It was Sunday night and we were all enjoying a friendly dinner, until someone accidentally dropped the Z-bomb. Normally I wouldn’t have noticed, but this time it caught my attention, because I hadn’t even known “Zionist” wasn’t appropriate for dinner conversation anymore. At least that’s the impression I got when one of the girls at dinner objected to her friend labeling her a Zionist” the way someone might not want to be called a liberal or a conservative” in front of everyone.
An article titled “Second thoughts about the Promised Land” in the January 13th issue of The Economist cites a survey by Steven M. Cohen, a research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, that found that only 17% of American Jews call themselves Zionists. The number of American Jews who consider themselves pro-Israel far exceeds that number.
So, why are so many pro-Israel American Jews avoiding the term Zionist? In a phone interview with Prof. Cohen, he explained that there are divergent definitions of the word: “Zionism believes there is something strongly lacking from Jewish life outside of Israel, either Jews will assimilate or Judaism outside of Israel is distorted or Jews will always suffer anti-Semitism — but in common parlance, especially in America, especially recently, it comes from [another] definition, that means bolder pro-Israel ideology.” With Zionism attached to a specific, more right-wing pro-Israel ideology, it also invites a backlash, which explains the dinner Sunday night.
David Twersky, the Director of International Affairs and the Council for World Jewry at the American Jewish Congress has another explanation for the decrease in Jews identifying themselves as Zionists. Twersky links the aversion to the word to the changing identity of American Jewry. “Zionism grows out of circumstances in which peoplehood and ethnicity matter and as they decline among American Jews, the substance out of which Zionism grows begins to evaporate.”
Despite falling on the liberal side of the Israeli political spectrum, I’ve always called myself a Zionist. That’s why I was surprised when my friend wanted to keep her Zionism under wraps. For me Zionism has never had a political connotation. Left-wing, right-wing, as long as you believed in the idea of a Jewish state’s right to exist, you were a Zionist. Or so I thought. But somewhere along the way (some might argue immediately after Israeli independence), the meaning of “Zionist” changed.
One way or another, the definition and the very nature of Zionism is evolving. But, that won’t keep me from using the word at the dinner table.
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