It was Abraham who heard the voice of God telling him, “Go forward to a land that I will show you”. It was Moses who was then tasked with bringing an entire people to that land. It was King David who first spoke of a mountain in that land called Zion – it was David’s son Solomon who spoke of all of Jerusalem as Zion. It was then the prophets who expanded Zion to include biblical Israel –
Zion, the land to which God and the Israelites are eternally linked.
After the Israelites were exiled by the Babylonians, the psalms and the book of Jeremiah speak of Zion as a place that the Israelites mourn for, that they grieve for – a place that they long to return to—
This longing for Zion is built into the very framework of Jewish liturgy – the Amidah, which is recited three times every day, includes a prayer about a return to Zion, the Musaf service includes calls for God to bring us to Zion. The Torah service is centered around that phrase “Ki Mi- TZION, TEITZE TORAH!” From Zion comes forth the Torah, from Zion comes forth Jewish peoplehood.
Zion—Israel—is at the very center of Jewish identity– Zion is where we are from and a place to which our tradition has long dreamt of returning—throughout our people’s history, Zion has not only been a place of refuge but also the beating heart of Jewish continuity.
Judaism is Zionist—it is, in its essence—a tradition connected to a specific place—it is a tradition that has always emphasized Jewish belonging to this place – Zion, TZIYON, is at the very core of what it means to be a Jew.
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And so, when we hear calls about Zionism being an illegitimate settler- colonial conquest of another people, when we hear Zionism described as inherently racist, when we hear Zionism equated with history’s greatest evils, when we hear Zionism being declared something wholly different than Judaism, then yes, we are deeply troubled.
October 7th was one of the most horrific days in modern Jewish history. On October 7th 2023, more Jews died than did in the Kishinev pogrom, more Jews died than did on Kristallnacht.
In many respects, the terrorists of October 7th were worse than the Nazis.
th The Nazis tried to hide their killing machine—but on October 7 ,
terrorists arrived in Israel with Go-Pros, they arrived with cameras to document everything – to show the entire world what they were doing.
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And when the world watched – when the world saw October 7 , how
did it respond?
So many responded by blaming October 7th on Zionists and Zionism. Zionism was at fault—not Hamas terrorists. Before Israel set one soldier or rocket into Gaza, Zionism was blamed for the October 7th massacre. An attack on Zionism was somehow a legitimate response to Hamas’ murderous carnage.
How did this word Zionism become so toxic? How did this word that is linked to Jewish self-determination and Jewish yearning to go home become synonymous with the worst of evils?
There is a real story to how this happened, how this occurred, a story that begins in the aftermath of the last world war, World War II.
World War II brought with it immense destruction—the war not only demonstrated how murder could be institutionalized and rationalized but it also revealed the technological power that we had amassed to
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annihilate one another – in the wake of that war, there needed to be a global response, a way for the world to ensure that such horror would never happen again.
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And so, from April 25 to June 26 , 1945, representatives of 50
countries met in San Francisco, California to seek out some kind of solution.
It was this gathering of countries which created a new international organization called the United Nations or the UN.
While the UN played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Jewish state, it would eventually be dominated by the politics of the Cold War between two new emerging empires – the Soviet Union and the United States.
As this Cold War erupted, that international organization, which was meant to seek justice and to protect the innocent, that international organization called the United Nations became nothing more than a battleground for power and influence.
In the sixties, the Soviets felt threatened by Israel and her relationship with the United States. And so, beginning in that decade, the Soviet Union launched a far-reaching campaign that used antisemitic tropes to demonize Zionism.
“The mass media
the Protocols of Zion. For the Soviet propogandists, the state of Israel was proof of the Jewish intention to take over the world.
By the seventies, the Soviet Union garnered enough support to pass a resolution in the General Assembly of the United Nations that equated Zionism with racism.
“all over the Soviet Union portrayed the Zionists and
Israel’s leaders as engaged in a world-wide conspiracy along the lines of
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Somehow, the Jews of Israel were white powermongers and their Zionism was a way to take advantage of people with brown skin. This even though so many Israelis were mizrachim with the very same brown skin as their Arab neighbors.
Although the Zionism is Racism resolution was eventually repealed in the nineties, Soviet antagonism towards the state of Israel lit a match and today, the fire is still burning.
Friends, so much of the antizionism movement that we see today is a remnant of stale old Soviet propaganda – it is the leftovers from a Cold War antisemitic campaign meant to isolate Israel and the United States from the rest of the world.
Today, the embers of this campaign continue to burn in the United Nations, where we see maddening double-standards – in 2023 alone, the
UN General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions critical of Israel, and only
seven critical of all other countries in the world put together. While the
UN critiques Israel again and again, it ignores the brutality taking place
in Sudan or Syria or Yemen or Iran. It ignores human rights catastrophes
around the world while calling out Israel again and again and again.
The UN’s Human Rights Council, which is sometimes—in a sick joke–
chaired by Iran, has a special agenda item reserved for conversations
that are critical of Israel. Every other human rights record is discussed
under a separate agenda item.
In the United Nations today, Israel is a pariah – it is held to impossible
standards – an organization that is supposed to be fair and equitable and
seeking justice continually makes the case that Israel is illegitimate, and
that Zionism is criminal.
What is Zionism but the longing of the Jewish people to return and be in their homeland?
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Zionism has nothing to do with colonialism or racism or genocide. It is an ancient longing to go home, a longing that is an integral part of the Jewish identity –built into the very framework of what it means to be a Jew – for most of Jewish history, it was just a dream – as Jews were forced into the ghettos of the world, they had no power to return home.
But Jewish powerlessness began to diminish in the 18th and the 19th century – Jews were emancipated, given new freedoms, and allowed to become citizens of nations throughout the world.
But as the 19th century moved forward, it became clear that this emancipation only went so far –in the 19th and 20th century, Jewish freedom and Jewish power were met with bigotry, hatred and yes, violence. Whether it be the pogroms of Eastern Europe or the Dreyfuss Affair in France or the Shoah itself, Jews were never fully accepted into their new worlds.
And by the way, when they were accepted, Jewish identity was often forced to be hidden – Jews were asked to be non-Jews in the public square and Jewish only at home and in private.
And thus, by the dawn of the 20th century, assimilation became a new threat to Jewish life.
This reality for Jews led many to a recognition that the eternal longing to return to Israel, to Zion, this dream to go back to our home must not simply be a dream anymore–-political Zionism was born out of a recognition that the state of Israel was central to Jewish survival in the modern world.
Political Zionism was not devised as a method of expanding an empire’s territory. It was not devised as a way of displacing another people – the political Zionism that Theodor Herzl ascribed to was first and foremost a way of saving the Jewish people by returning them to their indigenous
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and eternal homeland, a homeland they had been exiled and pushed out of time and again.
And yes, by 1945, with six million Jewish souls lying in their graves, it became clear that this was a people who needed to be saved.
Friends, Zionism is not monolithic – there are different views and ideas and streams of thought about how a Jewish state works – there continues to be fierce debates about this in Israeli society and in the broader Jewish world – how does Israel embrace a Jewish identity while still being democratic? How does Israel protect the rights of minorities while still embracing Jewish expression? How does Israel come to terms with another people who also live in this land and have their own connection to it?
These are real questions that Zionists do not have one answer to – there are diverse ideas rooted in Zionist thinking about how to deal with all of these very different issues.
But those who wholly reject Zionism by declaring it the root of all evil care little about any of this diversity. They see no difference between Bezalel Smotrich and Yitzhak Rabin, they see no difference between Israelis yearning for peace and Israelis who are xenophobic bigots. They look at any Jewish right to land as unacceptable.
A rejection of Zionism is a rejection of any Jewish state—it is a rejection of the rights of Jews to their homeland – it is to argue that the many other countries of the world who have religious identities, they have this right – but Jews have no right, no legitimacy – the rejection of Zionism is to argue that there is no future peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians – for any future peace plan would accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in some form—
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Ultimately, a rejection of Zionism is tied directly to antisemitism, to a belief that Jews are different – that they deserve less—
The carnage and horror of October 7th should have led the world to a real conversation about ending terrorism once and for all and protecting innocent lives—it should have led the world to recognize the evil of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, it should have led the world to come to terms with the ancient hatred of Jews that continues to plague our world.
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But no, instead, on October 8 , 30 student organizations at Harvard
University signed a letter blaming Israel for October 7th – blaming Israel and Zionism for the murder of 1200 innocent people – blaming Israel’s very existence for the horrors of what took place – and now, students at Harvard and Columbia, now, they are arguing that October 7th was a legitimate form of resistance.
The carnage of October 7th led the world back to that stale old conversation about the dangers of Jews having power and thus the illegitimacy of any Jewish political state –
Friends, having a home matters—it matters that there is a place in this world where we belong, a place where we nourish one another, a place where our values take root – we have a right to live as a people in our homeland. Our Zionism is an inseparable part of our Jewish identity.
Tonight, as we begin this solemn day of Yom Kippur, let us pray for the state of Israel – let us pray for her as the homeland of the Jewish people but also let us pray for her to be a beacon of hope and light to the world beyond the Jewish people – we pray for the safety of her citizens, and the security of innocent people around her entire region, we pray for hope to remain to possible for a real and sustaining peace, a peace where the world truly sees one another – Avinu She’ba’shamayim, Our father in
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the heavens, on this new year, protect Zion, protect those who care for her…
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