Series Note: Once in a while, when excerpts from my online course on US religion (see below**) are timely for context, historical perspective, or commentary, I post them in this “Mini-Lectures On American Religion” (MOAR) series. I don’t custom-build them, but only excerpt, so they often need framing or are less-than-ideal in various ways. But they would go to waste if I didn't post them.
Unlearning Bad Common Wisdom
I was raised, like so many Americans, to assume that God is on Israel’s side, that Palestinians brought their suffering on themselves, and that Zionism is an obvious default position for US Jews and their supporters.
It took me years to unlearn this—largely through engaging with anti-Zionist Jewish friends and Palestinian Christians. As discussed earlier, I don't want to write much about my unlearning process or my analysis of the current war because others are already addressing it. There are two places, however, where I may be able to add a distinctive contribution. I’ll take up the second in a later post. The first comes from my historical expertise in US religion, through which I came to understand—as discussed in today's mini-lecture—that only for a fairly short stretch of US history, between the late 1930s and early 1970s, was Zionism something close to a default US Jewish stance.
This is not news to Jewish people, but it goes against the grain of what I was taught, what some Jews are still taught, and what many assume.
So let's be clear. Before the 1930s, a majority of US Jews were either anti-Zionist or mainly disengaged from aspects of Judaism that would later evolve into Zionism. Since the 1970s, there has been steady growth, both of a Jewish anti-Zionist minority and of strong criticism of Israel by a wider spectrum of Jews. Today there are heated debates about Zionism vs. anti-Zionism and whether Israel's policies are doing harm to Jewish well-being. Of course Zionism remains highly influential—with a spectrum of versions from extreme right wing to solidly socialist—but its taken for granted hegemony is breaking.
These debates never really went away. And they were lopsided from the 1930s to 1970s. But the key point is how such lopsidedness was a sort of anomaly.
A current question that is non-trivial—although, of course, less urgent than demanding a ceasefire—is how much further illusions of consensus about Zionism will unravel due to this war. Through the viciousness of Israel’s attack and the absurd overreach of framing all critiques of it as hate speech or anti-Semitism, Israel is creating a whole new generation of incredulous skeptics. The Onion captured the dynamic in this piece that imagines Congress censuring 66% of all US citizens, including more than half of all Republicans, for "spread[ing] hate" through "dangerous calls for peace."
Two Internally Divided Traditions
For weighty and complex historical reasons that I won't slow down to summarize, many US Christians are pro-Zionist and most of the rest have some combination of affection for Jews and shame about Christian anti-Judaism that feeds a desire to support Jews—albeit without renouncing a right to criticize Israel and defend basic human rights for Palestinians.
When I was first taught about this in my childhood, it was presented as straightforward: Christians naturally supported Jews, who were naturally Zionists.
But today (well, actually always, but emphatically today) both Jews and Christians are deeply divided internally. We need to uproot any lingering assumption that the non-Zionist fractions of either tradition are marginal. US Christians especially, alongside other non-Jewish citizens, must understand—far more than they usually do—that they simply have no escape from exercising judgment about which fractions of Jewish allies they wish to join, and by extension which fractions they are opposing.
Now to the Mini-Lecture
It is easier to grasp the rise and fall of Zionism's taken-for-grantedness in historical perspective. Meanwhile, as this piece documents, there is a widespread lack of clarity about many basic issues. So, for my mini-lecture series, here is a short section on Zionism from my introduction to US Judaism.
This clip picks up after I cover basic points about Jewish history, immigration, debates about how much to blend into mainstream culture, traumatic legacies of anti-Semitism, and standard divisions for sorting out religious practices on a continuum from Orthodox ritual observance through Conservative and Reform traditions to non-observant “secular Jewish” culture.
Here I turn to second way of sorting the community that cuts across other subdivisions: Zionism vs anti-Zionism. You'll hear me note that the key architect of US Reform Judaism, Isaac Meyer Wise, was anti-Zionist. I don't slow down to introduce him because I featured him earlier.
This clip doesn't belabor, but rather presupposes, the undoubted motives for Jewish self-defense and some of the Biblical resonances that Zionism mobilizes. Here again I build on earlier parts of the lecture. If you want to back up and hear a little more, here are two key sections.
Someday I may return to a different part of this course, which discusses how a range of nationalisms (Jewish, US, black, etc.) all have the potential to unfold, from case to case, either as warranted self-defense or as ugly punching down from positions of power. This idea circles us back toward today's debates—pro and con Christian Zionism, pro and con Jewish Zionism—in which we should by no means assume that what counts as "warranted" or as "supporting Jews" naturally entails Zionism.
**I'm drawing on a course that builds on my book, Religion, Culture, and Politics in the Twentieth Century United States. I mention this since you may hear me reference the book or wish to use it to follow something up.