The Limits of Self-Definition in Faith Traditions
“Israel is Judaism, and Judaism is Israel!”
Heard this talking point before? Maybe when you’ve dared to criticize the Zionist entity’s genocidal colonization of Palestine? This is one of the claims at the root of the accusation that pro-Palestinian voices are antisemitic. Your Zionist interlocutor may have followed up the statement with the assertion that only Jews get a say in what Judaism is or is not, thereby hoping to shut down further conversation. In other words, the goyim don’t have a right to an opinion on Palestine at all.
Never mind that Judaism is a diverse, contentious tradition dating back thousands of years. Never mind that its Zionist variant flies in the face of most of that tradition. Never mind that sizeable numbers of Jews today are coming out of the closet as anti-Zionist. It doesn’t matter, the argument goes, because as a gentile I don’t have a right to pick and choose which Jews are the legitimate bearers of Jewish identity.
Okay, my interlocutor does have a point. Generally speaking, I agree that any group of people gets the final say over their self-definition. The art of collective self-determination is rightfully an insider’s game. But it is also a responsibility, and part of that responsibility means accepting the consequences when your self-definition is predicated on the erasure of others. Other people do get a say, because no group of people exists in a vacuum. We all bear responsibility for the well-being of our neighbors. And my judgment on my Zionist interlocutor is that when your tradition turns against your neighbors, you’ve reached a dead-end. It needs to change or die.
The first time I came smack up against this line of debate was during the bombing of Gaza in 2008-2009, when I was being called out by a “progressive except Palestine” type who I knew in college. I admit, it sort of shut me down, partially because the Zionist propaganda machine had successfully blinded me to the existence of any dissent within contemporary Judaism. But I was so enraged by what I was watching unfold in Gaza, I was about ready to say “fuck it, then I’m an anti-Semite,” if that’s what it meant to be opposed to the bombing.
Now that I have access to better information, I know that “Judaism is Israel” is bullshit, but even if it isn’t, it is nevertheless necessary to pass judgment on the brand of Judaism that it is. Zionism is a dead end, an epic face-plant. I am not a Jew. I am not an insider to the intra-Jewish debate over self-definition, but here I am boldly calling bullshit on this one.
By doing that I am treading on dangerous ground. That is because I am a descendent of Christendom, and am myself a disaffected Christian who even has a theology degree collecting dust in my closet. Given those facts, it might be the height of hypocrisy for me to pass judgment on Jews who opt for Zionism as their best chance at self-preservation. But I can also speak as someone who for years staked a claim in intra-Christian debates over its self-definition going back 2,000-years. And insofar as I am still claimed as an insider to Christianity (even as much as I’ve tried to escape it), I accept the judgment of the non-Christian world that large swaths of my tradition have been a dead-end for centuries. Christianity has an epic genocide problem, and I own it, even as I am alienated from it. Jews and Muslims and Indigenous peoples across the globe have a right to decide whether one version of Christianity or another has a right to exist.
At the end of the day, it is right to tread carefully when it comes to weighing in on the internal debates of other faith traditions. But when a heresy metastasizes and starts genociding its neighbors, all bets are off. In the modern world, the red flag is when a tradition coalesces around a racial, national, or ethnic identity. Within Christianity, the tradition crossed the line every time it made itself coterminous with a colonial empire (Christianity is Spain, Spain is Christianity, etc.). Today, we see Hinduism collapsing into fascist Hindutva in India. And we see Judaism collapsing into the invented Zionist identity it calls “Israeli.”
When I actively identified as a Christian, I was in the minority when I claimed that racist, nationalistic versions of the faith were heresies. Some lobbed the accusation back at me. Who knows, maybe by more-or-less dropping my Christian identity I wrongfully ceded the ground to them. But I did so because I identified more with their would-be victims, and because wearing that identity on my sleeve as I once did made me feel apart from those I wanted to be in solidarity with.
But I still feel appreciation when a friend who is decidedly not a Christian respectfully uplifts its best exemplars – the diverse branches of liberation theology, for instance, or anti-fascist martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. By doing so, they are doing Christians a favor they are not owed: constructive criticism, a sign-post to a possible future.
A Christian partisan might object, saying my friend has no right to weigh in, but if your version of Christianity is predicated on my friend’s nonexistence, then I say yes, they absolutely do get a say in it, and you will have to accept the consequences of their resistance if you make the wrong choice. In other words, those who fuck around will find out.