Why I Am Not a Jewish Zionist
December 15, 2020
By Mark Braverman
“Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the first flowering of our redemption. Strengthen the hands of those who defend our holy land, grant them deliverance, and adorn them in a mantle of victory.”
That prayer was added to the synagogue liturgy the year that the State of Israel was declared. Born in that same year of 1948, growing up in the supercharged fusion of Rabbinic Judaism and political Zionism that became the norm in the years following the establishment of the state, I recited it daily. I was taught that I was blessed to have been born at a time when my people had been redeemed from 2000 years of marginalization, humiliation, and slaughter. We’ve suffered, I learned, but we are still here and here’s the reason: we are special, chosen by God to bring a special message to the world at large (sound familiar, Christian reader?). I bought it – what was there not to buy? And we Jews had brought good things to humankind: the idea of one God, and the equally paradigm-shattering ethical code that flowed from that idea.
But as I grew older, I became aware of the dark side to the victim-tinged exceptionalism in which I was reared. I chafed at the identity of vulnerability and victimhood which seemed intended to define me: the world outside our Jewish bubble was dangerous, not to be trusted. Our liturgy is suffused with these themes: “You have chosen us from among all the peoples.” “In every age a tyrant arises to annihilate us, and God saves us from their hands.” I was taught that among the “goyim,” – the Yiddish term for gentiles -- who threatened my existence there were two peoples in particular who stood out for my generation: the Germans, because of what they had done to us, and the Arabs, because of what they would do to us if we didn’t have the State of Israel. And what began to bother me most of all, once I was introduced to the Palestinian side of the story of the founding of Israel, was that our historic suffering rendered us innocent of blame for whatever we had to do to gain our security and freedom from fear. This seemed at odds with the ethical code at the heart of my religious education. Increasingly alienated from the Jewish community that appeared to uncritically accept this worldview of separateness and the very idea that violence toward others could be redemptive, I distanced myself from the synagogue, the liturgy and the life of ritual observance in which I had been reared. But I never let go of being a Jew. It’s just that I was searching for what that meant for me, and that wasn’t to be found in the mainline Jewish community that appeared to have embraced Zionism uncritically and defended Israel ferociously. I saw that Israel was on a catastrophic, self-destructive path, and that Zionism had hijacked our faith.
And here is the wonderful, miraculous irony – my search for what it meant to be a Jew today brought me to a Palestinian Anglican priest.
It was grace that brought me to Palestine to meet my purported enemy. Like Jacob reunited with Esau, when I met these brothers and sisters on the other side of the wall of separation we had built, I saw the face of God. The liberation theology of the Palestinian Christians of the Sabeel Center in Jerusalem, founded by Father Naim Ateek, led me straight to the core of my Jewishness by introducing me to a Palestinian Jew of 2000 years ago. The Gospel narrative of Jesus, speaking truth the Jewish establishment that had betrayed the social justice tradition of Torah by throwing in with Empire spoke strongly to me as a Jew horrified and heartbroken by what was being done by the State of Israel in my name. It was the Palestinian Christians who showed me why I could not be a Jewish Zionist. It was they who helped me become the Jew I had wanted to be all along.
The answer for me to “Why I am not a Jewish Zionist” is the same answer as for my Christian friends and colleagues to “Why I am not a Christian Zionist.” The answer is Jesus. Jesus, who told the Samaritan woman that “the day will come when we will not worship on this mountain or that mountain but in the Spirit.” Jesus, who instructed his disciples that “what you do for the oppressed you do for me.” Jesus, who in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets spoke truth to the power and corruption of the Jewish theocracy, said “this Temple of tyranny and greed must come down – this is not Torah, this is not what God requires of us.” Jesus, who, answering the question “Who is my neighbor?” said, “it is the human being lying beaten and naked by the side of the road, reviled and ignored by the powerful and privileged, crying out to be seen and to be afforded the most basic of human rights.” It is not only the Palestinians who must be liberated, it is the Jews of the State of Israel who must be rescued from the ideology and theology of exclusion and racial domination which is poisoning their society and robbing their children of a decent future.
Jesus was the best Jew. If he were to come back today, he would stand in front of the Knesset and say, “Destroy this Temple!” There are Temples of tyranny, oppression and racism throughout the world, waiting to be transformed, as the passage in John chapter 2 goes, into the body of Christ -- one humanity, united in love and compassion. Those who claim to belong to the church founded by Jesus’ followers can no more be Zionists than Jews who strive to follow the Torah, that demands “Justice, justice you shall pursue!” can support this ethnic nationalist project. We, Jews and Christians alike, like Jesus in his day, must reject this heresy and work to bring our people back to the core of our faith.
Mark Braverman devoted his professional career to working with groups and individuals undergoing traumatic stress. Returning to the Holy Land in 2006, he was transformed by witnessing the occupation of Palestine and by encounters with peace activists and civil society leaders from the Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities. He is the author of “Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land” and “A Wall in Jerusalem: Hope, Healing and the Struggle for Justice in Israel and Palestine.” He is currently Executive Director of Kairos USA.