We need to teach Jewish power, not just Jewish pride.

Diaspora Zionism should move beyond sentiment to responsibility, showing the next generation how to wield influence, defend survival, and act with moral clarity.

photo: Ivan Louis/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Adam Hummel, a lawyer in Toronto.

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

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“I have called Zionism once as an endless ideal, and I truly believe that even after we gain our land, Eretz Yisrael, it will not cease to be an ideal; for Zionism as I see it incorporates not only the aspiration to a promised land for our miserable people, but also an aspiration for a moral and spiritual wholeness.” — Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism

There’s a question I keep circling back to, especially when I think about how we teach Zionism in the Diaspora and how we model it for the next generation: What, exactly, is the Diaspora’s role in Zionism now?

Not rhetorically, not emotionally — but practically, ethically, and educationally.

For a long time, Diaspora Jewish discourse has rested on an assumption that feels both intuitive and increasingly unstable: Zionism is something Israel does, and the Diaspora responds. Israelis carry the burden of power and consequence. Diaspora Jews supply values, critique, funding, advocacy, and moral voice.

Some days, that division feels reasonable. Other days, it feels like abdication dressed up as humility. Historically, at least, it is incomplete.

Zionism was born in the Diaspora as a response to Jewish powerlessness, not as an Israeli identity project. It emerged from the recognition that Jews, as a minority wherever they lived, were subject to forces they didn’t control, and that moral refinement alone had never been sufficient to protect them. Political Zionism wasn’t a slogan or sentiment; it was an argument, often uncomfortable, that Jews needed to relearn how to act in history, with agency, responsibility, and consequence.

That argument was articulated almost entirely outside the Land of Israel.

The Hungarian-born Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”) in Paris. The First Zionist Congress convened in Basel, Switzerland. The World Zionist Organization was, by design, a Diaspora political body, created to mobilize Jews across borders, languages, and communal cultures. The “Basel Program” spoke not in the language of symbolism or longing, but in the language of political reality: organization, diplomacy, settlement, leverage, and power.

Diaspora Jews built the institutions that made Zionism real. The Jewish National Fund raised funds across continents to purchase land. United Israel Appeal financed national infrastructure. Hadassah, founded in the United States by the American-born Henrietta Szold, helped build Israel’s medical system. Youth movements like Betar (originating in Poland) trained generations of Jews not just to care about Zionism, but to take responsibility for it. This wasn’t abstract attachment; it was preparation.

Even Zionism’s diplomatic achievements were shaped through Diaspora political engagement. The Balfour Declaration wasn’t the product of moral pleading alone, but of leverage, relationships, and statecraft by people like Chaim Weizmann (a Russian living in the UK) who became the modern State of Israel’s first president. United Nations Resolution 181 — passed in 1947 in New York, approving the partition of British Mandate Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish state — did not emerge simply because Jews like Abba Eban (a South African) were eloquent or sympathetic, but because they were organized and prepared to act on the outcome.

Then the modern State of Israel was established, and the question changed.

Statehood solved a central problem Zionism was meant to solve. But it didn’t resolve Zionism itself. In 1951, the World Zionist Organization adopted the “Jerusalem Program” (no longer the “Basel Program”), explicitly reaffirming that Zionism requires action not only in Israel but throughout the Jewish world. Zionism was never meant to become Israel’s exclusive domain, nor the Diaspora’s spectator role.

And yet, over time, something shifted.

For many Diaspora communities, Zionism became less a lived framework of obligation and more a subject of interpretation, advocacy, and emotional identification. Not because Diaspora Jews stopped caring, but because Israel’s existence made it possible to care at a distance. Zionism could be supported, defended, debated, even loved, without always being inhabited.

I am not sure that shift was wrong; I am increasingly sure it was consequential.

What replaced obligation was posture, and what replaced discipline was mood.

Of course, Diaspora Zionism was never a single thing. From the beginning, it contained competing moral languages and political instincts. Cultural Zionists feared the erosion of Jewish spirit more than physical danger; political Zionists insisted that sovereignty must come before moral refinement; Labour Zionists tied redemption to social justice and collective labor; Revisionists warned that restraint would invite catastrophe; and religious Zionists debated whether human initiative was faithful service or heresy.

These were not side debates; they shaped institutions, leadership, and the very lives Jews built. In the Diaspora, Zionism was always a debate about how Jews should live with power, not whether power was necessary at all.

For a long time, that distance seemed manageable. Moral discussion could remain theoretical. Jewish vulnerability could be treated as historical rather than current. Zionism could be debated as an idea rather than lived as a condition.

October 7th shattered that illusion.

I understand why this is where disagreement often begins. Many people approach October 7th through moral frameworks that prioritize proportionality, symmetry, or contextual explanation, believing this is what seriousness requires. But those frameworks fail when they flatten intent, erase peoplehood, or treat the right to survive as just another claim to be weighed. When violence is aimed at Jews not because of what they have done, but because of who they are, moral analysis can’t begin by relativizing legitimacy itself. It must begin by securing the moral ground on which any further judgment is possible.

This is where many well-meaning people stumble: They mistake balance for fairness, and complexity for neutrality, and in doing so shift the burden of moral justification onto the victims of a massacre rather than onto those who carried it out.

The massacre didn’t introduce moral complexity into Zionism; it removed the illusion that complexity could be safely abstract. Jewish civilians were hunted, tortured, raped, murdered, and taken hostage not because of policy or misunderstanding, but because they were Jews — in the place that was established precisely so that such hunting never took place again. That matters. It establishes the moral baseline.

After October 7th, some debates are no longer symmetrical. The right of Israel to defend itself is not one claim among many; it is the condition that makes all other moral claims possible. Without it, Zionism ceases to be a discipline of responsibility and reverts to a posthumous ethic, admirable and irrelevant.

At the same time, October 7th did not erase moral limits. It clarified where they belong. Moral seriousness after October 7th does not begin with questioning Jewish legitimacy, nor does it end with pretending that power carries no cost. It begins with naming enemies honestly, defending Jewish survival without apology, and refusing to allow Jewish ethics to be rewritten by those who deny Jewish peoplehood altogether. That goes for non-Jews and Jews alike.

This brings me to the tension I keep returning to: On one hand, a Zionism that demands unquestioning loyalty from the Diaspora is brittle and dangerous. It collapses moral vocabulary and teaches our children that Jewish power is either perfect or unspeakable. Neither is true however, because both are corrosive.

On the other hand, a Zionism that lives only as critique or qualification hollows itself out. When Zionism becomes primarily a language of distance, disclaimers, or moral signalling, it ceases to be a framework for responsibility and becomes a performance.

These aren’t equal failures.

In today’s Diaspora environment, critique is often rewarded. Nuance is often punished. Admission of moral cost is not received as seriousness, but weaponized as evidence of illegitimacy. Moral complexity is rarely honoured by those demanding it. That asymmetry matters, especially educationally.

Which is why the answer can’t be certainty. It must be adulthood, properly defined, or what I call “Adult Zionism,” a set of obligations.

It means refusing loyalty tests imposed by hostile frameworks. It means refusing to outsource Jewish moral language to movements that deny Jewish legitimacy altogether. It means distinguishing tragedy from crime without collapsing the difference. It means defending Jewish self-defence even when it is ugly, while naming ugliness when it exists. It means knowing when to speak, when to be silent, and when to walk away from rigged conversations entirely. It’s not easy, but neither is adulting.

The Diaspora does not face Israel’s security dilemmas. That matters. It demands humility and restraint. Israel does not live in a friendly neighbourhood, and Diaspora Jews should not apply theoretical or “gentleman’s rules” to a region that’s never played by them.

But the Diaspora does face pressure, exposure, and danger of its own. Both on account of historical antisemitism, and yes, because of Israel and its actions too. On campuses, in professional spaces, and in public life, Jews are being coerced into disavowal. They are being asked to earn belonging by condemning their people. And now, they are being hunted, attacked, and murdered too.

That means Diaspora Zionism can’t be something we only talk about among ourselves. But it also can’t turn into public confession or self-denunciation. Teaching Jewish morals is first and foremost a Jewish responsibility, aimed at our own community and our own children. Engagement with the outside world should be thoughtful and strategic, not an emotional exercise or a bid for approval.

This is where the Diaspora’s role becomes clearer. The Diaspora does not get a veto over Israeli policy. But it does carry responsibility for sustaining Jewish legitimacy for power itself. It educates the next generation not only about what Israel does, but about why Jewish power exists at all.

What does this look like in practice?

Imagine a moment when Israel makes a military decision that is necessary for Jewish survival, but causes real civilian suffering. Diaspora Zionism does not demand blind defence, nor performative condemnation. It demands language capable of holding tragedy without surrendering legitimacy. It demands teaching our children that moral cost exists without turning cost into accusation.

Now imagine the opposite case. Israel hesitates when action is required, constrained by international opinion or reputational fear, and Jews are harmed as a result. Diaspora Zionism does not respond with distancing for moral comfort; it insists, clearly, that Jewish life cannot be negotiated away in the language of restraint.

Or consider this: A Jewish student is asked to “condemn Israel” before being welcomed into a coalition. Adult Diaspora Zionism does not train reflexive defence or reflexive disavowal; it trains refusal — refusal to accept coerced speech, refusal to trade peoplehood for proximity, refusal to participate in moral shakedowns masquerading as dialogue.

These moments test not loyalty versus betrayal, but adulthood versus avoidance. If Zionism is only defence, it collapses into propaganda. If it is only critique, it dissolves into abstraction. If it is only feeling, it can’t guide action at all.

But if Zionism is understood as a discipline, a framework for holding power and ethics together under pressure, rooted in the belief that the Jewish People have a right to a safe and secure home in the Land of Israel, then these moments become educational rather than paralyzing. They teach judgment rather than posture, responsibility rather than reflex.

Reclaiming Zionism as a Diaspora inheritance doesn’t mean mimicking Israeli policy or issuing judgments from a safe distance. It means refusing to outsource Jewish seriousness. It means teaching history honestly and completely. It means speaking clearly about power without fetishizing it. And it means rejecting both the fantasy that acceptance is permanent and the fantasy that survival alone absolves everything.

Zionism itself was born as a rebellion against leaders who were learned, sincere, and wrong. Leaders who believed intellect could replace action. But it was never a rejection of morality. It was an insistence that morality must live in history, among real people, under real threat.

I do not pretend this resolves the tension. I doubt it ever will. Diaspora Zionism was never a single inheritance handed down intact. It was always a set of competing moral and political traditions, each offering different answers to the problem of Jewish power. The mistake today is not disagreement, but evasion: treating pluralism as a refuge from responsibility, and ambiguity as a moral position in itself.

What I am arguing for is not a return to consensus, which never existed, but a return to seriousness. A willingness to choose among imperfect Zionist traditions rather than hide behind their diversity. Some instincts prepare Jews for adulthood in history, where power, danger, and consequence are real. Others, however well-intentioned, collapse under pressure and ask Jews to justify their legitimacy before they are allowed to defend their lives.

A Diaspora Zionism understood as a discipline rather than a posture produces stronger Jews and sturdier communities. It teaches the next generation that loving Israel means judgment as well as loyalty, moral clarity without moral theatre, and responsibility without illusion.

Choosing that tradition again is not an Israeli demand; it is a Diaspora task. And after October 7th, it is no longer optional.

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