June 3, 2026

If Jews are all-powerful, why are they so powerless? Historically, Jews have been accused of controlling politics, the banks and the media. I haven’t read yet that they control the weather, but that wouldn’t be any more bizarre than the other charges.

If Jews control the media, why is the Jewish state portrayed in the mainstream media as the aggressor, when it is the victim? Why couldn’t the all-powerful Jews in America, Canada and Europe stop the intimidating street protests, campus protests and shootings at synagogues, Jewish schools and institutions?

When Jews lost their sovereignty to the Romans in the year 70 C.E., they sought refuge in other parts of the Middle East and Europe, where they were consistently uprooted whenever the reigning authorities turned on them. No stability, no safety, no power.

Wherever they settled, they added to the life and prosperity of their host country, but that did not make them immune to frenzied outbursts of violence, accused of every crime known to society. Pogroms and expulsion are not signs of power. They are proof of utter vulnerability and helplessness.

During the Middle Ages, in Europe, Jews had no rights, could not obtain citizenship, were banned from government posts and the military and excluded from the professions. Ghettos dated from the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century. Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Spain in 1492, from Portugal in 1497, not to mention the forced expulsion from Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Yes, Jews do have power – the power to survive injustice, cruelty and inhumanity.

Another myth? Jews are rich. If all Jews are rich, why does every synagogue and so many Jewish institutions raise funds, especially before holidays, for Jewish families who cannot provide for themselves? Child poverty and senior poverty among Canadian Jews is higher than the national average. So many Jews have been successful and generous, funding hospitals, universities and arts institutions, that those who are fueled by hatred cannot recognize the good or acknowledge that most are not in that league.

One of the most enduring and dangerous myths is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a completely fabricated text that has had a lasting effect. It was first published in a newspaper in the Russian Empire in 1903. The document claims that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.  In 1920, Lucien Wolf, a British journalist and diplomat, exposed the document as a fraud. He found that its source was a chapter of a German novel, “Biarritz” (1868), in which Jewish leaders meet secretly, with the Devil supporting them. There are 24 chapters or “protocols” claiming there were secret plans to control politics, the economy, financial markets and education. This is all fiction, not history. The leaders, the “learned elders of Zion,” never existed but the enduring lie lives on. Yes, the Devil was, indeed, involved. The Devil was the person who created this conspiracy theory that has inspired hatred and death for generations.

The current myth that dominates the academy, the press, social media and politics is the outrageous slander that the Jews don’t belong in Israel, that they displaced the original inhabitants and that Jews in Israel are an illegitimate presence. They are portrayed as colonial invaders. Anyone who reads history knows that Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. It was a return to the land that gave birth to Judaism, the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from which they were expelled after establishing kingdoms in Israel for hundreds of years. If the world did not want Jews to return to Zion, they should have treated them better. It was myths about the “wicked” Jews that made the Jews’ return an absolute necessity.

The irony of ironies is that antisemitism exists only in monotheistic countries, Christian and Muslim. Judaism is the parent of monotheism. Your children are your greatest joy, except when they turn on you, and then they’re your worst nightmare. Jews decided to exit the nightmare and fulfill a dream, a return to their ancestral homeland, free of hate-filled myths, a democracy among dictatorships, an open society of Jews from all over the Diaspora, including Arab lands. Jews in Israel are home.

The Diaspora myths – and I have enumerated only a few – are so preposterous and demonstrably untrue that only people who want to believe them, do. Jews cannot convince them of the facts, nor can they protect themselves in the Diaspora. Israel is not the problem – it is the solution to Diaspora vulnerability. Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, is portrayed as evil incarnate. It takes up one one-hundredth of 1% of the surface of the world, and one one-fifth of 1% of the landmass of the Arab world, yet it is the only country in the world whose existence is challenged.

As for the Diaspora, the general population needs to understand that the current wave of virulent, hysterical antisemitism is corrosive and dangerous for the entire society. Antisemitism is a fundamental challenge to Western democracy and the complex nature of our societies. Western countries are composed of many ethnic groups. If the existence of one group is questioned, all groups are endangered. The government’s responsibility is the safety and stability of everyone. Either government exercises authority and acts, rather than simply mouthing platitudes, or they participate in the dismantling of the fundamental values of our democracies. Justice cannot be selective.

This is what is at stake. The survival, not of the Jews, but of our free societies.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.

A few weeks after Oct. 7, 2023, I was invited to speak at a university in California. About 40 minutes into the conversation, a graduate student raised her hand.

She said: “I want to acknowledge that what happened on Oct. 7 was terrible. But I also think we need to be careful about how we use that tragedy, because it’s been weaponized to silence criticism of Israel.”

I paused before answering. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I wanted to understand what I was actually hearing.

She had just acknowledged that 1,200 people were massacred. And her immediate next move was to describe that massacre as something that could be “weaponized.” As if the horror of it were a political instrument rather than a human reality. As if the most important thing to say about Jewish death was: be careful how you use it.

I have spent more than 13 years working in Jewish communal life in America, trying to explain antisemitism to audiences who genuinely want to understand it. In that time, I have watched this particular form of bigotry change its vocabulary, its ideology and its political clothing while keeping something constant underneath: the desire to marginalize Jews while making them carry the weight of society’s discomfort.

What I watched in that California classroom is one of the newest and most dangerous forms that desire has taken.  Let’s call it the “Victim Inversion Engine.” It’s one of the many engines that fuel anti-Jewish bigotry, which I have been writing about. It works like this: the history of Jewish suffering is systematically denied, minimized or turned against the Jews themselves. Their victimhood is either erased or weaponized against them. And the moral weight their history should carry – the weight that should make the world especially sensitive and alert to threats against them – is systematically dismantled.

What makes this especially dangerous in 2026 is that it is happening at a moment when moral language itself has become a form of power.  Social and political movements are determining who is allowed to claim harm, whose suffering is recognized and whose pain is treated as morally relevant.

Increasingly, and dangerously so, Jews are being pushed outside that circle.

The new antisemitism does not always deny Jewish suffering outright. More often, it reframes that suffering as manipulative, suspicious or politically illegitimate. Jewish pain is treated not as a warning sign of danger, but as an obstacle to someone else’s narrative. The result is a culture in which Jews are expected to prove their humanity or something else, before they are permitted to grieve.

That is why the weaponization of Jewish suffering matters so much right now. Because once a society begins treating Jewish fear and/or pain as inherently dishonest, Jewish trauma as inherently political or Jewish victimhood as uniquely undeserving of empathy, it creates a moral exception around Jews. And, as history has repeatedly shown, societies become dangerous for Jews long before they become physically violent toward them. The danger begins when Jewish suffering stops counting as suffering.

This is not Holocaust denial. It is something more sophisticated, sinister, yet more socially acceptable. It is like Holocaust weaponization – the rhetorical move that takes Jewish suffering and turns it into a liability rather than a human reality.

It sounds like this: “Jews use antisemitism accusations to silence critics.” Or: “Israel’s conduct in Gaza is just like what was done to Jews in Europe.” Or the softest and most common version: “I acknowledge what happened on Oct. 7 – but …” And one more thing, that is very dangerous as well: when someone start their criticism of Israel with the words: “As a Jew …” You already know what is coming….

That pivot is doing a great deal of work. In the hands of someone committed to honest inquiry, it introduces complexity. In the hands of someone running the victim inversion engine, it introduces doubt about whether Jewish suffering deserves to be treated as suffering at all.

Jewish students on campuses across America experienced this in real time in the weeks and months after Oct. 7. They were told their fear was not legitimate.  Some were told that naming what was happening to them was itself a form of manipulation. Some were told that their Jewishness, in the context of Israeli military action, disqualified them from claiming victim status.

Think about what that means. The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – some of them the children of people who escaped persecution by the skin of their teeth – were being told that their experience of anti-Jewish hatred did not count as a legitimate experience of hatred. That the history behind their fear was not a history that entitled them to be concerned.

Every other form of antisemitism attacks Jews in ways that can, at least in principle, be countered with evidence and argument. The religious accusations can be examined. The economic myths can be fact-checked. The conspiracy theories can be exposed. But the victim inversion engine attacks the ground on which Jews stand to make their case after they have been harmed individually or collectively. It does not say your evidence is wrong. It says your evidence does not count.

Once a society accepts that logic – once it decides that Jewish claims of victimhood are inherently suspect, that the memory of Jewish suffering is a political tool rather than a human reality – it has removed the last moral guardrail between Jews and violence. This is not hypothetical. This is the pattern that preceded every major act of collective violence against Jews in modern history. The victim was recast as the aggressor first. The moral permission was established first. And then violence followed.

I told that graduate student: the people who were murdered on Oct. 7 do not belong to a political argument. They belong to their families. And the first moral obligation – before context, before analysis, before any political response – is to let them be human beings who were murdered.

She did not agree with me. That is fine. But several students in the room shifted in their seats, as if something had been named that had been floating unnamed for weeks.

That is the point of naming it. Hatred that has no name is harder to resist. Once you know what the victim inversion engine sounds like – once you can recognize it when it arrives wearing the language of social justice and political analysis – you can begin to push back against it.

The engines that fuel antisemitism have always run on confusion. The antidote is always clarity.

Oz Laniado is the Executive Director of StandWithUs for the Southwest and Mexico, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and combats antisemitism.  He is the author of The Engine of Blame: Thirteen Forces That Keep Antisemitism Alive, (https://engineofblame.com/)

This week’s Torah portion begins with an instruction. While given specifically to Aaron as the High Priest, I think these words are meant for all of us and especially our leaders. We read:

“Speak to Aaron and say to him, ‘When you cause the light to go up, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand.’” (Numbers 8:1-2)

The Torah’s instruction to Aaron is precise. The word here is not the same as the one we use each Shabbat when we light our candles; it does not say l’hadlik. Aaron is not simply asked to kindle the lamps. Rather, the word is b’ha’alot’cha — when you cause the light to ascend, to go up. The purpose of the flame is not merely illumination. It is elevation. Our task as Jews — as a people, as a nation and as individuals — is to bring more light into the world and cause that light to rise, to inspire, to uplift.

This week I want to speak about something difficult. I do so not to add to the overwhelming noise around Israel, and not because I think the relentless criticism Israel faces is fair or accurate. On the contrary. But Israel is a real country with real challenges, just like any other country on the planet. Its leaders are imperfect, like all of us, and some of what has happened in recent weeks has pained me. As a Zionist — someone who loves Israel not only as it is, but even more the moral and spiritual promise of what it can still become — I do not believe silence is an option when that collective light is diminished.

So I want to name three incidents over the last few weeks that ask us to live up to our Zionist aspirations more fully.

First: settler violence in the West Bank. This is not new, but it has intensified. President Isaac Herzog, speaking at the Jerusalem Unity Prize ceremony last week, condemned “a wave of terrible violence carried out by an anarchist mob,” calling these acts ones that “defile and violate every basic moral, legal and Jewish norm.” He warned of a “terrible process of brutalization” creeping in from the margins — one that “threatens to enter the mainstream” of Israeli society.

That Herzog spoke these words publicly, at a ceremony celebrating Jewish unity, is the mark of a healthy democracy. I am grateful for his leadership and moral resolve. And I want to add my voice: lawlessness in the West Bank, by anyone, is a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s expectations for us. It diminishes the light.

Second: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir filmed himself taunting activists detained from the Global Sumud Flotilla and posted the footage to social media. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rebuked him sharply: “You knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display – and not for the first time.” U.S. Ambassador Huckabee said Ben-Gvir had “betrayed the dignity of his nation.”

I understand the strong feelings many of us have about publicity stunts like the flotilla, crewed in no small part by agitators and propagandists who seem more interested in harming Israel than helping Palestinians. But the rule of law, and the basic dignity owed to every person in custody, are not optional. Not even now. Not even for those who hate us. Ben-Gvir’s childish stunt handed our enemies exactly what they wanted. Prime Minister Netanyahu chose to include him in his government. He must hold him accountable. It diminishes the light.

Third: Social Equality Minister May Golan stood at the Knesset podium recently and told Reform rabbi and MK Gilad Kariv that he was “marrying dogs in your delusional synagogues.” Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, himself an Orthodox Jew, called her remarks “disgusting and reprehensible, worthy of excoriation and rebuke … Theological, political and ideological differences are fine, even necessary for a healthy people. But there is a line that cannot be crossed.” I agree entirely. To speak this way about synagogues that millions of Diaspora Jews belong to, Jews who advocate tirelessly for our shared homeland, is a betrayal of the covenant between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. It diminishes the light.

I had the privilege of meeting with Ambassador Leiter in New York last week and raised these concerns directly. I also thanked him for speaking out so forcefully and unequivocally. That’s what real leadership looks like.

At the same time as we advocate publicly and proudly for Israel here in the United States, I left my meeting with the Ambassador feeling all the more strongly that true advocacy sometimes requires tochecha — loving critique, offered from within the family. I encourage you to make your voice heard. Reach out to the Israeli Ambassador’s office in Washington or the Consul General here in Los Angeles. Do so with love, as proud Zionists, as Jews who embrace values like egalitarianism, LGBTQ+ inclusion and Tikkun Olam. Speak not out of rejection, but out of love — because believing in Israel, and loving Israel, also means believing it can, and must, live up to the Jewish values we hold sacred.

B’ha’alot’cha teaches us that every action either elevates the flame or dims it. Our task — as Jews, as Zionists, as lovers of Israel — is always to bring more light. This is not a new calling. At Sinai, we were commanded:

“You shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6)

That is who we are called to be. And when we fall short — as individuals, as a people, whether everyday Jews or the Prime Minister himself — we must have the courage to face it honestly, call it what it is and do better. That is how we raise the light.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles.

A 2018 survey conducted by Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin found, astonishingly, that over 90% of evangelicals believe that God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. The pro-Israel organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI) claims an estimated 10 million members – more than the entire number of Jews in the United States. What explains the strong tendency among American Christians to love Israel?

To understand the roots of American Christian Zionism, it’s helpful to consider two key thinkers from early America: Increase Mather, a leading Puritan minister in 17th-century Massachusetts, and John Adams, the second president of the United States. Comparing selections from their writings highlights how Christian Zionism evolved from a theological doctrine in colonial America to a more politically oriented version in the early republic.

Long before the birth of the modern Zionist movement in the late 19th century, Puritans in New England envisioned a Jewish return to Zion. In his treatise “The Mystery of Israel’s Salvation” (1669), written in the aftermath of a failed Jewish messianic movement, Increase Mather insisted that the phrase “all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26) – in his view, a precondition for the second coming of Christ – refers not only to a “spiritual” salvation of national conversion but also a “temporal” (this-worldly) salvation: “Some that have believed and asserted a general conversion of the Jews, yet have doubted whether they should ever again possess the Land of their fathers; But the Scripture is very clear and full for this, that I see not how it can justly be denyed or questioned.”

While this sentiment seems to align with Zionism by emphasizing Jewish possession of their ancestral homeland, it has two key limitations. Firstly, Mather did not wish for Jewish restoration as a manifestation of the national right to self-determination. Instead, he hoped to see a return of the Jews to the Holy Land to fulfill his eschatological ambition. Zionism, by contrast, denotes the establishment of a Jewish state – not a waystation toward a fully Christianized world order.

Secondly, the specific form of government Mather envisioned for the polity of the restored Zion looked backward to the Bible rather than forward to the modern idea of the nation-state. He lamented that the Jews had suffered “near 1,600 years since the house of Israel was left unto them desolate.” However, he also observed that the ancient Israelites only experienced “oppression from their own Rulers” when they demanded a human king and “cast off that Theocraty, or Government by Judges which was of divine appointment.” Mather envisioned the political system described in the Book of Judges – a nonmonarchical leader appointed by God – as the form of governance in the restored Israel.

To support this view, Mather cited an Old Testament prophecy: “I will restore thy Judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning. Sion and her converts shall be redeemed with righteousness” (Isaiah 1:26-27). While his translation followed the King James Version, Mather made a subtle but highly significant tweak by capitalizing the term “Judges.” This editorial choice reinterpreted the vision as alluding not simply to a restoration of Israelite political power but rather the return of the theocratic judgeship. Such a model similarly conflicts with the principle of self-determination, which places agency in the hands of the people.

However, Christian Zionism evolved after the American Revolution. In this era emerged a vision of Jewish restoration inspired by the revolutionary ideals of independence and liberty. While still rooted in eschatology, these expressions in some ways anticipated modern political dimensions of Zionism as Jewish statehood.

Consider John Adams. Like his Puritan ancestors, Adams admired the Old Testament, which he hailed among the “greatest Wonders of Antiquity.” However, he also expressed a dim view of post-biblical rabbinic literature; in an 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Adams dismissively remarked that examining the entire corpus “would require the life of Methuselah, and after all, his 969 years would be wasted to very little purpose.”

Despite his ambivalence toward rabbinic Judaism, Adams embraced the idea of Jewish restoration in his correspondence with the Jewish diplomat and notable proto-Zionist Mordecai Noah. In an 1819 letter to Noah, Adams expressed his hope for “restoring your nation to the dominion of [Judea]—For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” Adams believed that the Jews, “once restored to an independent government & no longer persecuted they would soon wear away some of the asperities & peculiarities of their character possibly in time become liberal Unitarian Christians.”

Adams’ letter retained the Puritans’ theological limitation noted earlier of idealizing Jewish restoration only to effectuate a national conversion. However, Adams’ political outlook differed significantly from Mather’s. Whereas Mather’s imagination led him to the Bible, Adams framed Jewish sovereignty through the new reality of a post-revolutionary world – hence the term “independent nation.”

The advent of American independence, something that Mather could never have anticipated, might explain how theological and theocratic fantasies in the 17th century evolved into an embrace of Jewish statehood in the early 19th century. These ideas culminated with America’s embrace of Jewish self-determination in the 20th century. Indeed, a mere 11 minutes after Israel’s founding in 1948, U.S. President Harry Truman recognized the nascent Jewish state and cemented an alliance that endures today. Moreover, Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 itself drew inspiration from the United States’ Declaration of Independence in 1776.

As America’s 250th birthday approaches, the history of Christian Zionism in early America highlights the importance of today’s ecumenical allyship. The ideals of 1776 and 1948 call for a united front against efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Jewish and Christian Zionists must stand together, championing Israeli sovereignty on its own terms and ensuring that Judea’s “independent nation” endures for generations to come.

Yisroel Benporat serves as the Senior Associate for Faculty Engagement in New York at the Academic Engagement Network. He holds a Ph.D. in early American history from CUNY Graduate Center.

In recent months, a growing number of voices within Jewish philanthropy have argued that our community has spent too much time focused on threats and not enough time focused on flourishing. The proposed remedy is often framed as a greater investment in Jewish joy.

The argument is understandable. After years of rising antisemitism, political polarization, campus hostility and the trauma of Oct. 7, 2023, many donors are exhausted. They are weary of constantly funding defensive efforts. They are tired of crisis. They want to invest in positive Jewish identity, Jewish culture, Jewish experiences and Jewish flourishing.

Who could object to that?

The problem is not Jewish joy itself. The problem is the growing belief that Jewish joy can replace the difficult work of protecting the conditions that make Jewish flourishing possible in the first place.

A healthy Jewish community requires both. Increasingly, however, philanthropy is acting as though it must choose.

Across the Jewish world, there is a noticeable shift away from supporting efforts that tackle difficult and often controversial challenges: rebuilding democratic norms in Israel, countering Israeli extremism, confronting antisemitism, strengthening public policy protections for Jewish communities, advancing regional integration between Israel and its Arab neighbors and defending liberal democratic values against authoritarian movements that threaten minorities everywhere.

Many of these efforts are messy. They are politically complicated. They often produce outcomes that are difficult to measure. They generate criticism from one side or another.

A Shabbat dinner, a cultural festival or a Jewish arts initiative is far easier to celebrate.

But easier is not always wiser.

The irony is that the very reason many funders feel compelled to invest in Jewish joy is because the underlying conditions facing Jewish communities have deteriorated. Oct. 7 did not emerge from nowhere. The explosion of antisemitism on campuses did not emerge from nowhere. The growing normalization of anti-democratic movements throughout the world did not emerge from nowhere.

These developments were the result of political, educational, technological and ideological forces that evolved over decades. Addressing them requires sustained investment in institutions willing to engage difficult questions and tackle root causes.

Jewish joy can strengthen identity. It cannot stop an Iranian nuclear program. It cannot strengthen democratic institutions. It cannot counter extremist ideologies. It cannot reform social media systems that reward hatred. It cannot build strategic alliances between Israel and its regional partners.

The belief that we can withdraw from these arenas and simply focus inward represents a profound misunderstanding of the challenges before us.

The question is not whether antisemitism remains a serious threat. The question is whether now is the moment to deprioritize efforts to confront it. Given everything we have witnessed since Oct. 7, that conclusion strikes me as premature.

The shortcomings of the antisemitism field should prompt reflection, not retreat. Before redirecting substantial resources elsewhere, we should first understand what has worked, what has failed, and what changes are needed to meet a rapidly evolving threat environment.

If parts of the field have underperformed, the answer is not to pivot away from the challenge. It is to identify which approaches deserve more investment, which deserve less and where entirely new approaches are needed.

Before we conclude that philanthropy should shift its focus from combating antisemitism to promoting Jewish joy, we should first ask whether the field has genuinely had the opportunity to assess what went wrong. Many organizations are still responding to a post-Oct. 7 reality that remains poorly understood, while many funders have yet to undertake the difficult work of determining where consolidation, restructuring, or innovation may be required.

There is another reason the Jewish joy movement gives me pause.

If the goal is to strengthen Jewish identity and create deeper connections to Jewish life, then we cannot ignore one of the central pillars of modern Jewish identity: Israel.

Yet many of the same institutions now championing Jewish joy have still not reckoned with the shortcomings of contemporary Israel education.

For years, too many young Jews were presented with an Israel that felt disconnected from the reality they would eventually encounter. When they later confronted difficult questions about Israeli politics, “the occupation,” religious pluralism, democratic backsliding, corruption or internal social divisions, many felt unprepared. Some felt misled.

If philanthropy wants to invest more heavily in Jewish identity, belonging and joy, then honest Israel education must be part of that agenda.

The answer is not less Israel. The answer is better Israel.

Young Jews deserve an education that acknowledges complexity while remaining rooted in a deep understanding of Israel’s history, achievements, challenges and strategic importance. They deserve opportunities to wrestle with difficult questions rather than being shielded from them.

Just as importantly, they deserve educational spaces that move beyond ideological purity tests. Too often, communal institutions have narrowed the range of acceptable perspectives, creating environments where genuine inquiry is replaced by litmus tests. That approach does not build connection. It builds alienation.

A generation forced to choose between blind celebration and outright rejection will often choose neither. A generation invited into honest engagement is far more likely to develop a lasting sense of ownership and responsibility.

Jewish joy built upon avoidance is fragile. Jewish joy built upon truth is durable.

Ultimately, the debate is not between Jewish joy and Jewish security, Jewish joy and democracy or Jewish joy and Israel.

The real question is whether we are confusing outcomes with prerequisites.

There is nothing wrong with investing in Jewish joy. The mistake is treating it as a substitute for the harder work of defending the conditions that allow Jewish communities to thrive.

Strong communities, effective institutions, democratic resilience, physical security, honest education and meaningful engagement with Israel are what make Jewish flourishing possible. If we neglect those foundations, no amount of investment in joy will compensate for what has been lost.

And if we abandon the difficult work of protecting Jewish communities, defending democratic norms, strengthening Israel’s future, advancing regional integration and confronting the forces that threaten both, we may eventually discover that there is far less to celebrate than we imagined.

Coby Schoffman is a Los Angeles–based serial social entrepreneur and the founder of The Nation Foundation (TNF), which operates project zones across East Africa. Schoffman holds an MSc in Transnational Security from New York University and a BA in Counterterrorism and Conflict Resolution from Reichman University. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of any affiliated organization

Last week I attended an elegant Friday night dinner gathering in Jerusalem’s Old City, a short walk from the Kotel. Over the course of the evening, between appetizers and dessert, the host asked guests to stand one by one and introduce themselves. The guests ranged from dewy-skinned Israeli soldiers to white-haired American businessmen, and after they’d presented a potted account of themselves, the host wanted to know one thing. “And… are you a Zionist?” he asked. It became something of a joke, so that the moment the next guest rose to speak, a cry rose from the table: “Are you a Zionist? Are you a Zionist?”

The host pressed on, asking each guest to explain what they understand Zionism means. Most, squirming under all those pairs of eyes, responded with something along the lines of, “Zionism means the Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland” or “It means Israel has the right to exist, just like any other nation.” This is how I’ve understood it since declaring myself a Zionist several years ago. I’d been steeped in the understanding that all nations have the right to self-determination. Once I saw that antizionists deny this principle to the Jews and only the Jews, it was obvious that antizionism is overwhelmingly driven by antisemitism, and Zionism is completely legitimate. I instinctively put a plus where the antisemites put a minus.

And all of this is true: Jews do have the right to self-determination, denying this right to the Jewish people alone is inherently antisemitic, and it’s right to object about being discriminated against. But I’m beginning to think this understanding doesn’t go deep enough. Part of the problem may lie in that bit about how Israel should be seen as “just like any other nation.” This plaintive Jewish wish runs far back in Jewish history. In the first Book of Samuel, the people, fed up with their existing leadership, demand that Samuel appoint a king to rule over them. Samuel tells them they’d come to regret it—that a king “will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves”—but the people are obstinate.

“No!” they say. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” And since the Jews ended up with King David, who is generally considered a flawed individual but great ruler, it might seem that the people were right to push for a king.

But there’s an inherent problem with the desire many Jews have to be like everybody else. Conforming is, in fact, what the non-Jewish world has often demanded of Jews, and it amounts to requiring them to effectively stop being Jewish. In the Greco-Roman world, Jewish men in the gymnasia felt huge pressure to reverse their circumcisions as a way of avoiding stigma. Napoleon granted the Jews civil rights but required them to drop outward displays of Jewishness. The Soviet Union forbade Jewish (and all forms of religious) worship. Today, Jews face relentless demands to disavow their state—to declare that although they have the misfortune of being Jews, they are not Zionists: a term deemed synonymous with “Nazi.”

As Gilda Radner said, It’s always something. The non-Jewish world will always find something rankling about the Jews, whether that’s monotheism, the original sin, or their stubborn refusal to die on command.

As Gilda Radner said, It’s always something. The non-Jewish world will always find something rankling about the Jews, whether that’s monotheism, the original sin, or their stubborn refusal to die on command. So maybe we should stop wanting to be like everybody else.

So we should stop wanting to be like everybody else. Embrace what makes Jews, and their state, different. Stop thinking of Zionism merely as an expression of national self-determination like any other. This is conceiving of it only in secular, political terms, when its beauty and strength stems from a different plane.

I write this in the shadow of Jerusalem’s old walls. From the balcony I can see the City of David, and if I wanted to, I could think about how that archeological site contains roughly a zillion refutations of the fashionable claim that Jews have no history in this land—that they swept in only recently to steal it from the Palestinians. But thinking this way only means that the ahistorical “anti-colonialists” have succeeded in colonizing my mind.

This is where King David walked. As a lifelong nonbeliever I’m supposed to be unmoved by this fact, or reflexively skeptical about how much truth there is in the biblical account. But thinking that way is also wearying and tedious. It robs me of a sense of majesty and mystery, the sparking of my imagination.

Jerusalem is not like any other place on Earth. The only way to experience it is to open yourself to its glorious strangeness, the dizzying juxtaposition between the transcendent and the mundane. The cats napping in the shade at Jaffa Gate. The reggae musician beating a drum at Zion Square. The bearded Jews in black hats and tallits hurrying through the stone alleyways of Old City. The souq, where a jovial merchant insists you marry him, and succeeds in getting you to hand over an insane number of shekels for a bag of paprika. The out-of-this-world wonder of the Kotel at dusk as Shabbat begins, a surge of humanity and song and prayer.

Jerusalem is not like any other place on the earth. The only way to experience it is to open yourself to its glorious strangeness, the dizzying juxtaposition between the transcendent and the mundane.

Newly stirring bones have been on my mind these past few days, ever since a visit to Jerusalem’s Friends of Zion Museum. It’s a wonderful, too-little-known place founded by Christians who advocate for Zionism with clarity and zeal. In one room, an artistically animated movie was played telling the story of the prophet Ezekiel—how he prophesied the destruction of the first temple in 586 B.C., but how he also prophesied that the Jewish people would eventually be restored to the land of Israel. This was Ezekiel’s vision after coming across a valley filled with dry bones. God commanded him to speak to them, promising that they would be restored to life. When Ezekiel did, flesh and skin formed over those bones, breath returned, and the dead lived once again.

As I watched that movie depicting this story, I knew how many people, including many dear to me, would smirk at the whole thing. I was raised to be allergic to anything resembling Bible-thumping. But this attitude increasingly feels like closedness, a deliberate stunting of the imagination and spirit. I choose to feel otherwise, and think I’m richer for it. I believe others would be, too.

My notebook contains a curious scrawled page, the source of which I didn’t note but I’m pretty sure I copied from a podcast with Yossi Klein Halevi. “The secular story of Israel is running out of juice,” it says. “And there’s something of the strangeness of the Jewish story that we need to reclaim.” That’s it exactly. Nothing about the Jewish story—with its then-revolutionary insistence that there is one God, its history of relentless suffering, its triumphant return to the land it was expelled from millennia ago—is normal, and we shouldn’t try claiming it is. The beauty lies in its incredibleness, those bones returning to life.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”