Zionism can no longer be treated as optional.

The question is no longer whether Jews relate to the Jewish state, but how that relationship is lived, argued, and sustained.

photo: Cole Keister/Unsplash

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

This is a guest essay by Ariel Beery, a strategist dedicated to building a better future for Israel and the Jewish People.

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

---

Judaism is the word we use to describe the beliefs guiding the life choices of the Jewish People.

One can both believe that Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai and passed it on to Joshua, and from him to the Elders, and from the Elders to the Prophets (as Rabbinic Jewish tradition tells us), while also recognizing that Judaism has, over time, evolved and integrated practices and tenants of faith to help our People live as a covenantal community (a community voluntarily created and maintained) in a changing and challenging world.

The Jewish People and Judaism have been evolving for as long as we have existed. In ancient times when animal sacrifice was the norm, Judaism described the ways and means of sacrificing to find favor in the eyes of the Eternal through representatives that just so happened to be a landless tribe which lived among us. These Levites served to build commonality and maintain identity through guiding the sacrificial offering and divining right action.

In later years, when kingdoms arose in our region and we sought to be like other nations, Judaism evolved to center the role of the king and the kingdom, gathering these same Levites near his palace in Jerusalem into a single Temple. In response to this centralization of power, Prophets arose to preach morality and represent the interests of the powerless within our community, adding a layer to Judaism defining how we think today about our covenant and its daily implications.

Following the destruction of that Kingdom and its Temple, Judaism became portable so that it could maintain the connection between our people in exile. At the heart of the exilic version was the story first spoken and then read to the community on days dedicated for communal gathering. As that community grew, and a new kingdom was formed around a new Temple built, Judaism evolved further; Sages replaced prophets and commentary replaced prophecy as a means of guiding the behavior of the far-flung people and identifying the guardrails which marked the Jewish way.

It was after the second destruction of the second kingdom and Temple that Judaism disconnected from the sacrificial practices of its youth and matured into a fully portable, fully distributed system of ideas for how to live the good life. Unlike the practice of philosophy of the Greeks, which sought to describe universal truths, Judaism was based on one fundamental assumption: our people have a unique relationship with each other that enables us to maintain a covenant with the Creator. We left divining universal truths to others; our concern was how to live the good life, together.

Despite the pain and suffering, despite being disappointed in how that covenant was upheld by our Eternal partner or by our leaders or by ourselves, we remained loyal to that relationship by redefining it again and again to adapt to changing times: in the age of empires we maintained tight communities who traded amongst themselves, in the age of religions we added explanations not existing in our initial stories such as what happens after we die.

Under the guise of the inquisition we found means to hide and adapt and escape and be reborn through the ideas of luminaries such as the Rambam¹. In the shadow of the Enlightenment we redefined how one could be a Jew in the home and a person in the street, giving birth to the three denominations that most Jews today claim to adhere to: Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and Reform. For every age, an intellectual season. Factions championing certain ideas arose and others fell. Judaism evolved to become what we know it as today and remains a means to describe the different beliefs the Jewish People use to guide their everyday lives.

Zionism is no different. The Zionist idea was born in the throes of empire, as nation-states declared their independence and defined their social and geographical boundaries. Zionism may have started as a small sect within the Jewish People — much like the Pharisees had before — but it grew.

Now, more than half of the Jewish People live in the state the Zionists built, and the Judaism of the Jews living outside that state has been irrevocably changed. Belief or disbelief in that state affects their life choices, their very identity. As a result, Jewish life and belief are fundamentally different today than they were prior to the modern State of Israel’s founding in 1948. Zionism, in other words, has (once again) redefined Judaism.

Recognizing that the grand majority of the Jews have moved beyond Zionism as a separate set of beliefs and integrated it into the very core of their beliefs — that is, into Judaism — explains why “anti-Zionism” is seen by so many as antisemitism. Why so many Jews reject the world telling us, once again, what we should believe and how we should act. Why the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in academia and cultural circles feels less like a protest and more like the Inquisition. Why it is so easy for “anti-Zionists” to defend attacks on Jews, and why Jews are unwilling to give up their Zionism despite the rising threat against them.

It is time for us to move beyond describing Zionism as a separate and distinct belief from Judaism, and towards an understanding of the practices and beliefs of Zionist Judaism. Recognizing that we have moved beyond Zionism as a separate idea and integrated it into the covenantal manifest of contemporary Judaism will allow us to properly place it into the practices we’ve developed to maintain and nourish our community.

Just as ancient Temple Judaism gave us a set of holy days and festivals, Pharisaic Judaism brought with it a set of practices and rituals to define Shabbat and Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). Just as Maccabean Judaism brought with it Hanukkah and symbols of power and rebirth, Rabbinic Judaism wrapped them all together into the Jewish calendar that sets the pace for Jewish lives everywhere.

So too Zionist Judaism — that is, Judaism, post-Zionism — has introduced new dimensions to our beliefs, practices, and priorities. If the past 77 years have enabled us to experiment with the implications of Israel’s rebirth in our daily practice, a post-October 7th world invites us to learn from those experiments and refine our rhythms and rituals to best reflect the relationship we are hoping to achieve between the Jews and our state.

Imagine a future in which there is no separation between Jewish education and Zionist education, between Jewish holidays and Zionist holidays.

When the Zionist thinkers and their biblical and religious commentary is read alongside Rashi², studied alongside our greatest Sages. When celebrating Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) and Yom Haatzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) is just as natural in Cleveland or Santiago as celebrating Passover or Purim.

When education in Israel fills in the gap between the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and the Palmach³ with stories of our diversity and celebrations of our global communities. When we have revived pilgrimage holidays convening Jews from across the world in Israel to celebrate together.

If we were to build such an integrated future, every Bar or Bat Mitzvah would gain both the ability to read our story to the community and understand that story as part of the continuity of our collective consciousness. Becoming an adult member of the covenant would include the opportunity and even obligation to join our common festivals in our ancient revitalized land, and an invitation to take a part in the actions that define our people.

Such an integrated future would unlock a new stage of evolution for Judaism both inside and outside the land. New sages, prophets, teachers, or priests would arise to define the guardrails of our people, strengthen our roots in the soil, and cultivate branches reaching to the ends of the earth. An Israeli Judaism that unifies Mizrahi, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi traditions and infuses a new paradigm with the cultures and practices maintained by the diverse diaspora from India all the way to Ethiopia.

Moving beyond Zionism also means placing Jewish “anti-Zionism” in its proper place: as an outlier, a historic anomaly, a minority position that will over time either splinter off or wither away. Just as the Sadducees⁴ are no more, the Essenes⁵ are forgotten, the Karaites are increasingly integrating, and the Neturei Karta have become our adversaries, “anti-Zionist Jews” who join the global intifada await the same fate. The Jewish state will not go away no matter how hard they cry, and the Jewish People have already decided en masse to integrate Zionism into the set of beliefs that defines their life and times.

These anti-Zionist Jews may decide to go one of three ways, as have others when our people made a choice: They may join the inquisition as did Torquemada, they may hide their relationship to family members living in Israel as did the conversos, or they may decide to rejoin our People and accept Judaism as it evolves.

The movement beyond Zionism and into a newly evolved Judaism has already begun, but it is not too late to influence it. Just as Rabbinic Judaism did not steer clear from the hard questions, so too we should ensure Zionist Judaism does not avoid addressing the birth-pangs and tragedies and catastrophes caused when we fought to return to our land. Just as the Sages did not shy away from arguing with the Holy One, so too Zionist Judaism should accept and even encourage argument with the State and its policies.

Just as we are able to recite yearly the Lamentations of powerlessness, we need to learn to grapple with the regrets that emerge from attaining power. Just as the great Jewish generals and sages Isaac Abravanel and Shmuel Hanagid infused Judaism with political philosophy, so too should we devote study to the affairs of state and the morals that should guide us. New prayers will need to be written, old rituals adapted, common festivals reborn.

The institution of prophecy was born with Samuel, who went on to crown the first King of Israel. It co-evolved with the kingdom as a check on growing political and coercive power, reminding the temporal powers of the time that our covenant is not based on sacrifices and worship of the divine, but on proper action towards one another: care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger who lives among us. Prophet after prophet reminded us that the Eternal does not need our praise or support or care. That our fellow human does.

The Zionist visionaries who laid the intellectual and spiritual foundations for the state felt the same way. For them, the state was never an end in and of itself. Zionism was always a tool to free Jews to more fully participate in our covenant and live our lives according to the unique set of values and practices that maintained our people over millennia.

Instead of defending Zionism, it is time for us to move beyond it. We have a state. Its existence is not debatable. It is central to all of our lives, whether we want it to be or not. However long it lasts, its very existence will forever imprint how we think about our covenant and our people.

We now need to evolve our Judaism once again, to integrate that state into the rhythms and rituals we use to maintain our way of life so that all of us, wherever we may live, may participate in the covenant and find blessing in it.

---

1. A Sephardic Jewish rabbi who is widely acknowledged as one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages

2. Shlomo Yitzchaki, commonly known by the Rabbinic acronym Rashi, was a French rabbi and commentator who authored comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Hebrew Bible.

3. The Palmach was the elite combined strike forces and reconnaissance unit of the Haganah, the main Jewish paramilitary organization during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine, eventually becoming integrated into the Israel Defense Forces after the modern State of Israel’s founding in 1948.

4. A member of an ancient Jewish group or sect that denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of spirits, and the obligation of oral tradition, emphasizing acceptance of the written Law alone.

5. A member of an ancient Jewish ascetic group or sect of the period from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD who lived in highly organized groups and held property in common