Einat Wilf: Zionism as Therapy

How the Movement's Founding Texts Offer an Answer to Today's Bullies

Never has the question of “What is Zionism?” been more urgent than in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, and the war and global protests that followed. In this paradigm-shifting essay, Einat Wilf suggests that in its origins, Zionism wasn’t primarily a political project about creating a state, so much as a profound diagnosis of the maladies of Diaspora life, and a path forward to rebuild the Jewish spirit.

Einat Wilf, Ph.D., was a Member of Knesset on behalf of the Labor Party from 2010 to 2013. Her most recent two books are the co-authored The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (St. Martin’s, 2020) and We Should All Be Zionists: Essays on the Jewish State and the Path to Peace (2022).

Jerusalem Event: Join the author for a live Jewish Priorities launch event on February 7, 2024 at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, featuring Yossi Klein Halevi, Einat Wilf, Hillel Neuer, Izabella Tabarovsky, and David Hazony. The event will also be webcast live. For information, registration, and tickets, click here.

The following is an exclusive reprint from the anthology Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, edited by David Hazony. Copyright © 2023 Wicked Son. Reprinted with permission.

Zionism as Therapy

How the Movement's Founding Texts Offer an Answer to Today's Bullies

Einat Wilf

In the fall of 2021, I spent a semester at Georgetown University teaching a seminar on “Zionism and Anti-Zionism.” When I wrapped up the final class, one of the students approached me. “The course was more valuable,” she told me, “than dozens of hours of therapy.”

I have spent my life thinking, writing, and speaking about Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people, anti-Zionism, the conflict, and the path to peace. But I had never taught this course before, and now I was both moved and baffled. Why did she feel the need for therapy, and what was in the course that offered it so powerfully?

The course argued that while Zionism is one of history’s most successful revolutions, it has faced since its inception not only diplomatic and physical obstacles to implementing its vision, but also intellectual opposition to its very idea, which continued even once Zionism materialized in the form of the State of Israel. The course explored how every type of Zionist thought—political, social, religious—was opposed by a certain brand of non- or anti-Zionism. These would be presented through a set of pairs loosely paralleling historical developments.

The first section, under the theme of “politics,” paired political emancipation, as a non-Zionist alternative of Jewish integration into European society, with the rise of political Zionism as a response, among other things, to the failure of emancipation. The second pair—under the heading of “labor”—explored the ideas of socialism, Bundism, and communism as non-Zionist utopian visions for Jewish equality, paired with Labor Zionism and the critiques each of them had towards the others for being either too universalist or too particularist.

The course then moved to Zionism and anti-Zionism as reflected in the three monotheistic theologies. Jewish theological anti-Zionism was paired with Jewish religious Zionism as the theological post-facto justification for the success of secular Zionism. Christian anti-Zionism presented the theological basis for Christian, and later Western, opposition to Jewish sovereignty. It was paired with Christian Zionism, exploring the later theological development of Christian support for Zionism. We then turned to the world of Arab Islam, exploring Arab anti-Zionism against the background of the establishment of the State of Israel—ending with discussion of Soviet anti-Zionism and the intriguing possibility of the rise of Arab Zionism.

The course syllabus consisted almost solely of primary sources. Following a short introduction of historical context for each pair, the students engaged directly with the original texts, learning what Zionists and anti-Zionists had to say in their own words. Much like yeshiva students, they became part of an inter-generational conversation by engaging with the arguments and counterarguments from the time. They were asked to make every effort to insert themselves into the conversation, and so gain a sense of how the debate unfolded in real time, and how the success of Zionism cannot be understood as inevitable.

***

One unexpected outcome of the course was that the current tenor of debate was placed in perspective. When students were exposed to how Zionists wrote about emancipated Jews and how communists and religious anti-Zionists wrote about Zionists, the current discourse seemed tame by comparison. If anything, the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries emerged as an era of Jewish disagreement and division far greater than our own.

But more importantly, the direct engagement with Zionist and anti-Zionist texts accounted for some of the therapeutic effects of the course. When reading what Zionists had to say in their own words, the toxic descriptions of Zionism as emblematic of the world’s evils, from racism to genocide, melted away. Instead of a cabal of evil conspirators intent on wreaking evil in this world, these Jewish writers were desperately trying to carve a path for surviving as Jews in the modern era. Rather than powerful privileged Europeans seeking to dispossess another people, these were powerless and thoughtful Jews wrestling with how, against all odds, they could go about building a modern state in an ancient homeland that was mostly barren but in places also populated. Instead of the idea of Jewish nationhood and self-determination presented as a unique aberration in human history, Zionism emerged from the texts as no more than the Jewish manifestation of the concurrent global transition from empires to nation-based states.

In contrast, reading anti-Zionists in their own words exposed the total, often sinister, worldview that was the basis for their opposition to Zionism. When the deep roots of anti-Zionism were exposed, current justifications ostensibly tied to recent events revealed themselves to be nonsensical. Once the ancient Christian theological need for Jews to remain stateless and powerless was studied, its secularized western manifestation in the obsession with Israeli power became understood. Once the history of blood libels, with its particular emphasis on Jewish ritual lust for the blood of non-Jewish children, was seen, its secularized version in news headlines about the Israel Defense Forces killing children could no longer be unseen. Once Soviet anti-Zionism was studied as a scrubbed heir to the Tsarist Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the current academic discourse on Apartheid Racist Colonial Israel was traced to its original authors, long before post-facto justifications for those epithets were made. And once the ideals of political emancipation, Bundism, and communism were understood as genuinely believed utopian alternatives to Zionism, the verdict of history on the practical impossibility of these paths for Jews became tragically apparent.

Direct engagement with Zionist and anti-Zionist texts made the present clear—in the original sense of the word “clear,” as transparent and see-through. Students acquired the ability, almost a superpower, to see through the current discourse and understand Zionism and anti-Zionism for what they are. Zionism emerged as something normal: a national movement of self-determination of a people with a historical connection to a specific land, at a time when many peoples rose to establish nation-based states to replace receding empires. And anti-Zionism emerged from the texts as abnormal: a unique, ancient theological obsession that presents itself to every generation as newly justified.

And so, students discovered that nothing being said today about Zionism, especially by anti-Zionists, is new. While they did not study directly about the present, by the end of the course they had acquired the tools to understand the present far better than most people who express themselves on the topic. The students had joined the ranks of a select few who had first-hand knowledge of the foundational texts of both Zionism and anti-Zionism.

***

It was that connection—between today’s discourse and its ancient roots—that made clear to me why therapy was even needed, and why the course was effective in providing it. Therapy was needed because anti-Zionism is but a recent manifestation of an ancient attack on individual and collective Jewish life. The course was effective in providing it, because Zionism itself was formulated as a therapeutic response to that ancient attack.

Anti-Zionism in the West desperately tries to hide behind the claim that is nothing more than “criticism of Israel,” but its targeting of Jewish students and faculty, its promotion of Jews who are most virulently as anti-Zionist, and its relentless dynamic of constantly moving the goalposts, mean that it is experienced by many Jews as incessant bullying—a dynamic I call the “pound of flesh.” After all, William Shakespeare had it backwards: Throughout history, it is not the Jews who demanded the pound of flesh. Rather, it was the Jews who were bullied for a pound of flesh, usually metaphorically, but all too often literally.

When the pound of flesh is metaphorical, the demand is to mutilate one’s Jewish identity as the price of social acceptance and toleration. Sometimes the mutilation is visual, demanding that Jews be less visibly Jewish in the public sphere. Sometimes it involves severing elements of Jewish identity, such as denying any special Jewish collective solidarity or the Jews’ connection with the Land of Israel. Sometimes nothing less than a ceremony of exorcism, in which Jews mutilate their identity in public, is demanded.

These exorcism ceremonies require Jews to repeat with enthusiastic Amens any claims made about Israel, however outlandish. This is what I have termed the “placard strategy,” equating Israel, Zionism, and sometimes just the Star of David on placards with the greatest evil du jour. And so, the ceremony proceeds: Zionism equals Racism. Amen. Zionism equals Apartheid. Amen. Zionism equals Nazism. Of course. Zionism equals genocide. What else? Oh, Zionism now equals White Supremacism. That’s a new one, but sure. There is nothing natural and understandable in this progression. It is the pure expression of a relentless dynamic of bullying at work.

This bullying has ancient roots. The historian Tom Holland, in his excellent book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, which my students read, described this centuries-old dynamic as “a program for civic self-improvement that aimed at transforming the very essence of Judaism.” Holland describes how Western ideas of enlightenment and human rights have, when it comes to Jews, been nothing more than a secularized version of the ancient Christian dream “that Jewish distinctiveness might be subsumed into an identity that the whole world could share—one in which the laws given by God to mark the Jews out from other peoples would cease to matter.” Despite this being a dream that in modernity was “garlanded with the high-flown rhetoric of the Enlightenment,” Holland explains, its roots go “all the way back to Paul.” Faced with this all-encompassing, new-old campaign, “Jews could either sign up to this radiant vision, or else be banished into storm-swept darkness.” Holland clarifies that “if this seemed to some Jews a very familiar kind of ultimatum, then that was because it was.”

The ancient roots of the “pound of flesh” dynamic make it relentless. It always wants more, until there is no more flesh left. Either Jews are no longer Jews, or they are no longer alive. Throughout history, Jews have discovered again and again that no amount of flesh is ever sufficient.

***

This kind of bullying takes an emotional toll. It is not a matter of intellectual discourse. It operates at the deepest levels of one’s being. Almost all Jews have been subjected to it at one point or another and recognize it viscerally. Even when students could not explain it, their emotional reaction to anti-Zionist attacks on campus was the typical response triggered by persistent bullying. Anti-Zionist bullying was taking its toll on those Jewish students who refused to join its ranks.

Even I, who study and teach Zionism and anti-Zionism, find myself at times exhausted after engaging with Western students on the topic, interactions that increasingly include personal attacks and charges of evil. It is not pleasant. It takes an emotional toll to be told that what you hold dear, even who you are, is evil. It would be much nicer to be lauded by students for concurring with them that Israel is evil. The temptation of being liked in a world of likes is powerful. I can understand why young students on campus would choose to either stay silent or even join the bullies in the hope of being left alone.

But what Zionist thinkers like Theodor Herzl reluctantly realized is that they would never be left alone. Herzl observed how antisemitism rose in the nineteenth century as a progressive idea, popular among students on campuses, such as the one in Vienna where he studied law, by giving a modern scientific-sounding façade to ancient ideas about Jews. This convinced Herzl and fellow Zionists that as much as modern Europeans claimed to uphold ideals of equality, liberty, and fraternity, they could not bring themselves to apply these ideals to Jews. Observing nearly a century of European emancipation, Herzl and his fellow Zionists realized that no matter how much Jews strained themselves to be acceptable to their fellow Europeans—changing their clothes, their language, even their very conception of being Jews, away from a collective identity to a personal “faith”—Europeans would just come up with new cover stories to tell Jews the same old thing they had always told them: You do not belong.

Although they didn’t call it bullying, Zionist thinkers understood Jews were prey to the “pound of flesh” dynamic. Often harsh in describing the Jewish condition under European domination, some of their criticisms could hardly be differentiated from those of antisemites. But whereas antisemites believed the Jewish “sickness” to be inherent to Jewishness itself, Zionists believed it was the result of European actions—situational and conditional—and the systemic powerlessness forced upon the Jews of Europe.

This was the seminal insight of Zionist thinkers: that powerlessness corrupts no less than power. That power corrupts is an ancient teaching shared by biblical writers no less than Greek, Roman, Hindu, and Chinese ones. But Zionism argued that powerlessness corrupts no less. Zionist thinkers observed that a people whose very survival depended on the frequently absent goodwill of others would inevitably be corrupted by the need to ingratiate itself with those in power.

***

At its core, then, Zionism was a therapeutic project. Zionism was about healing the Jewish sickness engendered by the contorting and corrupting effect of centuries of powerless exile. Since, in the Zionist analysis, this Jewish “sickness” was the result of living at the mercy of others, healing that “sickness” would require that Jews attain power of their own. Zionism sought to correct this corruption of Jewish existence by making Jews masters of their fate, powerful once again, normalized political actors among the nations. Zionism provided both the diagnosis and the cure.

But precisely because the cure was so effective, Jews had to be told it was actually toxic. Those who bullied Jews throughout the centuries needed Jews to believe the problem was with themselves, so that they would be amenable to efforts to make them no longer Jewish. Like an industry that profits by keeping people sick and therefore invests heavily in making simple, cheap cures appear toxic and unreliable, civilizations that required Jews to feel they needed to be less Jewish had to paint Zionism as so toxic that no Jew would want to touch it.

But touch it is exactly what the course did. Successful therapy taps into the molten lava that runs deep below the surface. Jewish leaders, rabbis, and organizations who thought they could escape the onslaught by avoiding discussions of Zionism and Israel discovered that the attacks never relented. The more they ran away, the more they were chased. Jews were told that Zionism was a sin and therefore they had to disavow it. In reality, Zionism was the cure that endangered the entire malignant project of de-Judaizing Jews.

This is why the course proved so therapeutic. Students discovered that their ailment had been diagnosed long ago, and an effective cure already found. Exposing the ancient roots of anti-Zionist bullying provided young Jews with understanding that while it appears tempting to disavow or contort Jewish identity to buy a reprieve from the bullies, this reprieve, if ever given, is at best temporary. Rather, Zionism already formulated a response to that bullying by refusing to play into its ever-increasing demands.

Bullies everywhere prey on weakness and shame. But if one is neither weak nor ashamed, they move on to easier targets. The course offered students the ability to understand the genealogy of attacks Jews face today while simultaneously generating an empowered appreciation for the vigorous debate and revolution that produced Zionism. It created excitement and confidence in the modern Jewish project and identity.

By robbing anti-Zionists of the power to shame them, students of these century-old texts discovered they had the power to rob their bullies of their prey. If anti-Zionists are met with Jews who are proud Zionists, who embrace their Jewish identity fully, and who understand the nature of the attacks against them, it is nearly impossible to shame them into handing over another pound of flesh.

What they realized by the end of the course was that the only effective, tried and tested response to anti-Zionism is, well, Zionism.