There is a Talmudic story (Bava Metzia 59b) about a rabbinic debate over the kashrut of Akhnai’s oven. One rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer, insisted the oven was kosher, but the rest of the rabbis disagreed. Rabbi Eliezer brought forth a number of arguments supporting his position, including a Divine Voice calling out to the rabbis, admonishing them that on matters of Jewish law, Rabbi Eliezer was always correct. Rabbi Joshua called out in response, “It is not in Heaven!”—meaning that the law was given to the Jewish people, and thereafter, it was up to us to determine what it means.
Ultimately, although Rabbi Eliezer’s argument was undoubtedly correct, the law did not follow him, and the story concludes with God smiling and saying, “My children have defeated Me! My children have defeated Me!”
The first time I was taught this passage of Talmud, as a teenager, I did not realize that it was teaching me about the social construction of our world. Jewish law is not a category that exists in nature; it has to be constantly constructed and reconstructed within the Jewish community by sharing our understandings of its underpinnings, discussing its evolution and building consensus about its applicability and consequences. We could not simply accept it at Mount Sinai, never think about it again and continue applying it with no changes or evolutions for the rest of time. We had to make it our own and figure out how to use it in a world that is constantly remaking itself, and we had to do so collectively. That is how social constructs work. To paraphrase John Donne, no person is an island; we are all affected by and affect others, and our interactions inevitably have an impact on how we think about the world in ways both simple and complex.
The story of Akhnai’s oven, at least on the surface, is a simple debate over whether a piece of equipment is legal to use. How American Jews relate to Israel is far more complicated. Take, for example, the fraught question about how many American Jews are Zionists. Every so often, you may see an article in the Jewish press, claiming that 95% of American Jews are Zionists. This claim is misleading at best. Its source is an analysis by Frank Newport, a senior scientist at Gallup, one of the top polling organizations in the United States. In 2019, Newport showed that across Gallup’s available data, 95% of American Jews had favorable views of Israel.[1] The words “Zionist” and “Zionism” do not appear anywhere in his report, so we are left to ask whether “favorable views” can be equated with Zionism. My gut instinct was that they can’t; I may have favorable views of Reconstructionist Judaism, for example, but I do not identify as a Reconstructionist Jew. Still, as I have often told my students, the plural of anecdote is not data, and we should let data tell us whether the equivalency is valid.
It seems clear that holding favorable views about Israel is not equivalent to being a Zionist.
Fortunately, we have recent data. The community studies research team at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies has conducted studies of the Jewish communities of Chicago,[2] Los Angeles[3] and Portland, Ore.[4] — as well as more recent, not-yet-published studies in other communities, conducted after Oct. 7, 2023 — that included a series of questions to assess respondents’ feelings about Israel. For example:
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements:
- I feel proud of Israel’s accomplishments (in Los Angeles, scientific and technical accomplishments):
- Chicago: 82% somewhat or strongly agree
- Los Angeles: 88%
- Portland: 66%
- I consider it important for Israel to be a Jewish state (in Los Angeles, the nation-state of the Jewish people):
- Chicago: 80%
- Los Angeles: 79%
- Portland: 65%
- I consider it important for Israel to be a refuge for the Jewish people, now and in the future:
- Chicago: not asked
- Los Angeles: 88%
- Portland: 87%
- I describe myself as a Zionist:
- Chicago: 40%
- Los Angeles: 42%
- Portland: 26%
Items one through three are statements that might be thought of as “Zionist perspectives,” and they certain constitute “favorable views of Israel.” Strong majorities of Jewish adults in each community agree with these perspectives, but when you ask the same respondents if they call themselves Zionists, only a minority in each community says they do. It seems clear that holding favorable views about Israel is not equivalent to being a Zionist.
What explains the discrepancy? One common explanation is that the label of Zionist has become tainted; that is, some number of respondents might actually think of themselves as Zionists but are reluctant to say so as part of a survey for fear of the negative connotations such an identity might bring. In my experience, this explanation is comforting to some pro-Israel advocates, suggesting that if only Israel had a better public relations strategy, more people would identify as Zionists. However, it is, at best, only a partial explanation. For many years, I have believed that a better explanation would be variation in what respondents think Zionism is. A multitude of definitions are available in scholarly and popular literature as well as governmental policy, produced by Jews and non-Jews alike. Some examples:
Zionists maintain that Zionism is the same as Judaism or part of Judaism.[5]
Zionism is a form of racial discrimination.[6]
And then Jews thought that they should have their own state, and that was called Zionism.[7]
Zionism, a movement that was simultaneously colonial and national in origin, might be understood as a sort of “orthogonal colonialism,” in which the settler attempts to become more native than the local people … .[8]
Zionism is, however, heterogeneous. As the writer Amos Oz famously remarked, Zionism is a family name, claimed by a vast number of people whose relations may be intimate or distant but who do bear a certain family resemblance.[9]
Whatever the merits of Zionism, Yusuf Diya wrote, “the brutal force of circumstances had to be taken into account.” Palestine … had an Indigenous population that would never accept being superseded, making it “pure folly” for Zionism to plan to take Palestine over.[10]
I wonder if we just actually need multiple definitions for [Zionism] … different definitions for different contexts.[11]
So, how do North American Jews define Zionism? To help answer this and similar questions about the complexities of how North American Jews relate to Israel, I have been working for three years on a study[12] in which I ask Jews to respond to standard survey questions about Israel, explain why they answered as they did, and provide other key details such as what it means to them if someone describes themselves as a Zionist, non-Zionist or anti-Zionist. Reading through the words of the 1,854 self-identified North American Jews who participated in my study, including 1,590 who answered one or more of my open-ended questions about Zionism, it is clear there are multiple narratives of Zionism among them:
- 640 respondents wrote comments about Zionism entailing the belief that Jews deserve self-determination in the land of their heritage and/or where they are indigenous[13] (e.g., “Zionists believe in Jewish self-determination in the land of our history and heritage.”);
- For 160 respondents, the key to Zionism was awareness of the history and legacy of antisemitism (e.g., “The expression ‘Never Again’—there should always be a Jewish state and that should be Israel.”);
- 93 respondents equated Zionism and Judaism (e.g., “There is no separating Judaism and Zionism. The very crux of our Torah speaks of settling the land, inheriting the land, right off the bat with Abraham. Every prayer culminates with the return to Jerusalem, every Seder ends with ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ ”);
- 79 respondents believed Zionism inherently entails supporting the right to mistreat non-Jews and racial minorities, particularly Palestinians (e.g., “The term ‘Zionist’ has come to mean something different than what it meant when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I thought it meant an innocent and beleaguered Jewish state, a scrappy and tough people, survivors doing their best to keep its little scrap of land alive. Now it means you defend Israel no matter what, don’t criticize its government, etc., support the oppression and degradation of Palestinian people.”);
- 76 respondents defined Zionism as the belief that Israel is to be a refuge for Jews in need (e.g., “I believe Israel is the Jewish homeland. A place available for all Jews to live when they have no place to go.”);
- For 56 respondents, Zionism demands that Jews live in Israel or make aliyah (e.g., “I believe a Zionist describes a person who has made the critical decision to move to and live in Israel. I can support the State of Israel without making the commitment to live in Israel. That is a commitment I am unwilling to make.”)
And there are dozens of other definitions in my dataset. I agree wholeheartedly with some of these definitions, partially with others and would spend my entire life shouting from the rooftops about the folly of still others. The point of my work, however, is not to adjudicate whose views are right and whose are unacceptable. The point is to learn about the diversity of views that exist within the Jewish community and their implications for internal Jewish communal discourse, our ability to function as a Jewish community without tearing each other apart and our relations with our non-Jewish neighbors. Across the totality of the data, it is clear that the participants in my research have vastly divergent knowledge of Israel, experiences of Israel and personal connections to Israel, and vastly divergent external stimuli that influence their opinions.
Naturally, the Jewish community also has vastly divergent senses about what Zionism is, and why wouldn’t we? Here at Brandeis, Ilan Troen has taught generations of scholars that there are multiple narratives of Israel; why wouldn’t there also be multiple narratives of Zionism? If we want to understand the full scope and diversity of Jewish perspectives on Israel, then we need to understand more than just the narratives to which we personally subscribe.
The participants in my research have vastly divergent knowledge of Israel, experiences of Israel and personal connections to Israel, and vastly divergent external stimuli that influence their opinions.
This understanding is critical for multiple reasons. Among them, most of my work with Jewish communities around the United States is supposed to help solve problems. Most communities tell me they struggle with having civil conversations about Israel. Anyone who has spent significant time in Jewish communal spaces in the past 17 months — and even before Oct. 7 — has seen more than one conversation devolve into a screaming match with participants shouting past each other rather than listening to each other with the respect due our friends, neighbors and fellow members of the community. We cannot afford to dismiss thoughts that are not 100% in lockstep with our own as irrelevant, heretical or even criminal. As scholars, we cannot learn from people we call stupid, murderers or bad Jews. As teachers, we cannot expect students to learn from us if we call them stupid, murderers or bad Jews. As advocates, we cannot hope to persuade anyone to join us or adopt our viewpoints if we call them stupid, murderers or bad Jews. But if we take the time to listen to understand their perspectives — not to agree with them, to share them or to accept them into our hearts, but simply to understand them and where they come from, without ad hominem attacks and recriminations — and we speak with them calmly, we may have better luck.
There are multiple narratives of Israel; why wouldn’t there also be multiple narratives of Zionism? If we want to understand the full scope and diversity of Jewish perspectives on Israel, then we need to understand more than just the narratives to which we personally subscribe.
Whose views about Israel are kosher? It is not in Heaven; it is up to all of us to decide collectively. And it is not a decision that we make once and never revisit, but rather one we have to continue making together, interactively, over and over again as we evaluate the changing world around us. I can only hope that we choose wisely, and I pray that my research will help us to do so.
[1] Newport, F. (2019, August 27). American Jews, Politics and Israel. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/265898/american-jews-politics-israel.aspx.
[2] https://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/community-studies/chicago-report.html
[3] https://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/community-studies/los-angeles-report.html
[4] https://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/community-studies/portland-report.html
[5] Jacob Neusner, Zionism and Judaism
[6] United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379.
[7] Naomi, a fifth-grade student, interviewed by Sivan Zakai, My Second-Favorite Country: How American Jewish Children Think about Israel.
[8] Rachel Z. Feldman and Ian McGonigle, introduction to Settler-Indigeneity in the West Bank.
[9] Derek Penslar, Zionism: An Emotional State.
[10] Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017.
[11] Mijal Bitton, Wondering Jews podcast, “Zionism and Anti-Zionism: Defining Our Terms.”
[12] My research was partially funded by a grant from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Antisemitism Research.
[13] As Daniel Delgado, a Quechua Jew, has written (link), the term “Indigenous” does not work when applied (or not) to the Jews because it was developed in the context of a social movement that divides the world into pre-1492 and 1492-and-after. Jews’ relationship the Land of Israel predates this divide in a way that complicates the discourse but is not broadly recognized.
