opinion
BY NAYA LEKHT
We Are Jews Because
We Are Zionists. We Are Zionists
Because We Are Jews
n the defining spirit of our times that promotes
diversity and inclusion by encouraging
individuals to self-identify, to celebrate their will
to determine their identity — whether driven by
gender, race or religion — what has transpired at
UC Berkeley is an assault on Jewish identity.

Immediately, Jewish activist and legal luminar-
ies commented “UC Berkeley develops a Jew-
Free Zone.” And then came the popular refrain:
“anti-Zionist is not antisemitic,” followed by the
familiar mental acrobatics of having to prove that
anti-Zionism is today’s form of antisemitism or the
well-accustomed to strategy of passing the IHRA
definition of antisemitism.

It’s been 20 years, 20 years since antisemitism
arrived on college campuses, and we are no better
off. It takes a moment to refrain from viewing the
events that transpired at UC Berkeley as solely
antisemitic. Let’s put it this way: What other group is
demanded to excise an integral part of their identity
in order to participate in culture, but the Jews?
Perhaps this is a pivotal moment for the Jewish
community to point out that anti-Zionism is not simply
a modern form of an age-old hatred, but an attack
on the Jewish self and the Jews’ right to define our-
selves. It is a violation of the freedom of a people to
identify with a core component of their heritage.

It takes a moment to reframe, to move away
from a conversation about antisemitism to one
about identity. To help illustrate this, imagine
disinviting Black individuals who hold pan-Afri-
can views, which emphasize the unity of African
and black diasporas in a joint struggle. Imagine a
coalition of campus groups announcing that Black
Americans are welcome, just not the ones who
believe that they are indigenous to Africa.

This is exactly what is happening to Jews in
America, whether on college campuses and in
classrooms or during high school club rush week
and teachers union meetings, to name just a few
antisemitic hot spots. Accepting Jews who self-am-
putate their own ancestral legacy, their own indige-
nous roots, is not inclusion. It is discrimination at its
highest form and an insidious form of abuse.

Our abusers want to set the terms of how Jews
show up to the world. They maintain that we are
welcome in the form of ashes, but insist that Jews
with power, with weapons in their hands, Jews
with borders, Jews who have returned to their
ancestral homeland, are evil. And what’s worse,
they dictate to us what it means to be a Jew. And
we run, we run in circles, our heads aching from
16 OCTOBER 6, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
the mental gymnastics of having to prove why
anti-Zionism is antisemitism, our hearts confused
by the gaslighting: Isn’t Zionism a political move-
ment? Wait, what?
Ladies and gentlemen: Why do we face
Jerusalem when we pray, why do we break a
glass under a canopy on our wedding day, why
are there commandments that we cannot perform
outside of the Land of Israel and laws that can
only be performed when living on our ancestral
homeland, why did our people weep “by the
rivers of Babylon when we remember Zion,” why
must our “right hand forget its cunning if we forget
Jerusalem,” why did Yehuda HaLevi weep in the
12th century sitting in Spain that his “heart is in the
east, and [he] in the uttermost West”?
As I write this, it is 81 years since Jews were mur-
dered at Babi Yar. There, they showed up as their
full selves. At Babi Yar, Jews came as Jews. They
came to be murdered because they were Jews.

There, they had no choice — no one told them
Jews could stay home but “all Zionists of the city
of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday,
September 29, 1941 at 8 am at the corner of
Melnikova and Dokhterivskaya streets (next to the
cemetery).” There, they came as their full selves;
there, they perished as their full selves.

Judging from the blood-stained annals of
Jewish history, one can praise our abusers: Jews
welcome, Zionists not. And in this tenuous fes-
tivity, we cast down our eyes and show up, but
never as our full selves. But here’s the caveat: As
my mother, who was told to “go back to Palestine”
by her Soviet Russian co-worker, says, “When they
say Zionist, they mean Jew.”
That’s why when you’re the only Jew in your
class or among friends and Israel is brought up,
everyone turns to you, Jew. That’s why when
you post “Shabbat Shalom” on your Instagram,
the likelihood that someone will comment
“#FreePalestine” is almost a guarantee. And finally,
why synagogues and Hillels have been vandalized
with the slogan “Free Palestine.”
Because when they say Zionist, they mean you,
Jew. Some will say that the struggle against anti-Zi-
onism and antisemitism is a legal struggle. All are
correct. I say this is our moment, our moment to
show up as our full selves. Yes, we pray toward
Jerusalem, yes we break the glass under the wed-
ding canopy to remember the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem, no we cannot cultivate land
in the Diaspora as we would in Israel, yes we say
“next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the Passover
meal (seder). We are Jews because we are Zionists;
we are Zionists because we are Jews. JE
Naya Lekht is director of education for Club Z, a
Zionist youth movement that has created a cur-
riculum on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism and
antisemitism being taught to Jewish teens across
the nation.

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