More than 100 Jews gathered in Brooklyn this week to discuss the creation of a new Jewish establishment. They weren’t interested in another protest march or demonstrations outside an Israeli consulate. They wanted something more permanent. Synagogues, Jewish schools, summer camps, cultural institutions and eventually an entire network of Jewish organizations with one common characteristic, no attachment to Zionism or the State of Israel.
The gathering, organized by the Jewish Diaspora Movement, was described as a bootcamp for activists interested in establishing Jewish institutions outside the traditional communal framework. According to a report in the Times of Israel, the participants discussed everything from staffing and fundraising to determining who would be welcome in their organizations. Among the speakers were Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago, former Jewish Voice for Peace director Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise, who previously worked with Jewish Voice for Peace and founded Rabbis for Ceasefire in October 2023. There are even plans to establish a Jewish day school in the Boston area by September 2029.
The most interesting part of the gathering was the discussion about membership. Apparently, some of these activists are unhappy with traditional Jewish institutions because they feel excluded by their support for Israel. Their solution is to establish alternative institutions where anti-Zionism is among the defining values. Rosen, whose Chicago congregation was established around anti-Zionist principles, explained that his synagogue was deliberately created with political boundaries and was not intended to appeal to everyone. He said potential members were not required to agree with every position, but would have to decide whether they were comfortable belonging to a congregation whose values were already established. In other words, they object to existing Jewish institutions having a Zionist identity, but see nothing particularly troublesome about establishing institutions with an anti-Zionist one. It is the kind of progressive logic that has become increasingly common, where inclusivity is celebrated until somebody expresses an opinion that doesn’t conform to the prevailing political ideology.
Then came the money. Arielle Angel, an editor at Jewish Currents who has advocated creating new Jewish institutions, acknowledged that there is only so much funding available on the Jewish left. Donor Kathleen Peratis was somewhat more direct, explaining that the movement would have to win over liberal Zionists because that is where much of the money is. The irony is rather amusing. After spending years attacking Zionism and distancing themselves from the Jewish organizations that support Israel, these activists have discovered that establishing synagogues, operating schools, employing staff and maintaining buildings requires considerable funding. The solution, apparently, is to convince the very Zionists whose ideology they reject to help finance their competing institutions. One can only imagine the reaction if a traditional Zionist organization announced that it intended to raise money by converting anti-Zionist donors to its cause.
The proposed school is where this becomes considerably more serious. A synagogue can attract adults who already have established opinions, but a school is designed to shape the beliefs and identities of children. How exactly does an institution founded around opposition to Zionism intend to teach Jewish history? Jerusalem appears throughout Jewish prayers, the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash remains central to Jewish mourning, and the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel predates the modern State of Israel by thousands of years. Jews prayed for a return to Zion long before Theodor Herzl was born. There is a legitimate historical distinction between religious attachment to the land and modern political Zionism, a distinction that Orthodox opponents of Zionism have maintained for generations. But that distinction requires a serious Jewish education, not simply replacing Israeli nationalism with Palestinian activism. We will have to see what the proposed school actually teaches, but an institution that announces its political conclusions before opening its classrooms deserves some scrutiny.
Several years ago, in The Death of Zionism and the Rise of Ignorance, I wrote about the failure of Jewish education to provide students with a solid understanding of Jewish history and their connection to Israel. More recently, we examined the danger of allowing support for Israel to substitute for teaching Judaism itself. A Jewish child who knows how to sing Hatikvah but cannot understand the Shema has been shortchanged by his education. So has a Jewish child who can explain every accusation made against Israel but knows little about the Torah, Jewish law or the history of his own people. Jewish education should be producing knowledgeable Jews, not simply training the next generation of political activists, regardless of which side of the argument they support.
There is also something rather disturbing about the attempt to establish yet another political division within the Jewish community at a time when Jews are already confronting growing hostility around the world. Jewish institutions have been attacked, Jewish students have been harassed and Jewish gatherings have become occasions for protests and intimidation. Instead of finding ways to strengthen Jewish knowledge and communal institutions, these activists are investing their efforts in establishing an alternative Jewish infrastructure defined partly by its rejection of an existing one. They are certainly not the first Jews to disagree about Israel, and they won’t be the last, but the decision to turn that disagreement into a separate institutional movement will inevitably deepen divisions that already exist.
I have no problem with people debating Zionism, criticizing Israeli governments or disagreeing about the political future of the Middle East. Jewish history is filled with disagreement, much of it recorded in the Talmud itself. What troubles me is the growing tendency to turn contemporary political positions into tests of Jewish belonging. An organization that requires political conformity before a Jew can feel comfortable participating in Jewish communal life has confused ideology with identity, whether that ideology is Zionist or anti-Zionist.
The people in Brooklyn appear convinced that they are creating something new, a Jewish future freed from the political attachments of the traditional Jewish establishment. They have the organizers, the activists, the fundraising plans and even the beginnings of an educational network. What remains to be seen is whether they can build institutions capable of passing on anything more enduring than the political convictions of their founders.
Judaism survived thousands of years because our ancestors believed they had something worth preserving. They passed down Torah, traditions, religious obligations, language and history, often under circumstances considerably more difficult than anything facing the people gathered in that Brooklyn meeting.
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