I note Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the title of this headline mostly because controversies tied to his campaign are the immediate space in which we’re again seeing arguments about Israel, Zionism, American Jews and the Democratic party. This has cropped up again because of streamer Hasan Piker’s comments about how Jews need to ditch Israel or Zionism or whatever. My own sense is that El-Sayed is well on his way to defusing the wariness or opposition of many in Michigan’s Jewish community. (As I’ve written elsewhere, to the extent it matters for someone outside of Michigan, I’ve supported him from the moment he won the primary.) But there’s something that’s become more and more clear to me in recent weeks as I’ve had various conversations and arguments about this issue. One is that I increasingly hear from left-leaning non-Jews is a fairly confident declaration that Zionism doesn’t have anything to do with or isn’t the same as the “Jewish faith.” This is at best a rather total statement about a much more complicated reality — especially when stated by people outside the community in question. But it’s not only that side of the equation.
Yesterday, Michelle Goldberg published a piece in the New York Times in which she wrote: “For most American Jews, the land of Israel is bound up with their faith.” This is true. And for what it’s worth, I think this “bound up” phrasing comes the closest to capturing the close, complex and often conflicted relationship between Jews and Judaism and Zionism. A week ago Micah Lasher, who won the nomination to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (and is therefore almost certain to enter Congress), wrote this on X:
Also, Mr. Piker, Zionism is in fact bound up with Judaism. It is not “false conflation.” Yes, some Jews are anti-Zionists. And yes, you have helped turned the Z-word into a slur such that large numbers of Jews, particularly younger ones, disown it partly out of misunderstanding. But when Jews are attacked for supporting Israel, they are being attacked for a core part of their Jewish identity. It is Jew hatred, it is unacceptable, and your rhetoric encourages it. Spare us all your taxonomy of good Jews and bad Jews.
Ryan Grim, a constant combatant in this online battle, responded that Lasher’s first sentence was not only false but in fact “shameful.”
What has increasingly caught my attention here is the focus on religion, which as we can see is referenced by both sides of these fights, though it can vary on the Goldberg/Lasher side of the equation whether that’s a shorthand or a more specific reference to religious belief. The thing about this is that this is a very specifically American focus, something very rooted in American civic culture, and generally for good reason.
These rules or civic customs are of course often honored in the breach. But in general it follows that if my religion tells me to build a small shrine out of ice cream, steak and shoelaces, that’s the end of the discussion. You’re not allowed to speak to the matter. Period. If it seems weird to you, keep it yourself. Again, obviously, sometimes this isn’t honored at all. But it’s a powerful totem in American civic culture. And that’s often what’s being invoked.
But again, that’s a very American conception. And that’s not nothing. We’re here in America. And there are really good things that come from it, not least for Jews. But it’s worth recognizing its Americanness.
Zionism has very complicated origins. There were religious and irreligious parts of it from the start. But far and away the most vital and numerous parts of it were secular and even anti-religious. That’s changed substantially over the second half of the 20th century as most branches of Judaism accepted or embraced Zionism. But the origins of Zionism were always more communal and focused on Jewish safety or liberation — particularly growing out of and being driven in urgency by the experience of being a perpetually vulnerable minority in what was an age of nationalism and increasingly violent nationalism. Zionism was at once an embrace of key elements of European nationalism while also driven by the crisis of European nationalism, particularly in Eastern Europe where both decaying multinational empires and rising nationalisms both embraced anti-Semitism for their own reasons. In our modern terminology it was based on identity, more than any theological precepts, and an identity that you had whether you liked it or not.
Where this has some modern relevance is that a lot of these arguments — at least when they get into these semantic or fine-point controversies over “identity” vs “religion” — come from imposing American schema onto something that has never totally fit into it, though many Jews in the early 20th century leaned very hard into the idea that Judaism is simply a religion like Christianity, only the buildings are called synagogues or shuls or temples as opposed to churches and some of the fine points about God are different. That never really quite fit since in Judaism or for Jews, “peopleness” and religion have always been fused. And that’s mostly because the group itself predates Roman and Christian conceptions in which the two things are separate. In the ancient New East such a thing was fairly common.
So is it “religion” or “identity”? It’s kind of both. And that’s fine. That’s part of the specific history of the group in question.
Does this have relevance to the controversies of today? It’s helpful to know because it’s worth knowing that a lot of these fights are rooted in these conflicting schemas and how both sides are trying to operate within the advantages of these totems of American civic culture. But if these things are about “identity” or “peoplehood” as much or more than “faith,” that’s okay too.
Source link
