By Gil Troy
December 18, 2007
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What has feminism got that Zionism hasn't got? What does gay liberation have that the movement for Jewish national liberation lacks? Why does a woman's right to have an abortion feel so much more compelling than the Jews' right to have a Jewish state? We do not need to commission one of those multi-million dollar polls the Jewish community loves to note that for many young Jews, especially in North America, the movements for feminism, gay liberation and personal choice are not only more popular than Zionism but felt more intensely.
Activists fighting for women's rights, gay rights, or abortion rights are so passionate because they perceive these causes as central to their identity. In a society shaped by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, issues of gender and sexuality are primary. This openness and intensity about these issues on a mass scale is unprecedented in history, and tells many different stories about where we are today.
It is not surprising, in a world where the personal is political -- and where anti-Semitism impinges personally on the lives of very few Jews -- that a political expression of Judaism, ie Zionism, would have difficulty getting traction. Individualism is in, collectivism is out. Zionism, like all enlightened nationalist movements, is about the "us" not the "I," about people finding common bonds and working together to improve the world.
How, then, can we take Zionism personally? We start by distinguishing between "Crisis Zionism" and "Identity Zionism." Crisis Zionism or "Gevalt Zionism," is the important but reactive Zionism of fighting anti-Semitism and supporting Israel politically. The Arab assault has been so vicious and effective that for many Zionist activists simply defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state provides sufficient rationale -- and more than enough satisfaction. Supporting Israel these days entails nobly defending democracy and Western enlightenment in addition to protecting Jewish lives, Jewish rights, and Jewish national equality and dignity. Still, Gevalt Zionism has its limits. We cannot build a movement on the idea that the world hates us, especially when many people have never been so nice and welcoming to us.
Identity Zionism is the more abstract but equally compelling movement to use Jewish peoplehood, Jewish tradition, and the Jewish homeland to provide a framework for meaning in this confusing world. For many of us in the modern world, our basic needs -- food, clothing, and shelter -- are met. In fact, one of our ideological challenges is learning how to cope in an age of excess and amid a culture of indulgence. Even in our age of individualism, humans are social beings and meaning-seeking creatures. Our tribes, our national groupings, help us find communities -- and our ideologies and values help us fill those communal bonds with meaning.
We Jews are lucky to be blessed with a rich, four-thousand-year-old storehouse of beliefs, insights, values, and heroes. By finding the "I in Zionism" we find a way into that conversation -- and have standing -- no matter how religious or non-religious we may be, no matter how learned or inexperienced we might be. All of us have a stake and a bond in each other, in our past, in our homeland. Sometimes, we have been forced to pay the price for those affiliations -- why not reap the benefits too?
My Identity Zionism, then, is utilitarian, practical, even if it sounds abstract. As a person, and certainly as a parent, I use this sense of history, community, identity I derive from my blessed affiliation with the Jewish people to get beyond the modern world's me-me-me, my-my-my, more-more-more materialism, pressure and selfishness. Zionism helps me touch base with inspiring heroes, impressive people, noble causes, and a state I want to help improve. I am not arrogant or fanatic enough to claim this is the only way to find meaning in modern life's smorgasbord of identities. I have, however, benefited enough to say that Zionism is not only a useful, easy accessible, multi-dimensional vehicle for finding individual fulfillment -- it is also a great way for us as Jewish individuals to magnify our impact on our tiny but significant people and our small but growing state.
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