Your identity is who you are, it is very personal and helps define much of your world view, which values you have and which groups you identify with, put crudely whose “side” are you on
When I read Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s recent essay in the New Statesman, “What is Zionism? Why the State of Israel is central to Jewish identity”, I felt the need to respond. When he attempts to make the case that Zionism is “a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity”, it is important to say that this is wrong and explain why.
This essay has now been published and provided to the mainstream Orthodox United Synagogue members, as part of a message to say that “Zionism“ is now part of belonging to these synagogues.
All this is news to me, and something I find deeply disturbing.
My own identity was formed growing up in a north-west London Jewish community. My Mum came from a “traditional” family and my Dad from a Jewish communist one. They sent me to the local primary school, and my mother told me not to eat the meat as it was not kosher – a very good way to instil my identity as I was the only child in my year to do this (including the many other Jewish children). Not eating meat in post rationing Britain caused much consternation, as I recall it (not all of it bad, to make up for my abstinence, the dinner ladies often gave me a double helping of tapioca pudding!)
I then went to a very orthodox Jewish school, so I could learn about Jewish culture and religion, but was told to make sure I didn’t become too observant (“be in the B, not the A stream for Jewish studies”). Of course, after a few years there, I did become quite observant, much to my parents’ concern.
The school was not Zionist, though many of the children were, and there was no observance of Israel Independence Day and singing Israel’s national anthem HaTikvah was banned, ostensibly due to the line “to be a free nation”, whereas the school authorities thought that the Jewish people should be a “nation” bound by the laws of the Torah. Jewish study was focussed on rabbinic texts, e.g. the standard commentaries on the Torah, and the classic rabbinic works, the Mishnah and the Talmud
These were the foundations of a humanistic Jewish identity which I received in the early 70s. Even though by this time I was religious, I went to Habonim “a Socialist Zionist Culturally Jewish youth movement”, thus starting the road to my self-identification as a “left wing orthodox Jew”, being left wing on Israel as well, and supporting religious Zionist peace groups like Oz veShalom (“Strength and Peace” – these groups did exist back then) and, in the 1980s, British Friends of Peace Now
I think people, at this time, would have been surprised by CR Mirvis’s assertion that Zionism is a fundamental part of Jewish identity – they saw this as being defined by Jewish religious observance and learning. And not all Jewish youth groups were Zionist (e.g. the Bnei Brith Youth Organisation)
What I have become increasingly aware of, since that period, is how Zionism took Jewish history and re-purposed it to create founding myths for the state, e.g. the idea mentioned by CR Mirvis that “the Roman empire would eventually exile the majority of Jews”. There were already significant Diaspora Jewish communities at the time of the destruction of the second Temple in 70CE, e.g. in Babylonia, Alexandria, Cyprus and elsewhere. There was no exile at this stage (and while Jews were banned from Jerusalem which was re-named Aelia Capitolina and Judea renamed, after the disastrous Bar Kochba revolt), Jews lived on in what is now Israel for hundreds of years after these events and produced some of the key works of rabbinic Judaism, mentioned above.
It should be noted that such myth-making is unexceptional when it comes to building a state, however we need to remember it is always dangerous to take such myths literally
These dangers are manifest in the Chief Rabbi’s article – for example, he writes
”Zionism is nothing more or less than the near 4,000-year-old expression of the Jewish People’s connection to, and right to self-determination in, the land situated at the very heart of Jewish faith and peoplehood…For most Jews, therefore, whether religious or secular, Zionism is both an existential imperative and a fundamental aspect of their Jewish identity.”
The fact is that Zionism started in the 19th century, as a nationalist movement, the scholar Antony Polonsky explains the nationalism is a 19th century phenomenon and Zionism as a nationalist movement, is therefore a modern construct.
Conflating the modern Zionist movement with traditional themes (e.g. the return to Zion and the constant emphasis on Jewish life in Erets Yisra’el, the Land of Israel) of Jewish identity over an alleged “4,000 years” is misleading, at best.
Even the idea of there being a “Jewish people” over this period is problematic, as another scholar Shaye Cohen argues the “peculiar combination of ethnicity, national and religion” that is Jewish identity developed in the second century BCE. Before that, being Judean was a tribal identity.
Chief Rabbi Mirvis says:
“The Torah (Five Books of Moses) is, in effect, a 3,000-year-old constitutional document for the establishment of a nation state in the territory known previously as Canaan and later as the Kingdom of Judah or Judea “
Setting aside that Canaan was geographically different to Judea, the “nation state” referred to above is unrecognisable in modern terms. CR Mirvis is aware of this, however gets the process precisely the wrong way round when he writes:
“It [the Jewish relationship with Israel] is a relationship which existed long before the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel, long before Theodor Herzl founded the Zionist movement at the end of the 19th century”
Nationalism as a political movement is a modern phenomenon, and it built on an older core of “ethnic self-consciousness” (paraphrasing Polonsky, quoted above).
Arguing that the Bible is our constitution is extremely dangerous, especially as it opens the floodgates to the claims of “Greater Israel” espoused by Gush Emunim, and subsequent groups, from the 1970s onwards.
Even reading the Hebrew Bible in the modern state of Israel and having the ability to visit, touch and feel the various places mentioned can easily lead to a compelling feeling of the immediacy of the Biblical promises recorded.
Yet the pitfalls in such emotions are manifold. Israeli ministers have referred to Hamas/Palestinians as Amalek, for whom the Torah commands murder of every man, women and child. And many children have been killed in Gaza. The Ministers who have said these things are in a Government which has directed a policy of forcible displacement, destruction of homes and property, blockading of access to food and medicines.
Rabbinic law has developed from Biblical laws, and has developed laws such a “milchemet mitzvah” (roughly a “holy war”), which have also been invoked regarding this conflict, and which would also allow behaviour far beyond what is acceptable in modern warfare
This approach conflates religion and state, and pushes towards an ethnocentrism which can privilege Jewish identity, as defined by the various Israeli religious authorities. This has now been enshrined in the 2018 nation state law which the Israel Democracy Institute says “excludes minorities, omits equality, ignores democracy and the Declaration of Independence, and undermines the fragile balance of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state”.
CR Mirvis asserts, against the background of this ethnocentric nationalism, that “a school or any other organisation can be proudly Zionist without that fact having any political connotations,” and has not a word to say about the supremacist views of many religious Zionists, especially the far-right “religious” ministers, who are part of the coalition Government. The nation state law of 2018 has been followed by many more anti-democratic laws, e.g. the Israeli parliament has passed a law allowing the government to deport the family members of people convicted of terrorism offences, including Israeli citizens.
This creates a tension, which has an increasingly corrosive effect on Jewish education in the Jewish community’s schools, and leads to students feeling they need to make stark choices between their liberal values and the politicised form of Judaism (aka Zionism) being taught to them.
In wider society, “Zionism” now means all things to all people, and even within his article, CR Mirvis uses this in several senses, both using it in the sense of a historical link to the land of Israel with no political implications, and a Jewish right to national self-determination. .
As a consequence, when the Chief Rabbi suggests that “Zionists off our campus” is a call for the expulsion of the majority of Jews, he may be correct in the loosest sense of the term. “73 per cent of British Jews say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel”. However, this may relates to the close ties that exist between British Jews and family/friends in Israel. The same survey found only a minority of British Jews support the current government, or feel that the IDF has done enough to protect Palestinians in Gaza or to provide humanitarian aid.
Calls to exclude “Zionists” are similarly problematic as it is unclear what exactly this word means . Such calls bring back bad memories. However, simply seeing this is classic antisemitism is misleading, and adds to the estrangement that many progressive Jews feel from people who they would otherwise see as allies
All this is sharp contrast to his predecessor, Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits, noted the differences between secular and religious Zionism. In his book ”If Only My People…”:
He [went] so far as to accuse David Ben Gurion and other Labor Zionists of “hypocrisy” for having told British leaders in 1937 that “the Bible is our mandate.”
The idea that Zionism is an essential component of Jewish identity, implies that anti-Zionism is automatically antisemitism., closing down discussion at a time it is urgently needed .
The case made by Chief Rabbi Mirvis is anachronistic and ahistorical. Rather than try to redefine Jewish identity as Zionism, we should look to the example of his predecessor Lord Jakobovits, who made the case for a principled stand against the extreme religious Zionist views, which have now become a significant factor in the actions of the current Israeli Government
