The Curious Connection Between Anti-Zionists and Reform Jews

It is time to question why so many people raised in Reform Judaism become “anti-Zionists” and why many Reform Jewish spaces tolerate antisemitic rhetoric.

Just one day after the Hamas-led massacres in Israel on October 7th, 2023 that killed more than 1,000 Israeli Jews, these “anti-Zionist” Jews rallied.

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This is a guest essay written by Mallory Mosner.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

Share this essay using this link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/connection-between-reform-judaism-anti-zionism

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“There is no such thing as traditional Judaism.”

These were the words of a Reform rabbi I have known since childhood, in response to an article I wrote about feeling envious of Jews who grew up in Conservative and Orthodox Jewish households.

I’ve been thinking about her defensive reaction to that article for almost two years, and it makes less and less sense to me the more I learn about and immerse myself in Jewish tradition.

Between lamenting how observant Jews cannot listen to music or shop on Shabbat and suggesting that halacha (Hebrew for “Jewish law”) is “rooted in both racism and patriarchy,” she was very clear in her belief that Reform Judaism is “no less observant” than Conservative or Orthodox Judaism.

No less? Really?

This is an unpopular topic of discussion because most American Jews are now Reform or secular, and it’s not an easy topic.¹ As evinced in the rabbi’s strong reaction to my article, no one wants to have their religious views impugned or diminished; and there is also the complex question of “Who is a Jew?” which has many answers, depending on who you ask. It’s uncomfortable discourse that many prefer to avoid or shut down.

And yet, I feel ever more certain as a millennial who was raised in a very standard Reform Jewish home that it is essential to look at this topic and discuss it as a community.

Not because people who are Reform are “bad” or “lesser” or that Conservative or Orthodox Jews are implicitly “better” or “right,” but because we are in a contemporary era of dangerous antisemitism — often channeled through “anti-Zionism” — and the champions of this dangerous rhetoric are far too often Reform Jews (who vastly outnumber the fringe Neturei Karta, who are also rotten and come from the polar end of the religious Jewish spectrum).²

It is time to question why so many people raised in Reform Judaism become “anti-Zionists” and why many Reform Jewish spaces (from synagogues to summer camps and everything in between) tolerate antisemitic rhetoric.

Who is a Jew?

Before we get in the weeds, let’s answer this foundational question at a high level. Judaism is an ethno-religion. While there are Jews of all colors and backgrounds, ethnic Jews have unique genetic makeup linking them to their Jewish ancestors (whether that is primarily Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Beta Israel, or something else) and their indigenous homeland of Israel.

Judaism is also a religion (though it does not and never has encouraged proselytizing; in fact, it has historically been quite insular). And it is very friendly to converts and considers converts to be as much part of the tribe as any ethnically Jewish person (and therefore just as spiritually connected to Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew for “The Land of Israel”) and just as much a part of Am Yisrael (“The Nation of Israel”).

Of course, there are ethnic Jews who are atheist, or indeed have even converted to other religions; there are also people who have converted to Judaism and then become atheist or converted to other religions.

There are even varying opinions about Jewish identity based on who you ask — Jews who observe halacha more strictly only view inborn religious Jewish identity through a matrilineal lens, and usually do not recognize non-Orthodox conversions. There is a lot of complexity.

So, you’re assuming ‘anti-Zionism’ is always antisemitic?

Another point to clarify before we delve further into the main topic: Zionism is quite simply the right to self-determination on ancestral land for Jewish people. There are no caveats for specific political or religious ideologies; that is literally all it is.

Why does it matter?

As a 30-something millennial, I grew up in the height of the era of “color-blindness” in America, a time when it was considered not only impolite, but backwards to point out racial differences, with the consensus that it would be easier, safer, and better for everyone if we all pretend to be the same.

Indeed, the preponderance of Ashkenazi Jews in America — who have been trending increasingly Reform, increasingly secular and intermarried, and largely been more light-skinned than other subsets of ethnic Jews — made for ripe circumstances of sweeping assimilation in the post-World War II era.

Even mentioning the ethnic component of Jewish identity will ruffle many feathers — to this day, scores of Jews will suggest that invoking anything about Jewish genetics is akin to Nazism itself. For clarity, the ethnic component of Jewish identity is important (just as it is for any group) to understand ourselves medically, epigenetically, indigenously, and for the very reason that Nazis still measured the Jewish facial features of completely non-religious, ethnic Jews.

A convert to Judaism may be able to hide behind a non-Jewish appearance or at any point renounce their Jewishness (not that they should ever have to, and not that they can’t be victims of painful antisemitism), but an ethnically Jewish person can never shed their ethnic Jewishness, nor avoid the racist aspects of antisemitism.

It isn’t wrong to discuss, and mentioning it doesn’t mean that anyone is “better” or “worse” or more worthy of belonging in the Jewish tribe from a spiritual or religious perspective; understanding our differences is just that, a tool for understanding. We should not need total homogeneity in order to seek or find understanding.

But it matters, because an increasingly secular, assimilated culture makes for an ever-murkier understanding of Jewish values, culture, and identity.

Why call out Reform Judaism?

I grew up in a very traditional Reform Jewish home. I attended Sunday school at our synagogue, had a Bat Mitzvah, went to Jewish summer camps, participated in Jewish youth groups, celebrated the major holidays with short, food-forward gatherings with family friends, and so on.

The only thing that was slightly different about my upbringing is that I studied abroad in Israel when I was in high school — an experience that I still credit as one of the only things that staved off the temptations of “anti-Zionism” for as long as I did.

Like most of my family, I very much considered myself “culturally” Jewish; I loved bagels, I would repeat Yiddish words I heard from my grandparents, and I loved the Hanukkah episode of the popular Nickelodeon show “Rugrats.” I also recall feeling extremely spiritually connected to G-d and Judaism as I went through Sunday school.

As I grew into my adolescence, however, my relationship to Judaism changed. Fascination with Torah was replaced by a more embarrassingly stereotypical obsession with what I would wear to my Bat Mitzvah, who the “cool” kids were at temple and in youth groups, and fitting in or competing with my peers.

My parents had a nasty divorce that started only two weeks before my Bat Mitzvah, so it was a very rocky time. Despite talking to my rabbi and cantor, I found no solace. I managed to get through the event, but it was terrible. I felt abandoned by most people in my life.

The reality is, life is hard and messy. The 90s and 2000s and 2010s were not altogether great times for mainstream American society, and the whole problem with assimilation and secularism is that the veil between Jewish values and culture and mainstream societal values and culture is thin, which creates a confusing quasi-religious endorsement of behavior and norms that are not at all fundamentally Jewish.

World Union for Progressive Judaism meeting in 1970 (photo: Bert Verhoeff (ANEFO) - GaHetNa)

Reform Jewish Camps and ‘Wet Hot American Summer’

For many Reform Jews, besmirching summer camp is like heresy. And yet, while I hold countless fond memories of my Jewish camp experience, I also can’t help but feel angry and even resentful about what that experience fostered.

Even without the strange dynamics of being at camp with my sisters, there was a lot of weird behavior that made the environment feel uncomfortably more like a music festival than a Jewish summer camp.

The reason why so many American Jews love the cult classic comedy “Wet Hot American Summer” is not merely because of its hilarious all-star cast; it’s because of the almost painful verisimilitude to what Reform Jewish camps were actually like — at least in the 90s and 2000s (and based on that movie, apparently in the 80s as well, at a minimum).

I recall counselors leaving bunks full of 10-year-olds unsupervised to go hook up with their boyfriends (sometimes in plain view of the campers). Kids would routinely get kicked out for drug or alcohol possession, sometimes staff members would get fired for having sex with campers. It was weird.

From what I understand, there are a lot more restrictions in place now to protect campers from the nuisance of unhinged, hormonal 18-year-old counselors running amok. But for a generation of millennials, Gen-Xers and probably some Gen-Zers, the damage is done.

Judaism was a novel backdrop to the scene of camp, but usually little more than that. We technically had kosher meals and had Friday night and Saturday morning services for Shabbat, and every once in a while we had Israeli education or dancing, or Hebrew words of the day.

And yet, even a rotating cast of Israeli staff every single year at camp didn’t stop countless people I went to camp with for almost a decade from calling for the murder and/or displacement of all Israeli Jews.

Shabbat was not about rest or Torah study, but instead about dressing up in heels and tiny dresses, having leg-shaving parties on the porches of cabins, and then having to hug literally every single person in the entire camp, every week before services.

Though it was surely not designed this way, it felt like Reform Jewish camp functioned as a runway for hyper-sexualization and bullying. But to be very clear, this is not unique to Jewish camp. It was part and parcel to life in the 90s and 2000s, where movies like “American Pie” and “Mean Girls” satirically reflected the same culture that lapped up and abused a nubile Britney Spears. 

It was objectively not a good time in mainstream culture, and movies like “Saved!” and “But I’m a Cheerleader” point to these same trends and behaviors cropping up equally in secular or non-Jewish religious contexts at the time.

Because there is nothing about Judaism or any denomination of a Jewish environment that explicitly fosters abusive or degenerate behavior — it’s simply what was fostered in society, and without a clear and disciplined distinction in the moral compass between the two, they blend into one and the same.

Jewish Identity Lost at Jewish Camp

Although I’m a darker-skinned, curly-haired Ashkenazi Jew, I didn’t understand really anything about my ethnic Jewish identity until I went to Israel. Despite my years of Sunday school and Bat Mitzvah training and studying Hebrew in high school, I didn’t know about different Jewish ethnicities until countless curious Israelis prodded me to find out if I was a Yemenite Jew. 

There was so, so much I didn’t know about our history and culture until I studied in Israel. And yet, after October 7th, seeing how many non-Jewish people I went to summer camp with sympathizing with Hamas and celebrating or justifying October 7th, I have started feeling enraged that I had to share what could have been an enriching, educational and spiritual experience in America with those people.

I recognize, honor, and appreciate that Jews traditionally and spiritually pride ourselves on welcoming in strangers, and I’m not saying that no non-Jewish person should ever be allowed in Jewish camps or at holidays or anything else.

But I find it problematic that I did not know when I was growing up just how many non-Jewish kids there were at camp. It was more than it should be. If it’s not almost entirely Jewish, then it’s not a Jewish camp. And there’s nothing wrong with secular camps — those are awesome! Non-Jews and secular Jews seeking secular experiences should go enjoy those camps to their hearts’ content.

Yet, it bothers me that Reform Jews have been so averse to any kind of exclusivity, and so irate about the prospect of anyone bringing up the ethnic component of Jewishness that they would deprive entire generations of Jewish youth of the opportunity to understand ourselves more fully and proudly.

I am aware that Orthodoxy is not a panacea for the ills of anti-Jewish racism; when I was in college, I attended a Shabbat event in the Chabad community of Passaic, New Jersey, where a gorgeous blonde, curly-haired young Jewish woman told me about how she had not been able to find a husband yet because “men in the community [were] mostly looking for a wife who doesn’t have curly hair.”

But it’s more than that.

I don’t care or necessarily need to be in the company of other people who understand what it’s like to be made fun of for appearing visibly Jewish.

I care that I was socialized as a Jewish person, with a Jewish identity, in an environment where I had no idea who was or wasn’t Jewish, not just in their outward appearance, but in that they might literally worship Jesus and they were in many ways indistinguishable from someone who was technically actually Jewish.

That bothers me.

Is what happens at Jewish camp Jewish?

I am queer; I come from a very liberal family, grew up in the very liberal Pacific Northwest. And yet, it was painfully difficult for me to come out when I was in my 20s, because I understand how entrenched the stigma is, even in the most “tolerant” environment.

It’s been fascinating to me to watch the majority of the LGBTQ+ community side with Hamas in the ongoing war, despite what would be a guarantee of torture and murder if they set foot in Gaza. Regardless, many queer Jews that I know from my upbringing are now also “anti-Zionists.”

When I remember the rampant homophobia at camp (two mean girls in my bunk once read a girl’s secret journal in eighth grade and outed her as a lesbian), it makes a lot of sense to me why queer Jewish people may project blame for events that happened at Reform camps or youth groups onto Judaism and Jewish people as a whole.

In fact, I suspect this is true of almost any traumatic or hateful thing that happened in secular religious environments. Children don’t know the difference between what is “society” and what is explicitly “Jewish” unless they are shown and educated. Without that, a lot of the distinction is blurred.

This is a reality of all the societal dynamics around racism, classism, sexism, and so on, that every Western community encounters, but not every community deals with or experiences through the same lens.

When grotesque wealth, for example, is paraded and favored in “mean girls” cultures of Reform camps or youth groups, it has the effect in unknowing minds of bestowing a seemingly religious superiority upon those who are more fortunate or dominant. 

And I can painfully recall in the midst of my own struggle with depression and suicidal ideation just how real it feels to blame Judaism for what feels so easily in despairing moments like the root of all problems.

Of course, this is lazy, and it’s an expression of the very internalized antisemitism that becomes imbued in your psyche when everything you hate about society is indivisible from everything painful about Jewish community and spaces — because they are literally one in the same.

‘Tikkun Olam’

At the crux of the conversation around what (if anything) gets lost in the practice of Reform Judaism, is the original question of what Judaism is. Christianity technically appropriates our seminal text as a chunk of their religion, so what’s different about a Jewish person and a Christian (aside from worshipping Jesus)?

Often it feels easier to get consensus around what Judaism is not — it’s not worshipping Jesus, it’s not eating pork in the middle of Yom Kippur. It’s very clear what Judaism is for more religious Jews, but for Reform Jews, it feels like the religious reason for being is simply a perversion of the Jewish value known in Hebrew as tikkun olam (roughly translated as “repairing the world”).

That is, anything can be considered “Jewish” if it feels good while you’re doing it, and you consider yourself a Jew. Beneath that, I believe, lies a plethora of fear and projection that make a social justice-oriented religious doctrine feel more resonant and rewarding than the traditions that require more effort, sacrifice and even distancing from mainstream secular culture in order to actualize.

This is not unlike the “Jew-bus,” or Jewish people who find refuge in Buddhism; Reform Judaism doesn’t offer them what they seek, because many Reform practices are completely divorced from the kabbalistic wisdom that is suffused through more religious denominations like Chabad.

When I asked a rabbi at a prominent synagogue in Portland why there were so many different spellings of G-d’s name and what the significance was, he laughed it off as extremist Jewish nonsense that didn’t mean anything. That was the last time I gave a Reform synagogue a second thought.

And many Reform synagogues are now deliberately avoiding the subject of Israel altogether, or openly fostering an environment that is inclusive to “anti-Zionist” Jews — again, in theory because they truly believe it upholds the highest doctrine of tikkun olam to them, and they see proponents of Hamas and enemies of Israel as well-intentioned do-gooders instead of terrorists and Nazis.

What also disturbs me is that major Jewish institutions, including Jewish publications like “Hey Alma” or organizations like the Jewish Federations, which overwhelmingly skew more Reform, are increasingly inclusive of “anti-Zionist” Jews and “anti-Zionist” converts.

Anti-Zionist converts???

Something that bothers me about the knee-jerk reaction of Reform Jews when complex topics pertaining to Judaism come up is that, while they are firmly insisting “a Jew is a Jew is a Jew,” there is an increasing preponderance of Reform Jewish converts who are “anti-Zionist.”

That is genuinely nonsense. Israel is our ancestral homeland, and the single most sacred and holy place for Jews on this planet. If someone converts to Judaism through Reform only to peddle a “token Jew” narrative that reaffirms an existential danger to half the Jewish population, they are not really Jewish.

And I shouldn’t be perceived as a conspiracy theorist for pointing out that Reform synagogues, which I have in certain cities observed as encompassing a surprisingly large amount of converts (and which is a lucrative business, with conversions raking in sometimes thousands of dollars), are more likely to be willing to foster communities of “anti-Zionist” Jews — either through silence, ambivalence, or even vocal anti-Israel rhetoric. 

Bringing this up shouldn’t de facto make me a fundamentalist, or a backwards person. We are allowed to gate-keep Judaism. Again, it doesn’t mean that converts or mixed Jewish people cannot be or aren’t “real Jews.”

It means that the impetus to assimilate to the point where anyone and everyone are encouraged to be Jewish, regardless of if they want to have a Christmas tree or destroy the Jewish state, ought to be examined.

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1. “Denominational switching among U.S. Jews: Reform Judaism has gained, Conservative Judaism has lost.” Pew Research Center.

2. “A short guide to Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist's favourite fringe Jewish sect.” The Jewish Chronicle.