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Every era of Jewish history has demanded something different from the Jewish People.
There were centuries when Jewish survival required endurance above all else: the ability to remain Jewish under empires, expulsions, inquisitions, and poverty.
There were generations when survival required scholarship: the discipline to keep studying, teaching, interpreting, and transmitting a civilization without a country to protect it.
There were moments when Jewish life required diplomacy: the ability to negotiate with kings, governments, landlords, neighbors, and enemies.
There were eras when it required entrepreneurship, mobility, reinvention, and an almost supernatural talent for beginning again.
Then came modern Zionism, and with it a new set of Jewish skills.
The early Zionists had to learn how to organize politically, revive an ancient language, drain swamps, build farms, form institutions, defend land, create a state, and convince a scattered, wounded people that history had not ended for them.
They needed courage, imagination, stubbornness, and faith. Not only religious faith, though many had that too, but faith in the Jewish future. Faith that the Jewish People were not merely survivors of the past, but builders of tomorrow.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, Zionism required the skills of migration. Leading up to 1948, Zionism required the skills of founding. Through 1973, Zionism required the skills of defense. In the decades that followed, Zionism required the skills of diplomacy, statecraft, absorption, innovation, and military resilience.
Now, our era is asking something new of us. The question now is whether we can build the kind of Jews capable of carrying Zionism forward in a more confusing, emotional, hostile, fragmented, and digitally distorted age.
For many Jews today, Zionism has become reactive. Someone attacks Israel, and we respond. Someone posts a lie, and we correct it. Someone slanders Israel with accusations of genocide, colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing, and we scramble to explain history, law, context, terrorism, borders, peace offers, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the moral difference between a democracy defending itself and a terror group hiding behind civilians.
This work matters; so do facts, debates, and advocacy. But if Zionism becomes only a reflex against accusation, it will become exhausting. If Jewish identity is built only in response to hostility, then our enemies still get to set the terms of our Jewish lives. We will know what we are against before we know what we are for. We will learn how to respond before we learn how to belong.
The next stage of Zionism requires more than information. It requires formation. It requires a new set of Zionist skills.
The first is knowing our story. The second is mastering our reactions. The third is understanding the world around us. And the fourth is strengthening the relationships that hold the Jewish People together.
These are not the skills of slogans. They are not the skills of online performance. They are not the skills of people who confuse loudness with strength. They are the skills of mature Zionism. They are the skills this era now demands.
1) Knowing Our Story
The first new Zionist skill is self-knowledge.
A Jew who does not know why he is a Zionist will eventually be forced to borrow someone else’s explanation. And in today’s world, there is no shortage of people eager to explain Zionism to Jews.
Some will tell us Zionism is racism. Some will tell us Zionism is colonialism. Some will tell us Zionism is an outdated 19th-century nationalist project. Some will tell us Judaism is a religion, not a people. Some will tell us Israel is merely a political preference, no different from supporting one party or another. Some will tell us that good Jews are the ones who detach themselves from Jewish power, Jewish sovereignty, and Jewish self-defense.
If we do not know our own story, we will become vulnerable to theirs.
This is one of the great failures of modern Jewish education. Too many Jews were taught to defend Israel before they were taught to understand why Israel matters. They were given talking points before they were given memory. They learned about wars before they learned about longing. They learned how to answer accusations before they learned how to feel at home in the Jewish story.
But Zionism did not begin as a public relations campaign. It began as a return.
Long before there was a modern State of Israel, there was a Jewish People that lived in Judea, prayed toward Jerusalem, broke glasses at weddings, ended seders with “next year in Jerusalem,” mourned on Tisha B’Av, studied texts written in the land, remembered kings and prophets, and carried the Hebrew language like an ember through exile.
Zionism did not invent the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel. It translated an ancient attachment into modern political action.
To know our story is to understand that Israel is not an accessory to Jewish identity. It is not a hobby for political Jews. It is not a foreign-policy issue that happens to involve people with familiar last names. Israel sits at the center of Jewish memory, Jewish prayer, Jewish peoplehood, and Jewish destiny.
Knowing our story means we do not panic every time someone challenges our legitimacy. We do not need to reinvent Jewish history in every conversation. We do not treat every hostile question as if it deserves to put us on trial.
We know why the Jewish People needed sovereignty. We know what statelessness cost us. We know what it meant for Jews to live for centuries at the mercy of others. We know what changed when Jewish blood was no longer cheap. We know what it means that there is one place on earth where the army arrives because Jews are in danger, not because Jews are accused of being the danger.
This kind of self-knowledge creates calm. It does not make a person arrogant. It makes a person rooted. And rooted Jews are harder to intimidate.
2) Mastering Our Reactions
The second new Zionist skill is emotional discipline. This may be the hardest one, because the modern world is engineered to destroy it.
Every day brings a new provocation: A celebrity says something ignorant, a professor signs a grotesque letter, a student group glorifies terror, a news outlet distorts a headline, a politician condemns Israel for defending itself, a stranger with a flag emoji and no knowledge of history announces that the Jewish state has no right to exist.
The temptation is to respond to everything. The temptation is to live in a state of permanent outrage. And sometimes outrage is appropriate. There are moments when anger is not only understandable, but moral. A person who feels nothing in the face of Jewish murder, hostage-taking, rape, terror, or global indifference has not achieved enlightenment. He has lost contact with reality.
But anger is a signal. It cannot become a home.
A Zionist who is ruled by outrage will eventually become easy to manipulate. His enemies will learn exactly which buttons to press. Social media will decide his emotional schedule. Strangers will dictate his mood. Every lie will feel like an emergency. Every insult will feel like a crisis. Every post will demand a response.
That is not strength. It is captivity.
The Jewish tradition has never treated emotion as meaningless. We mourn, we rejoice, we rage against injustice, we cry out, we argue with God, we sing, we remember, we sit shiva, we dance with Torah scrolls, we break glasses under wedding canopies because even at our happiest moments, we refuse to forget what has been broken.
But Judaism also insists that emotion must be disciplined into action. Grief becomes memory. Memory becomes responsibility. Anger becomes courage. Fear becomes vigilance. Pain becomes solidarity.
The new Zionist must learn the difference between being moved and being ruled.
Not every battle is ours. Not every idiot deserves our energy. Not every lie can be corrected by us personally. Not every argument is worth having. Not every person asking a question is actually asking a question. Some are performing. Some are baiting. Some are recruiting an audience, not seeking truth.
Emotional discipline means learning to pause before reacting. It means asking: Is this useful? Is this wise? Is this the right person, the right time, the right platform, the right tone? Am I responding because I can help, or because I cannot tolerate the discomfort of remaining silent?
There is a kind of Jewish courage in restraint. There is a kind of Zionist strength in refusing to let enemies turn us into a mirror image of their hatred. The Jewish People did not survive for thousands of years because we reacted to every insult. We survived because we knew what deserved our attention and what did not. We knew when to debate, when to flee, when to fight, when to build, when to pray, when to mourn, and when to begin again.
In this era, the ability to stay calm is not passivity. It is power.
3) Understanding the World Around Us
The third new Zionist skill is social understanding.
Many Jews assume that if they simply present enough facts, the world will understand Israel.
Show the maps. Explain the history. Quote the charter. Describe the peace offers. Mention the withdrawals. Explain the rockets. Explain the tunnels. Explain the hostages. Explain that Hamas started the war. Explain that Israel left Gaza. Explain that Jews are indigenous to the land. Explain that Arabic is spoken freely in Israel. Explain that Israeli Arabs vote, serve in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), sit on the Supreme Court, study in universities, and work in hospitals.
All of this is true. And still, facts alone often fail — not because facts do not matter, but because people interpret facts through stories.
Some people look at Israel and see a small nation surrounded by enemies. Others see a powerful military backed by the United States. Some see Jewish return. Others see Palestinian dispossession. Some see a democracy fighting terror. Others see an oppressor fighting the oppressed. Some see October 7th and understand immediately what Hamas is. Others see October 7th and rush to explain it away because it does not fit the moral framework they had already chosen long before that date.
If we do not understand the story someone is living inside, we will not understand why our facts are failing to move them.
This does not mean all stories are equally true. They are not. Some are false. Some are malicious. Some are propaganda. Some are built on ignorance. Some are built on old antisemitic patterns wearing new political clothing.
But a serious Zionist must learn to read the room. Why does this person believe what he believes? Is he misinformed, or is he hostile? Is she asking in good faith, or looking for public victory? Is this a moral concern, a political fashion, a social identity, a religious prejudice, or a need to belong to a movement? Is the person actually talking about Israel, or using Israel to talk about their own country, race, capitalism, colonialism, power, guilt, or personal alienation?
Too much Jewish advocacy treats every critic as if they are the same person. They are not.
The college student repeating slogans may not be the same as the professor manufacturing them. The confused friend may not be the same as the activist who knows exactly what he is doing. The person grieving Palestinian suffering may not be the same as the person celebrating Jewish death. The person who has never heard the Israeli side may not be the same as the person who has heard it and rejected the Jewish right to self-determination anyway.
Wisdom requires distinction.
A mature Zionist knows how to tell the difference between ignorance and hatred, between discomfort and malice, between criticism of Israel and opposition to Jewish sovereignty, between someone who can be reached and someone who only wants to watch Jews beg for acceptance.
This skill matters because not every conversation has the same purpose. Some conversations are meant to persuade. Some are meant to clarify. Some are meant to plant a seed. Some are meant to defend a boundary. Some are meant to show other Jews listening that they are not alone. And some should not happen at all.
Understanding the world around us also means understanding that many people are not actually responding to Israel as it is. They are responding to what Israel represents (or what they think Israel represents).
Israel represents Jewish power, and Jewish power unsettles the world.
For centuries, the world knew what to do with Jews as victims. It knew what to do with Jews as minorities, wanderers, sufferers, scholars, comedians, merchants, refugees, and moral symbols. But Jews with tanks, borders, intelligence services, fighter jets, agricultural technology, cyber capabilities, and the will to defend themselves — that is something else.
The world is not always angry because Israel fails to meet a universal standard. Often, it is angry because Israel refuses to remain in the role assigned to Jews. The new Zionist must understand this without becoming bitter, which is not easy. It requires seeing clearly without losing generosity. It requires recognizing hostility without assuming every outsider is an enemy. It requires refusing naïveté without surrendering to cynicism.
The goal is not to hate the world. The goal is to understand it well enough to navigate it.
4) Strengthening the Jewish People
The fourth new Zionist skill is relationship-building.
This may be the most neglected skill of all. Many Jews know how to argue with the world. Far fewer know how to speak to each other. This is dangerous, because the Jewish future will not be secured only by defeating external enemies. It will also depend on whether we can remain a people when we disagree.
And we disagree about almost everything.
Every generation worries about Jewish unity, but unity is often misunderstood. Unity does not mean agreement. If Jewish unity required Jews to stop arguing, the Jewish People would have disappeared somewhere in the Book of Exodus. Jewish unity means relationships are strong enough to survive disagreement. That is a very different goal.
It means we stop treating every internal debate as a civil war. It means we stop excommunicating Jews for asking hard questions, while also refusing to indulge Jews who build their identities on public contempt for their own people. It means we make room for complexity without making room for betrayal. It means we argue seriously, not theatrically. It means we remember that the person across the table is not merely a position, a label, or a demographic category.
He is another Jew, she is another Jew — and that should still mean something.
New Zionists must be able to build bridges without becoming vague. They must be able to hold convictions without turning every disagreement into a loyalty test. They must be able to speak about Israel in a way that invites Jews closer, not only in a way that proves opponents wrong.
This matters especially for young Jews.
A generation is growing up in an atmosphere where Jewish identity is often framed as a burden, a controversy, or a public relations problem. They are told that to be accepted, they must distance themselves from Israel. They are told that Jewish safety is conditional. They are told that Jewish belonging in “progressive” spaces requires Jewish self-denial. They are told that the easiest way to be praised as a moral Jew is to condemn the Jews who insist on protecting Jewish life.
If the only Zionism they encounter is angry, brittle, defensive, and suspicious, many will walk away — not because they hate Israel, but because no one showed them a Zionism large enough to live inside.
We need a Zionism of confidence; a Zionism that can tell the truth about Jewish pain without making pain the entirety of Jewish identity; a Zionism that can defend Israel without reducing Judaism to Israel advocacy; a Zionism that can mourn the dead, fight for the living, celebrate Jewish creativity, argue about policy, study Jewish history, visit Israel, support Israelis, and still remember that the Jewish story is bigger than the crisis of the week.
Relationship-building is not soft work. It is nation-building. The early Zionists built institutions because they understood that dreams require structure. Our generation must build relationships because we are learning that identity requires belonging.
A Jew who feels connected to other Jews is harder to isolate. A Jew who feels part of a living people is harder to shame. A Jew who has experienced Jewish joy, not only Jewish fear, is harder to detach from the Jewish future.
What a brilliant piece!!
I particularly like this quote. “But anger is a signal. It cannot become a home.”
Anger and hate are very addictive emotions.