zionists. These aren't large movements. But within the mainstream pro Israel community, there's increasingly a question whether the term is a burden, whether the term which carried and personified the relationship with Israel and the significance of Israel, whether that term has run its course. And in a really very thoughtful article which we'll put in the show notes by Nadine Epstein in Moment magazine, entitled the Word Zionism is Dead, she puts forth an argument and says, you know, Zionism was a critical term to marshal the various spectrum of ideologies which were moving to create a sovereign Jewish state in the land of Israel. But on May 15, 1948, the minute the state was formed, Zionism was no longer a necessary term. And Israel exists. So we don't need an aspiration for Israel to exist if it already exists, basically. And Israel is a state like all other states. Sometimes it's flawed, sometimes we don't like its political leadership. But nowhere in the world does that criticism delegitimize the existence of the state. So the term Zionism is just a burden right now. And it's the focus of so many feelings and experiences. And the anti Semitic anti Zionism is connected to the internal Jewish anti Zionism. It's just let it go. And so we want to talk today about what does it mean not from the outside, but from within the Jewish community. What does the term mean? What is its relevance and what is its significance? And is Nadine right? Has it run its course or is this term essential? And so you'll see. Let's start really with the most simple, maybe not the most simple, but the most obvious question. If somebody's questioning the significance of the term, what does Zionism mean to you? And then we'll start talking about whether we need it or not. But first, if we're giving something up, what are we giving up? What does the term mean?
- [06:10]
A
You know, it's so interesting, Daniil, as you were speaking, I suddenly remembered when I first started visiting Israel in the 1970s, you had mentioned Zionism to young Israelis and it was a slang term for excessive talking. Altida Bert.
- [06:34]
B
I activated that.
- [06:35]
A
Altida Bertionut. Don't talk so much. Don't talk nonsense.
- [06:40]
B
No, it's. I don't talk ideology.
- [06:42]
A
Yeah, but this was it. And you realize that Zionism had reached the point. And this is really, I think what Nadine Epstein is getting at, that after the Six Day War, when Israelis started to feel that the country had achieved its permanence, the term Zionism started to fall into disuse and even slight ridicule. Don't talk Zionism to me. You know, and it's interesting just to trace whether the ups and downs of Israel's struggle for permanence and whether when Israelis felt secure in their Israeli ness, whether they would begin to let go of the term Zionism. And then at those times when Israel Israelis felt that the country's existence was not taken for granted, they fell back on Zionism. It's just a thought. But to answer your question, on the most elemental level, Zionism meant and still means the return of the Jewish people to sovereignty and power. And the Zionist argument was that the least powerful people in the world, the most powerless people in the world, which is also the people that is most hated, that's a very bad combination. The most hated people in the world should not also be the most powerless. And that was a very kind of, you know, this kind of basic rock bottom Zionist intuition. And Zionism presented itself initially as a very practical and sensible movement. The ideologies came later. Socialist Zionism was a layer that was added onto Zionism, right wing revision of Zionism, religious Zionism. But the basic intuition of Zionism was this is not going to work out well for the Jews. You can't be the most hated people in the world and also the most powerless. So that was that basic kind of Zionist common sense instinct.
- [08:55]
B
Yes, survival instinct.
- [08:56]
A
Yeah. And that was Herzl, if you have to sum up Herzl on one foot, that's it. It's not a good idea for the most hated people to be a powerless minority everywhere. That's not going to work out well. The second way of understanding Zionism as a movement of return, okay, we're going to have sovereignty, we're going to reclaim power. Where do we do this now? Herzl preferred the land of Israel because of its sentimental resonance for Jews, as I think he might himself have put it, but he really didn't care that much where the Jews would reclaim power and sovereignty. And so at the Zionist Congress of 1903, Herzl brings a British offer to the table, which is, the British have offered us territory in Uganda. It's Kenya today, but they called it Uganda then. And Herzl said, look, it's only going to Be temporary. I understand the deep Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, but we desperately need an immediate solution to millions of Jews in Eastern Europe who are facing physical violence. This was the height of the pogroms in Russia. 2 million Russian Jews eventually flee to North America. And Herzl's idea was let's take Uganda as a temporary refuge. And the Zionist movement almost collapses over the Uganda offer. And the people who brought down the offer were the delegates from Russia. In other words, the very Jews whom Herzl was trying to save, led by Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel. As a young man, they sat on the floor, tore their clothes in mourning and reenacted the rituals of Tisha bav, the day in which we mourn for the destruction of the temple. And they say this is the end of Zionism. We would rather face. And they said this to Herzl, we would rather face the violence than to do violence to the goal of Zionism, which is the return to the land of Israel. Herzl lost that seminal debate and he died a few months later of heart failure at age 43. And I think that the Uganda story is crucial to understand Zionism, because had the Zionist movement opted for Uganda, it would have become a frankly colonialist movement. A tragic colonialist movement. The most tragic colonialist movement imaginable, but nevertheless colonialist. By insisting not on settlement but on return repatriation, the Zionist movement made clear that this is a movement of empowerment and sovereignty that can only happen in one place, and that's the land of Israel. And if I could just make one last point about what classical Zionism was really about. Zionism promised two forms of return to the Jewish people. The first was return to the land of Israel. But the second, no less important for the early Zionist leaders, Herzl, Jabotinsky, others, was a return to the international community, a return to the, in the Zionist terminology, the family of nations, the dysfunctional family of nations. Nevertheless, this was the. The second promise of the Zionist movement to the Jewish people. We are going to bring the Jewish people back. We are going to return you to humanity. We're going to end the ghettoization, this unnatural, extreme separatism of the Jews and bring them back to the community of nations. Which is why, Daniil, that the current assault against the legitimacy of Zionism is so ironic because Zionism was, in a way, the peace offering of the Jewish people to the world. We want to be part of you. And to reject Zionism, to turn Zionism into the object of hatred is in a way the cruelest blow to Zionist aspirations.
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B
Interesting.
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A
It's a lot. There's a lot of.
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B
There's a lot there. There's a lot there. You know, in many ways what you're saying is Zionism was an attempt to heal the malaise of diasporic existence.
- [13:53]
A
That's a much shorter and concise way of putting what I was trying to say.
- [13:58]
B
And each one of that, or the two, the first and the third, in many ways there's a malaise. There's the fact that you're powerless and hated. There's the fact that you're not normal.
- [14:10]
A
Right.
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B
Once nation states became normal, you're not. You're not normal. And if we're going to be normal, then we'll be accepted and loved. So Zionism was an attempt to really fix and repair the condition, the malaise of diasporic existence. Would that be a fair way to describe it?
- [14:28]
A
Absolutely. In some ways that's the headline.
- [14:31]
B
The headline with one addition, and that is your second point, and that is the term Zionism was not a term for Jewish peoplehood, nationness, in that sense. It was Jewish peoplehood, sovereignty within our ancient homeland, Zion. So that is the combination for me, when I think of the term, and I think a lot of the confusion and debate that's taking place today is the result of the fact that I believe there are really two concepts of Zionism. It's interesting. At one point, one was prevalent outside of Israel and at another point it was more prevalent in Israel. And I think they've switched their places. I think initially the term Zionism, in addition to what you were speaking about, it wasn't just the attempt to heal the Jewish people. It was a defense of the Jewish people's right to power and sovereignty. Zionism wasn't just a political movement. It, it was an ideology making a claim, trying to make a claim that we too, this people, that the world seems to have forgotten about as nation states are created all over, we are standing up and saying we have that right too. And Zionism was an argument about the legitimacy of Israel, or rather the legitimacy of the Jewish people to have a sovereign state. For the Jewish people in Israel, that's one dimension. It was a moral, philosophical, political, sometimes even religious argument about who the Jews are and what our rights are. Once Israel was formed, for Israelis, what does it mean to be a Zionist if we already have Israel, but the Zionist movement continues? Precisely because even after we were formed, our existence was always contentious. It was always argued, we always had enemies. The United nations declares the formation of a homeland for the Jewish people in the land of Palestine, but only some accept it. And part of what's happened with the history of Israel is that we live with this constant feeling that, did we really make it? You know, it's like, we made it, but did we really make it? And the period that you are quoting might have been a period in Israel where post 67, like, we feel we've made it. We're there. Like, I don't need the ideology. I have power in that sense. But part of the deep meaning of Zionism for Israelis, at least for the last 20 years, and I'm not a historian, I think it might even be longer, but for a very long period of time, is that Israelis live in the midst of that battle over the legitimacy of Israel. They live with that psychologically, the basic law of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is an attempt to respond to that sense of vulnerability. For Israelis, Zionism is the ideology which says we have a right to our home in the midst of a world that's challenging us. And we feel that challenge over and over and over again. But that concept of Zionism, which is so central for Israelis, I don't think has profound meaning for many Jews who live outside of Israel, for whom the existence of Israel is a fact. They don't live with the existential struggle over the legitimacy of Israel, especially if you're in North America before the last two, three years. If you live in North America, Israel is an ally. Israel is celebrated. Israel is on the good side of history. Israel is. You might not like a government, you might not like a policy, as I said before, but it doesn't matter. What do you mean, Amaya? To say, to even ask the question, does Israel have a right to exist? Is in many ways a crazy question when nobody's asking, does North Korea have a right to exist? Does a Trump America have a right to exist? Does a Putin Russia have a right to exist? There is, I believe, precisely for those who live outside of Israel. And I wish it would be a more dominant conversation in Israel itself, outside of Israel. To say that you're a Zionist is not to say that I support Israel's right to exist. Just say I support Israel's right to exist. And in this sense, Nadine is right. To be a Zionist in North America or outside of Israel is to say that my Jewish identity is inherently interconnected with the state of Israel. It's much more. It's what my colleague and good friend Gil Choi speaks about when he speaks about identity, Zionism or a Zionism of meaning. The question is not whether Israel has a right to exist. The question is, what does Israel mean to you? Zionism claims, wants to make a claim on you that you can't be Jewish without a relationship with Israel. That's a completely different conversation. I think a lot of the debate over the term is because we're not clear about which concept we mean. So what does Zionism mean? It means one thing in the midst of a struggle, especially in Israeli struggle, surrounded by people who want to kill us. We want to know, do you embrace Zionism? To be an anti Zionist from an Israeli perspective is to want to destroy the state of Israel.
- [20:37]
A
So, Daniil, what you're saying then really is that when Israelis ask themselves the question of what Israel means to them, they're not asking it in a Zionist framework, they're asking it in an Israeli
- [20:49]
B
framework, in a political. In a Herzlian framework.
- [20:52]
A
No, no, no. I'm saying that there are two points here. One is that Israelis see Zionism as the physical defense of the country. But in the sense of what is the meaning of Israel, what does Israel mean to me, that's not necessarily. Israelis don't think in Zionist terms. They think in simply terms.
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B
That's right. The term Zionism isn't used in Israel
- [21:17]
A
for meaning, to determine for meaning.
- [21:19]
B
Because I live here, and that's a separate question, what's the meaning of my life? But for Israel, from 6 to 10 to 12,000 miles away, wherever you are in the world, to claim you, to claim not simply your loyalty, not your political loyalty, not your money. But to say I am a Zionist is to say that Israel is essential to who I am as a Jew. And I can't imagine being a Jew outside of that. That's a separate question.
- [21:48]
A
It's a very interesting point, Daniil, because what you're really saying is that the Israeli diaspora conversation, such as it is, is so dysfunctional that we can't even agree on the meaning of the terms that we're using.
- [22:05]
B
But that's okay. Listen, it's not that it's dysfunctional. There's different needs. It's natural.
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A
Then we need different terms for these needs.
- [22:13]
B
Or not necessarily. We mean different things. Terms have multiple meanings. So in the latest JFNA poll, a third of North American Jews call themselves Zionists. Only a third close to. What's the exact number? I wrote it down. 88% support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish democratic state. But only a third are willing to call Themselves, Zionists. So when they accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish democratic state, they don't see that as Zionism. That's just accepting Israel's right to exist.
- [22:49]
A
Don't you think, though, that they're also being influenced in some way by the negative connotations of the term Zionism in recent years?
- [22:58]
B
That could be. I think that could be. I think it would be superficial to deny the influence of that. That there's. The term itself is becoming more toxic. But notice that they're not influenced by. To separate from Israel.
- [23:13]
A
Right.
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B
They're not walking away, or maybe be more accurate, they're not denying Israel's right to be. That the Jewish people have a right to have a Jewish sovereign state, as the anti Semitic, anti Zionists are arguing. So they're not buying that argument because to be a Zionist and only accept Israel's right to exist, it's just the term is much deeper than that. And outside of Israel, you have greater needs of meaning when it comes to Israel than you have when you're living in Israel. Because when you're living in Israel, this is. I'm living here, whether it's the most meaningful place, not the most meaningful. It's just, it's my home. That's the normalcy. And therefore you're fighting for legitimacy. You're not fighting for meaning under the term Zionism itself.
- [24:00]
A
It's interesting. A few years ago I saw a poll of Arab Israeli attitudes toward the state when they were asked, do you support Israel as a Zionist state? Overwhelming opposition. Do you support Israel as a Jewish state? 50 50. And the pollster was trying to explain this anomaly. His reasoning was that when Arab Israelis hear the word Zionism, they think of 1948, they think of the refugees, they think of all of the political connotations. When they hear the word Jewish state, it has a softer resonance for them. They think of, well, there are 56 Muslim states. It's religious, we're religious. I don't know how representative this poll was, but it really stuck with me that Zionism has toxicity, especially for Arab Israelis.
- [25:03]
B
Right. So let's delve more deeply in that and to like, why is this category, there are two meanings or there are multiple meanings. How people understand it also influences their relationship to it. But why is this category such a contentious category? How do you understand it, Jess?
- [25:21]
A
And you know, there's something here that maddening because the more that Zionism in some sense becomes obsolete as an ideology, because reality has overtaken ideology, the more Zionism is being attacked, the more the legitimacy of Zionism is being attacked when it no longer has that same relevance. And so there's this, it's almost a surreal situation that we find ourselves in. But let me suggest a few reasons. The first is that the Jewish return after 2,000 years to their ancient homeland is a very strange story. It's a bizarre story. There's nothing like it in history. It doesn't fit into any pre existing categories. And so there's a, I'd say an understandable tendency among people to try to understand Zionism within the context of categories that they know. So for example, evangelicals, right, evangelicals look at the story of the Jewish return home and they say, ah, you know, we understand this story. This is the precursor, the forerunner to the second coming. I'm really grateful for evangelical support, but it's not my story. You're taking my story and you're applying it to your story. On the opposite end of the political spectrum, the anti Zionist left do the same thing. They look at our story and they say, we know what this story is. This is another example of settler colonialism. 19th century European colonialism. Zionism is founded in 19th century Europe. So this is one more expression, maybe the last, the final expression, the last gasp of European colonialism. So in that sense, to some extent, the attempt to take Zionism, to wrench it from its authentic category and place it in a category that you understand is maybe a normal human reaction to something that's so strange. But there's also, I think, an ideological component here, which is that in the 1990s we saw the emergence of an ideology that really came to dominate the progressive left and that is the notion of settler colonialism. Not just colonialism, but that the worst form of colonialism is settler colonialism. What is settler colonialism? There's the British model of colonialism, which is you exploit the resources, you occupy India, you milk it for its resources, but you don't bring part of your population to take over India. Settler colonialism was the model of the English speaking world, the us, Canada, Australia, South Africa. And settler colonialism is applied to Zionism. Now where this goes wrong is an erasing of the indigenous relationship of the Jewish people to this land. So that's the Zionist counter argument to this attempt to apply the category of settler colonialism.
- [29:11]
B
We're not colonial, we're not colonial.
- [29:13]
A
In settler, I think it was Hillel Haller's book. Hillel Halkin actually wrote an essay recently saying of course we're settlers, but we're not settler. Colonialists. When you have this very problematic discourse being obsessively applied to Israel, there's an understandable Jewish response that says, you know what, the only way to extricate ourselves from this kind of stigma is to just, let's get rid of the whole package. You know, if we don't use this problematic terminology anymore, then we're simply a country like other countries and we don't have this ideology of return. We've already returned.
- [30:02]
B
So given what you're just saying, and given the fact that there's so many multiple meanings to the term, and as you emphasized, I was speaking about two concepts and there's. We can't even agree on what it means. So maybe there's some justification in just letting it go.
- [30:18]
A
The idea of abandoning Zionism to those who hate feels to me like a violation of Jewish dignity. So we're under assault and so we're going to abandon the term Zionism. If that's the case, we would have dispensed with Judaism altogether a long time ago. There's also something that I feel is not dignified about letting our enemies determine what language we use to define ourselves. This was our term. No one gave us this term. This was ours. And now to abandon it because it's fallen into disrepute with our enemies.
- [31:03]
B
You know, there's an interesting terminology in the Israeli army, since you never retreat because usually retreating is to go back into Israel and then we're dead. So we never retreat in Israel. And the term is lasegit is to retreat. Instead we do in Hebrew, shippur em.la'. Chol. We are improving our position backwards. So but you're making a dignity. Maybe we're just improving our positions. We're fighting a battle that we could maybe win. Maybe at some point. Dignity is overrated.
- [31:38]
A
Yossi, look, in the 1990s I was flirting with the identity of post Zionist. If you remember, it was in vogue in the 90s. There was a group of young historians, the so called new historians of the time, who really began to develop a post Zionist language. Now post Zionism meant different things to different people. For some it was almost a variation of anti Zionism, a kind of a non Zionism. But the most moderate form of post Zionism, which was developed by the historian Benny Morris, was that Zionism is a success story. We celebrate Zionism, but to celebrate Zionism doesn't mean that you continue carrying an ideology that has already succeeded. That was his argument. And it really appealed to me because I felt, you know, when I looked at my kids, I said, they don't really even know what Zionism means. They love Israel, they're Israeli patriots. And maybe that's enough. Why do we need this overlay, this heavy ideological baggage? And I began to change, though, in the year 2000, specifically the year 2000, with the Durban Conference, the UN Durban Conference on Racism, which turned into the moment when anti Zionism became a revived and living force. And the BDS movement, the Boycott Israel movement, emerges shortly afterwards. And I felt that if Zionism, now the legitimacy of Zionism is under assault. And it's not just the linguistic terminology, and there's a kind of a trickery here, this notion that if we dispense with the term that somehow we're going to appease our enemies or fool them. Our enemies are not going to let up. Interesting. You know, they're not going to suddenly say, well, you know, Israel's law of Return, which allows any Jew or descendant of Jews to immigrate to Israel. You know, it's not a Zionist law, it's just an Israeli law. So we can live with that. And this is where dignity is important, Daniel. And here I'm going to use classical Zionist terminology. There's something in the ghetto Jewish.
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B
Yeah. You are so Israeli.
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A
You're my. So is Gentiles. You know, we're just going to Three Card Monty here. We're going to change the words. They won't know the difference. They'll think they won't know the difference. They destroyed Zionism.
- [34:19]
B
But the term, the notion of dignity and how important it is for you in general, it's like, I don't want to caricaturize you, but like a deep part of your post Holocaust existence, your years at jdl, is it's not that. Stand up.
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A
No, Danielle, I.
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B
Stand up. Am I misunderstanding?
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A
No, no, that's. I'm.
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B
If they're critiquing me, you're critiquing me. I'm going to stand stronger. I'm not going to bear.
- [34:49]
A
Of course it's there, but when I'm invoking dignity, I'm really thinking of the classical Zionist idea of you stand where you stand and you affirm what you believe. There's also an element here which I think is related to dignity, of gratitude. The Jewish people owes Zionism everything. We were a broken people in 1945. The Jewish people that we see today, the state of Israel, the free diasporas around the world, all of this flowering, this renaissance, or much of it, can be directly attributed to the creation of the state and so we're going to ditch the term and the ideology to which we owe our vitality because it's under assault. That's the lack of dignity and the lack of gratitude.
- [35:51]
B
That's a lack of dignity. See, for me, it's not so much a question of dignity, but it's a question of Jewish history, but Jewish ideological, intellectual, religious history. Our history is a history of maintaining our terms and reinterpreting them. See, the question is when you inherit terms from the past. Or like when you just said, this term is what got us here, but maybe it's now destructive, you know, thank you, you got me here, but who said you're going to get me where I need to go? But what the Jewish tradition does is when we encounter these words, these terms, these ideas, what we do is we reinterpret them. One of the deepest parts of Jewish vitality is a feeling that you are engaging in a 3,4000-year-old conversation because you don't ditch terms. You don't get rid of ideas, you don't get rid of high dollars. What we do is we reinterpret them all the time. We look at our current environment like, look at every holiday that we have. Hanukkah, do we celebrate Hanukkah? The Hanukkah of the Maccabees, this group who simply fought and at the end of the day valorized power and even attacked Jews. It's a terrible historical story. It had a little nice element to it, and that is we won for like a year. So we celebrate that. But what do we do? We make it the holiday of lights. We make it the holiday of pluralism. This is what we do. We take God's attributes and we reinterpret them. Jewish life is a constant reinterpretation of categories because by doing so, we are moored somewhere. We have a past. We're not recreating ourselves on an ongoing basis. We are an ancient people who are giving meaning to our contemporary lives in conversation with our past. So, of course, Zionism is a confusing category. So is Judaism, So is any ancient inherited term. So now, you know, 150-year-old term is an ancient term because in the change. So my natural inclination is never to drop a term. You have problems with it, reinterpret it. Because if you think you're going to be able to come up with new terms, what you're ultimately going to be doing is you're going to be vacating the identity of the Jewish people, because new terms don't have the weight the gravitas, the past, the connection to my parents. My father was a Zionist. Your father? My grandfather was a Zionist. He lived in his. You want to just disconnect me. I might interpret it differently than they did, but don't take away from me my words. When you do that, you're undermining one of the greatest principles or the greatest secrets of Jewish vitality. We don't get rid of anything. We reinterpret it. The fact that it served us in the past and now is not serving us give it new meaning. So then that comes to the final question that I want us to talk about today. How do we resurrect it? How do we save it, Yossi, given all of this story? Because now what we're seeing is for many, only a third of North American Jews want to identify themselves as such. So how do we save it, Yossi?
- [39:22]
A
I think that the worst way to try to salvage Zionism is by clinging to its classical meaning, which has already been fulfilled. For me, Zionism is not about statehood. The state exists. And I'm not interested in reopening the argument over whether that should or should not have happened. There was a legitimate argument within the Jewish people before the state was created about whether this is a good idea. Today, when we've created not only a state, but the largest Jewish community in the world, it's a frankly ludicrous way of defining ourselves. It's as if to say, you know, I'm an American and I believe in America's right to exist. Well, yeah, so. So for me, Zionism today means something very different. And here I go back to Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, who was the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, who was a passionate Zionist. Unlike much of his movement today, Kaplan was devoted to Zionism. And Kaplan redefined Zionism as the ideology of Jewish peoplehood. Now, that needs a little bit of unpacking, because it's a very profound idea. What happened to the Jewish people, specifically to Ashkenazi Jewry, Beginning in the 19th century in Europe, was a breakdown of the entwinement of the elements of Jewish identity that Jews always took for granted as being part of a whole. We're a religion, we're a people. We were a nation. One day we'll be a nation again. Maybe we're an ethnicity or multiple ethnicities. And suddenly these different strands were being torn apart by new ideologies, new movements. In 19th century Ashkenazi Judaism, there was one strain of thought that said the Jews are just a religion. Another strain that said, well, the Jews actually were the working class. We're a Yiddish speaking working class. And others said, we're an ethnicity. And the Zionists came along and said, we are a people. And all of your subcategories, all of your various identities are subsidiaries of the identity we all share. Now, to say we're all part of the Jewish people is a very minimalist way of defining Jewishness. And the ultra Orthodox deeply opposed Zionism, not only because we were creating a secular state in Israel, and not only because we dared to do it before the Messiah came, but because, in a sense, Zionism was redefining the very meaning of who we are as a people. How can you separate Torah religion out of your Jewish identity? And the Zionist response was what you're saying worked until the modern era. It doesn't work anymore. And so if we're going to remain a united people, then the only identity that'll work is peoplehood itself. And so I'm very moved by that Zionist insight. And in the 19th century and the 20th century, when Zionism was struggling for statehood and the Jewish people were fighting for survival, this dimension of Zionism was downplayed. And I think it's time now for us to place peoplehood at the center point. And what peoplehood means in a 21st century understanding of Zionism is that the Jewish people has a center, we have a homeland, and we have diasporas. We've always had a homeland, beginning with Abraham and Sarah. The Jewish story begins with the movement to homeland, but built into that story is also diaspora. The patriarchs and matriarchs left the land. There was this constant back and forth. This is built into who we are. And so in embracing peoplehood, we're creating a new understanding of Zionism that affirms the legitimacy, the necessity of both homeland and diaspora simultaneously. That for me is 21st century Zionism. Interesting.
- [44:05]
B
I think it's going to be challenging because for many Jews around the world, they have no problem with the concept of peoplehood. They just don't need Zionism. Peoplehood means I could support Israel's right to exist. I worry about its security. But why does that have to be important to me? The difference between you and I is I think we have two homes. So how would you respond to that? Like, I'm a peoplehood person, Israel's part of my people. But you're saying peoplehood is what you mean by the term Zionism.
- [44:37]
A
Yes, but that Zion is integral to who the Jews are as a people. There is no Jewish people historically without Zion. I argue, as well, that there's no Jewish people without Diaspora. But, you know, there's this sterile argument that's opening up where you have a resurgent diasporism, this 19th century ideology from Europe which said we don't need to return to this ancient land which is no longer relevant. We exist in the Diaspora and that's the Jewish people. And in a way, diasporism is the reverse of classical Zionism which negated Diaspora. Can't we come to the point as a mature people where we celebrate the two parts of our being, which is homeland and diaspora? That to me is a healthy 21st century Zionism.
- [45:39]
B
Zionism. For me, Zionism is a little different. I respect what you're saying. I personally feel that I can get peoplehood. I don't need Zionism for peoplehood. Even though you're saying that's what the term. I hear you. I wanna think more about what you're saying. For me, the way to save Zionism is by paradoxically, by reengaging with another dimension of what we try to do here in the State of Israel. And that is not simply to heal the failures of a diasporic Jewish psyche and to overcome Jewish powerlessness. And this goes back to Herzl too, but not just. And that was to create here something exceptional. I think one of the reasons why Zionism is under assault is not just because people outside are assaulting it. It's because we are underperforming as a country. For most Jews under the age of 35, they don't even remember Israel's aspiration for Oslo. And they don't remember that Oslo failed because the Palestinians rejected it. All they see is, is an Israel which is spiritually and morally underperforming or not performing in a way that inspires them. Israelis are Zionists because they support Israel's right to be. They support their own right to be a free people in our country, as our anthem declares. But for Jews around the world, I think the challenge of Zionism is a challenge indeed of aspiration and of meaning. And unless we don't return to that conversation, we're just not going to win. How do we save Zionism? We have to go back to that conversation about why would we want a country? Not why we would want a country back in the 18th century or 19th century, or why we need a country for when Jews are powerless. We have a country now and we're not powerless now. The question of Zionism is what do you do with Jewish power? I want to go back to my mantra over and over again. It's like I'm stuck there, but it still provides meaning for me. And that is, what do we want to do here? At the end, Zionism will be reclaimed. When Zionism stands for something, Jews around the world will be Zionists, not just those who support Israel's right to exist, just because they support also Russia and North Korea, that of course we're not worse than anybody else. But I will be a Zionist when my Judaism is in fact enriched by Zion. I think, Yossi, I think your point of peoplehood, I want to think about it and whether Zionism could carry it. But it also has to be, I believe, more than that. It has to be morality. It has to be excellence. It has to be an aspiration for excellence. There's a larger story of Judaism. What does Yehuda Kercher say? It can't just be about loyalty. It has to be about inspiration. We need that again. And right now I don't believe that Israel is always providing it. So how do we return to that conversation? That's when Zionism will come alive again. And if we don't, I think Israel will be fine. But world Jewry will rightfully ask themselves, why should I have a relationship with?
- [49:09]
A
You've just added another element of return to Zionism, which in a way is that Zionism needs to return to itself,
- [49:19]
B
needs to return to the aspiration and to not allow all the battles to just break our spirit. We need something better when Zionism represents the best of the Jewish people. You quoted Kaplan. I'll quote my father as we come to a conclusion that Israel is where Jewish ideas and Jewish values, values meet the marketplace and are tested by reality and have to emerge as the best of us. When Zionism reflects that, then Zionism will be a term that Jews around the world will be proud to identify with. Last words.
- [49:57]
A
Yossi, I think that I'd like to leave it at that. I think that's. That's a beautiful way to end.
- [50:03]
B
Yossi, it's a pleasure taking this journey of Zionism. It felt like a luxury in the midst of the war. And our audience doesn't know this, but just one minute ago we had our pre warning notice that a siren is coming. So we're going to finish.
- [50:17]
A
It's a little bit of a reality check. You know, it was a little bit
- [50:21]
B
as we're talking, but I think we need to be able to talk about that too. So, Yossi, it's a pleasure being with you.
- [50:26]
A
Great to be with you. I think the Hartman Fellowship has impacted me as a Jewish leader more than any other Jewish program that I've done, because it's sort of broadened my horizon on what exactly it means to be a Jewish teen.
- [50:37]
C
You know, you're at Hartman when people
- [50:39]
A
are laughing and joking, but also the
- [50:40]
C
next second they're talking about some serious rabbinic text. The Hartman Teen Fellowship is an opportunity for teens who want more from Jewish learning. More depth, more connection, more ideas worth wrestling with.
- [50:51]
B
You really get the opportunity to engage with your peers and run with content
- [50:55]
C
with Hartman's top faculty fellows. Dig into Jewish life, their relationship to Israel, and and their own leadership development. There's just so much that could be
- [51:02]
A
going on that you can be put into any conversation and you know there's
- [51:05]
C
a space for you. Apply now for Cohort 5 of the Hartman Teen Fellowship, open to current 9th through 11th graders at Shalomhartman.org teens that's Shalomhartman.org teens if you want to be
- [51:17]
A
in a place where you can learn about different types of people, meet hundreds of new people from different areas, and experiences they never had before, there's no better place than being in the Hartman,
- [51:29]
D
For Heaven's Sake is a product of the Shalom Hartman Institute and ARC Media. It is produced by me, Daniel Goodman, with help from Miriam Jacobs, Adar Taylor Schechter, and Aviva Kat Manore, and studio support from Go Live Media. Our episode was edited by Seth Stein, Natal Friedman is our executive producer, and our music was composed by Yuval Sam Ammo. Past episodes can be found@arcmedia.org where you can explore more of Arc Media's podcasts. You can watch the video versions of our episodes on our YouTube channel. Follow the YouTube link in the show Notes. Also, to receive updates on new episodes, please follow the link to arcmedia.org and subscribe to Arc Media's weekly newsletter. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute, visit our website@shalomhartman.org.