The Left-Wing Case Against Antizionism

Adam Louis-Klein

The Atlantic, June 18, 2026. Read the full essay here.

In September 1948, a prosperous Jewish businessman in Iraq was publicly hanged in front of a cheering crowd of 12,000. The following day, close-up images of Shafiq Ades’s broken body ran on the front page of Iraqi newspapers in a triumphant and gruesome spectacle that celebrated the punishment of a “Zionist traitor.” Iraq was losing the war that would create the state of Israel, a humiliation that challenged fantasies of Arab unity and conquest. A military tribunal accused Ades of selling arms to Israel, and he was convicted within days. The state determined that the execution would take place outside his own mansion in a public act of humiliation. Regardless of whether it was true that Ades was a Zionist, his murder was an act of anti-Zionist violence—driven by a violent hatred of Israel and anyone associated with it.

The flight or expulsion of 850,000 Jews from countries across the Middle East is a story that still too often rests in silence, but even when it is told, the ideology that caused it is seldom named.…

Continues here. Adam Louis-Klein is an adjunct fellow at the Z3 Institute and founder of the Movement Against Antizionism.

Read the Full Essay Here

Since October 7 we have been reeling in the face of antizionism, antisemitism, and our collective failure to prepare ourselves for the battles we now face. But the problem is much deeper than narrative wars. We have given up our collective commitments in an atomized, consumerized world. Fraiman argues that it’s time to rebuild those commitments—in our institutions and in our homes—and lays out a path that will take us there.

—David Hazony

Islands of Sovereignty

Amitai Fraiman

This past Passover, when I ended the Seder with the words “Next year in Jerusalem,” I realized that the phrase could no longer mean to me what it once had.

Growing up in Jerusalem, I found it slightly anachronistic. “Next year in Jerusalem” sounded less like national longing than a calendar note. Only after moving to America did its emotional logic, as an expression of distance and return, begin to resonate.

But after thirteen years of Jewish life in the United States, the phrase has come to trouble me for a different reason. I have watched it become routine in some settings, recited because it is what Jews say at the end of the Seder, with little awareness of what it demands. In other settings, I have seen people soften it, skip it, or explain it away, embarrassed by its particularism or unwilling to say aloud what Jewish memory still insists upon.

To say “Next year in Jerusalem” after the return has already begun cannot mean only the preservation of the memory of exile. The return remains incomplete, and the prophetic vision of redemption has not reached its final form. But Jewish sovereignty is no longer only a dream, a prayer, or a deferred hope. It is a fact of Jewish history.

The early Zionists understood that exile was not only a geographic condition. It had created a diasporic consciousness. As early as 1882, Leo Pinsker explained the nature of this consciousness: European Jews, he argued in his book Auto-Emancipation, had preserved themselves as individuals while weakening their national bond as a people. “In the diaspora,” he wrote, “we maintained our individual life, and proved our power of resistance, but we broke the common tie of national consciousness.”

Writing after the First Zionist Congress, Ahad Ha’am sharpened Pinsker’s critique. Political refuge alone, he warned, could not repair the inner habits of exile. True liberation required “the strengthening of our national unity by joint action in every sphere of our national life.”

Pinsker believed that the broken tie of national consciousness could be repaired through political sovereignty. He was right, but only in part. Jews can now shape history in ways his generation could only imagine. Yet, as Ahad Ha’am foresaw, the achievement of statehood has exposed a deeper problem: political sovereignty restores power, but it cannot by itself teach Jews how to live as a sovereign people.

Jewish life is still speaking in categories shaped by exile: distance, dependence, vulnerability, and return. Sovereignty has changed the basic conditions of Jewish existence, but Jewish self-understanding has not caught up. The problem is no longer the absence of Jewish sovereignty. It is that Jews have not yet fully internalized what sovereignty requires.

***

That failure manifests itself differently in Israel and North America. In Israel, it is expressed by the struggle to use power without needing to prove strength again and again, to accept the obligations of sovereignty rather than evade them, and to embrace Jewish power and particularity without embarrassment. In North America, it appears in the habits of a Jewish life too often received, supported, visited, or consumed rather than built.

In North America, this failure is intensified by a surrounding culture that reinforces and rewards diasporic consciousness. Consumer culture teaches us to treat nearly every part of life as something to be chosen, purchased, improved, or abandoned. That habit is especially corrosive to Judaism, which depends on obligation, shared responsibility, and communal authorship.

Jewish institutions did not set out to commodify Judaism. They adapted, understandably, to a world in which belonging became voluntary rather than assumed. Institutions professionalized, programs multiplied, fundraising became central, and the work of sustaining the Jewish community increasingly became the work of specialists serving the masses through transactional and one-directional structures.

The results became clear only in retrospect. Jewish life, once held together by obligation and shared responsibility, began to resemble a marketplace. The question shifted from what Jews owe one another to whether Jewish life feels meaningful, accessible, and worth the cost. When the market becomes our rabbi, Judaism becomes a product, judged less by whether it forms a people than by whether it satisfies a consumer.

***

This can be seen in two of the most successful models of modern Jewish engagement: Birthright and Chabad. Neither is a failure. The opposite is true. Each begins with something Jewish life genuinely needs. Birthright offers immersion, encounter, and the experience of Jewish public life. Chabad offers warmth, access, religious seriousness, and recognizable Jewish depth. The problem is that under the market conditions of consumerism, even powerful forms of Jewish experience can become substitutes for the harder work of building and sustaining Jewish life.

Birthright Israel offers a revealing example because it seems, at first, to point in the opposite direction. Birthright is one of the great successes of the past two decades. For many participants, it has helped create a lasting attachment to the Jewish state and the Jewish people. It also offers something many North American Jews rarely experience at home: a glimpse of Jewish life as integrated, immersive, and public. In Israel, Jewishness is not only a program or an identity choice. It is language, land, calendar, politics, memory, grief, celebration, and argument. It is public life.

But in today’s consumer culture, even that encounter can become a curated intervention, aimed at the individual, staged elsewhere, and detached from the ordinary communities where Jewish responsibility must be learned and expressed. Birthright gives participants a trip, memories, and often a network of friends, but not a community that holds them accountable. It can make Israel feel immersive, social, and fully alive, while the communities to which the participants return often feel optional, fragmented, and self-directed.

It is not just that Birthright has a follow-up problem. It reveals a deeper issue with the North American Jewish ecosystem. Its success forced us to ask how we might create more powerful Jewish experiences in other settings. But creating experiences is not the same as forming communities. An experience can move a person, awaken memory, and create attachment, while still leaving that person outside the habits and obligations that sustain Jewish life. Birthright’s power lies in showing participants a more integrated Jewish world. Its limitation is that even in its best version, it cannot create that world for participants once they return home.

Chabad represents a more complicated version of the same problem because, at first glance, it does not appear to fit the pattern. In many ways, it seems to solve it. Chabad is warm, accessible, nonjudgmental, and serious in its Jewish presence. I am personally grateful for what Chabad has given me. It has built one of the most effective Jewish outreach movements in modern history by meeting Jews exactly where they are while offering an experience of Judaism that feels serious, recognizable, and alive.

This is also why Chabad works so well in America. It offers what consumer culture most wants but rarely produces: an experience that feels authentic. An encounter with Chabad can provide warmth, access, meaning, and a sense of recognizable Judaism. It is immediate and available, without requiring an individual to help build the world that makes the experience possible.

For Chabad, however, the encounter is understood differently. Chabad is not about service delivery. It is animated by a theological mission. As Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson put it in Likkutei Sichos: “When a Jew arouses… his quintessential Jewish spark, so that it governs his thought, speech and action, this is an act of individual redemption. Through this he… hastens the advent of the all-embracing Redemption, with the coming of Mashiach.”

Chabad pursues this mission through a structure in which the shaliach, or emissary, does not simply host programs or provide Jewish experiences. He seeks to draw the Jew closer to God, the mitzvot, and redemption. For the Jew, the encounter may offer comfort, connection, and Jewish depth. For Chabad, it is part of an eschatological mission: one more mitzvah, one more Jewish spark awakened, one more step toward redemption. The sincerity of both sides does not change the structure of the relationship.

That structure is a limitation. Chabad offers Jews a moving religious experience without asking them to take responsibility for a community they govern or shape. The experience can be meaningful and even transformative, but the Jew enters Chabad’s world rather than a shared community he or she is asked to help build. A Jew may become deeply attached to Chabad, but the relationship remains largely one-directional. Chabad provides a fully formed Jewish world, and the Jew is invited into it.

If the choice is between disaffection and Chabad, Chabad is the more serious answer by far. It gives consumer-age Jewish life theological depth and institutional coherence. But it cannot serve as an aspiration for Jewish life as a whole. The danger is not that Chabad lacks depth. It does not. The danger is that its depth can obscure the passivity built into the relationship. Judaism is not meant to leave Jews as recipients of someone else’s Jewish world. It is meant to form adults: people who understand that their choices carry consequence, that Jewish life makes claims on them, and that they are responsible for building and sustaining the communities that shape them.

This is why the rest of Jewish life cannot simply become Chabad. It is also why reducing Judaism to a purely religious framework is too narrow an approach. Judaism is larger than any one movement’s theological imagination. It is the civic, cultural, textual, political, spiritual, and communal life of a people. No single movement can carry the whole Jewish people, nor should it.

Synagogues, JCCs, federations, schools, camps, and cultural institutions cannot compete with Chabad by becoming better vendors of Jewish experience. They must do something different: formulate a serious account of what they are for and raise Jews who understand themselves to be responsible for the communities that shape them. When Jewish life is reduced to discrete religious moments, excellent programs, meaningful services, or powerful experiences, participation becomes possible without ownership. The institution may remain busy even as the community it was meant to form grows weaker.

If Birthright reveals the limits of experience without accountable community, and Chabad reveals the limits of depth without shared civic ownership, then the answer cannot be better programming or more effective outreach alone. It has to be civic institutions where Jews create Jewish life rather than consume it, make decisions about shared public life, and take responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.

***

The institutions American Jews inherited were not failures. They sustained Jewish life for generations and brought us to this moment. But they were built for a Jewish world in which Jews did not exercise sovereignty anywhere. They must now meet the demands of a world in which Jewish sovereignty is a fact, not by reducing Jewish identity to the State of Israel or denying the legitimacy of diaspora life, but by forming Jews who see themselves as agents and builders where they are.

The answer is neither to reduce North American Jewish life to Israel advocacy nor to sever it from Israel and what Jewish sovereignty now makes possible. North American Jewish life needs what we might call islands of sovereignty: the closest approximation, outside Israel, of a Jewish civic life in which Jews experience themselves not as consumers of identity but as participants in a shared Jewish world. These are concrete Jewish places where Jews learn to take responsibility for one another, inherit obligations they did not invent, and become builders of Jewish life rather than clients of those paid to sustain it.

These islands should not be retreats from the world or substitutes for Israel. They should be places where Jews learn, argue, organize, celebrate, grieve, and make decisions together in person; where Israel, memory, and peoplehood are not special programs, but part of how the community understands itself; and where belonging comes with obligation. Sovereign Jewish life requires a public square because Jews cannot learn shared responsibility from those who already agree with them. Jews must be close enough to disagree, bound together enough to compromise, and committed enough not to retreat into separate corners when Jewish life becomes difficult.

An island of sovereignty is not defined first by institutional form, but by what it asks of those inside it. It is a place where Jewish life makes claims on people: to show up regularly, sustain ritual, care for others, teach children, help clean up after the gathering, and make Israel part of the community’s moral and cultural life. It cannot mean only more committees or more opportunities to express Jewish opinions. Jews do not become sovereign by being consulted. They become sovereign by being responsible.

The strongest candidates for creating such a space are not necessarily the places with the strongest ideology or the most intense programming, but the places broad enough to bring different kinds of Jews into shared responsibility.

The months after October 7 showed that Jews still want to be with other Jews, and they revealed which institutions many Jews trusted with that need. According to JFNA research on Jews newly engaging at a high level, informal and interpersonal connections remained dominant. But when Jews turned to institutions, they turned most strongly to Jewish Community Centers (JCCs). Seventy-seven percent reported engagement through a JCC, compared with 56 percent through Jewish Federations, 24 percent through national Jewish organizations, and only 10 percent through local synagogues or temples.

The data does not mean that JCCs automatically become islands of sovereignty. It means they are one of the few institutions that can effectively do so.

This is why JCCs deserve special attention. After October 7, Jews were looking for something broader than denominational belonging and more concrete than online connection: a Jewish public square. In many communities, JCCs came closest to meeting that need.

At their best, JCCs are not merely program providers. They are civic institutions, places where Jews come together despite the differences that elsewhere divide them. JCCs’ strength is not only that they serve many kinds of Jews, but that they bring those Jews into proximity with one another. Children, parents, grandparents, Israelis, Americans, religious Jews, secular Jews, newcomers, staff, volunteers, donors, and community leaders all move through the same shared Jewish space. That breadth is not incidental. It is what makes the JCC capable of becoming a shared public square rather than another niche institution.

JCCs should not replace synagogues, schools, camps, or federations. They should give the broader community a shared center. Synagogues remain essential for religious life, schools and camps shape the next generation, and federations help organize communal resources. But no single denominational, educational, or philanthropic institution can serve as the civic home of the whole community by itself. Without a shared center, aspects of Jewish life may flourish, but Jews do not become responsible for one another as a community.

However, even the strongest civic institutions cannot bear sovereign responsibility on their own. Jews who do not build Jewish life at home cannot sustain the institutions that islands of sovereignty require, and institutions that make no claims on people cannot generate the Jews who carry those claims into their own lives. The relationship between community and home is mutually reinforcing. Jewish life must be built at both ends.

One of the places where this responsibility is practiced is the Shabbat table. Abraham Joshua Heschel called Shabbat a palace in time, a form of sanctity that, properly inhabited, can hold many dimensions of Jewish life at once: ritual, family, language, learning, hospitality, argument, song, and the welcoming of strangers. A Shabbat table is not one piece of Jewish life among others. It is Jewish life compressed into one location and brought into being by the people sitting at it. The same is true of a holiday meal, a study chavruta, or a parent teaching a child. Jewish life cannot be reduced to transactional or episodic experience. It runs through every scale of Jewish presence, from global peoplehood to the individual, and at every scale it asks to be created rather than consumed.

Islands of sovereignty require more than institutional structure or household practice. The deeper question is covenantal: what does Jewish responsibility now require of us? After October 7, many Jews rediscovered peoplehood through advocacy: rallies, letters, donations, public statements, and political pressure. Those acts are necessary, but reaction to crisis cannot become the substance of Jewish life. A sovereign Jewish consciousness must rebuild the forms of Jewish life that make responsibility habitual before crisis makes it urgent.

***

The work of building islands of sovereignty in North America is one expression of a larger Jewish task. The failure to internalize sovereignty is not only a diaspora problem. It is a generational Jewish problem, appearing differently in each center of Jewish life. North American Jewry’s challenge is to create the conditions in which Jews stop outsourcing Jewish life and become agents and builders of a Jewish world they are called upon to sustain. Israel’s challenge is different: to ensure that political sovereignty becomes a disciplined form of Jewish power rather than power alone.

Former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein once recalled a joke his father used to tell: “For two thousand years, Jews prayed for a sovereign state. Did it have to happen in our generation?” The joke lands because it points out the gap between longing for sovereignty and knowing how to live with it. Political sovereignty can be reclaimed in a generation. Sovereign consciousness takes longer.

In Israel, the failure to internalize sovereignty is expressed by the struggle to use power without being ruled by it. Israel lives under threat, and realpolitik remains an essential tool of survival. But survival alone cannot constitute the whole of Jewish life. A people that does not survive cannot exercise its moral voice at all. Yet when Jewish power loses moral discipline, it begins to consume the people it was meant to protect.

The failure to internalize sovereignty appears in different forms across Israeli society. Among some religious Zionists and nationalists, Jewish power can become a way to prove, again and again, that Jews are no longer weak, even though sovereignty should already have made that clear. In some Haredi communities, sovereignty can be refused as though Jews were still living under conditions of exile, perpetuating exilic reflexes inside a sovereign Jewish society. Among some secular and progressive Israelis, Jewish particularity and Jewish power can become sources of discomfort, as though Israel would be better off becoming a normal Western liberal society rather than wrestling with what it means to be both Jewish and democratic.

Jewish life in the diaspora, shaped by minority conditions, can make the opposite mistake. It can confuse Judaism with moral purity, as though a tradition built around law, obligation, action, failure, repair, and teshuva could remain Jewish while avoiding the moral risks that come with acting in history. Judaism is not a religion of pure intention. It is a discipline of commanded action in an imperfect world. A Judaism that refuses to risk applying itself to the real world becomes theoretical. A Judaism that seeks innocence over responsibility ceases to be Judaism at all.

The danger to Israel is power without conscience. The danger to the diaspora is conscience without consequence. Each center reveals what the other is tempted to forget: their relationship cannot remain ornamental. Jewish life cannot be built on power without conscience or on conscience without consequence.

For much of the twentieth century, American Jews and the State of Israel operated within a framework that made sense for its time. The 1950 Blaustein-Ben-Gurion understandings codified a delicate balance: Israel would not undermine the civic security of American Jews by treating them as Israelis-in-waiting, and American Jewish leaders would support Israel without formally claiming authority over Israeli policy. That arrangement was necessary, but over time its limits became clearer. It allowed Israeli sovereignty and diaspora life to coexist without forcing either one to reshape the other. Israel could become a state without requiring American Jewish institutions to rethink the meaning of Jewish power. American Jews could support Israel without asking what sovereignty demanded of their own Jewish life.

But coexistence is no longer enough. If sovereignty is now a fact of Jewish history, then the two centers of Jewish life must become conscious partners in shaping the next era of Jewish life. Ahad Ha’am imagined a Jewish cultural center radiating renewal outward, but Simon Rawidowicz, the twentieth-century Jewish historian and philosopher, offers a better paradigm than that of center and periphery. In his essay “Two That Are One,” Rawidowicz described the Jewish people as “an ellipse with two foci”—the Land of Israel and the Diaspora. But he refused to turn that structure into a hierarchy. “There are not, nor should there be, absolute givers and takers among Jews,” he wrote. Each center of Jewish life carries its own creative responsibility, and no part of the Jewish people can fulfill the obligations of another.

This is why the usual family metaphors are no longer enough. Israel and the diaspora are not siblings, cousins, or spouses negotiating affection, loyalty, and distance. They are chavrutot, bound not by sameness but by the demand that each help the other see more fully. The rabbis put the stakes starkly: o chavruta o mituta, either chavruta or death. Chavruta is not a gentler metaphor than family, but a more demanding one, requiring mutuality, accountability, commitment, and enough trust to expose the other’s temptation without walking away.

Yossi Klein Halevi has put the distinction sharply: Israel gives Jewish life depth, while the diaspora gives it breadth. Israel gives Jewish life the depth of majority existence: land, language, power, consequence, and the density of a full Jewish public square. The diaspora gives Jewish life the breadth of minority existence: translation, encounter, creativity, moral imagination, and the capacity to carry Judaism into the wider human story.

Internalizing sovereignty does not collapse the two centers into one another. It allows each to become more fully itself without mistaking itself for the whole. Israel must learn that power remains Jewish only when it is answerable to conscience. The diaspora must learn that conscience becomes Jewish only when it accepts consequence. Each center holds a truth the other lacks, and each prevents the other from transforming its own condition into an ideology.

Jewish life has never been well served by one Zionist idea alone. Herzl was right that Jews need power. Ahad Ha’am was right that power alone is not enough. Rawidowicz was right that Jewish life cannot be organized around one center. Each saw part of the truth, and each part becomes distorted when it is asked to become the whole. A state can protect Jewish life, but it cannot by itself form a Jewish people. Culture can deepen Jewish life, but without power, it cannot secure it. Two centers can correct one another, but only if each becomes responsible for the form of sovereignty entrusted to it.

The question is no longer whether Jewish sovereignty exists. It does. Nor is the question whether we must secure it. We must. The deeper question is whether we are ready to internalize sovereignty: not by simply longing for return, since the return has already begun, but by building the Jewish life that return now makes possible. If we succeed, the next stage of Jewish life will not simply repeat the old arguments between Israel and the diaspora. It will be shaped by a people capable of letting each center challenge the other, correct the other, and take responsibility for building a Jewish future neither can create alone.

Rabbi Amitai Fraiman is founding director of the Z3 Project.

A Metacritique of Palestine

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour

The Abrahamic Metacritique, May 18, 2026. Read the full essay here.

There is no shortage of writing about Palestine. This small and provincial conflict has generated more commentary, more theory, more denunciation, more advocacy, and more counter-advocacy than any comparable political question of the modern era, and the volume of this commentary has stood in inverse proportion to its analytical value.

The reason for such a lack of value is that what has been written is, with rare exceptions, written from inside the very structure that the writing claims to describe, and the writing therefore serves the structure rather than illuminating it. The liberal who writes about human rights, the leftist who writes about settler colonialism, the realist who writes about regional security, the conservative who writes about the clash of civilizations, the Islamist who writes about Crusaders, the Arab nationalist who writes about Western betrayal, and the post-Christian European who writes about the unbearable irony of Jewish power are not, despite their mutual hostility, engaged in incompatible projects. They are engaged in the same project, which is the conversion of the victimhood, regardless of its details, produced at a particular site into a particular kind of symbolic capital usable within a particular ideological market. They quarrel about the terms of the conversion. They do not quarrel about the conversion itself, because the conversion is what they all live on.

This essay is an attempt to step outside that conversion long enough to describe the system that makes it possible. The attempt is necessarily imperfect, because no one stands fully outside the system, and the writer who claims such a vantage is either lying or mistaken about his own position.

What is possible is the more modest achievement of seeing the Palestine system as a structure rather than as a contest within which one has already chosen a side. This requires the reader to suspend, at least for the duration of the essay, the question of which party is right and to consider instead the question of what kind of arrangement produces the very ground on which the question of rightness gets posed. The reader will recognize, I hope, that this suspension is not a refusal of moral judgment but its precondition. One cannot judge what one has not first understood, and the Palestine word-symbol has been, for at least three generations, a question about which everyone has had opinions, and almost no one has had understanding.…

Continues here. Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is an adjunct fellow at the Z3 Institute and editor of The Abrahamic Critique on Substack.

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The Kafkaesque Trial Facing Israel and Its Supporters

Benjamin Kerstein

The Dispatch, May 22, 2026. Read the full essay here.

It is quite common for defenders of Israel to preface their statements with the phrase, “Israel isn’t a perfect country,” which is true, as far as it goes, but rather misses the point. Given the blizzard of defamation and demonization that surrounds the Jewish state, the issue is not whether Israel is perfect, but whether it is as imperfect as its enemies claim.

The answer is self-evident, because no country could be as imperfect as Israel’s enemies claim. Even Nazi Germany, perhaps the one completely uncomplicated case of an outright demonic regime, was only charged (rightly) with wanting to take over the world, whereas Israel is regularly charged with having already taken over the world. Demonization can only be taken so far before it takes on a distinct quality of the ludicrous.

This simple fact was demonstrated once again last week when the New York Times published Nicholas Kristof’s impossibly long opinion column (tellingly, it was not published in the news section), charging that Israel systemically sexually abuses Palestinian prisoners, including through the physical impossibility of trained rape dogs.…

Continues here. Benjamin Kerstein is an associate fellow at the Z3 Institute and author of Self-Defense: A Jewish Manifesto (Wicked Son, 2025).

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Open Hiding

Izabella Tabarovsky

Quillette, June 1, 2026. Read the full essay here.

My father’s dissertation adviser emigrated from the USSR on the eve of his postdoctoral defence. In the Soviet Union, emigration was an act of betrayal, and by the time my father appeared before the committee tasked with approving his defence, his fate had already been sealed. Committee members peppered him with questions so far afield from the subject of his dissertation that he—a brilliant 29-year-old geophysicist—never stood a chance.

My father understood immediately what was happening. The year was 1974, and Soviet anti-Zionist hysteria was at a peak, blocking countless Jews from university admissions, academic advancement, professions, and entire career fields. He walked out, returned to his desk, and went on to do work so innovative that, when we landed in America in 1990, a major company grabbed him and never let him go. Shortly before emigrating, he successfully defended a brand new dissertation, but by then he had nothing left to prove to himself—or anybody else.

Twenty-five years after our emigration, as the ghosts of antisemitism we thought we’d left behind reappeared across the West, I asked my father: Were the people on that committee personally antisemitic? “No, no,” he told me. “They just knew what time and country they were living in.”

Antisemitism is often viewed as visceral hatred of Jews. But that’s a limited understanding of the phenomenon.

Antisemitism is also a politics and a zeitgeist; a conspiracy theory that feeds mass hysteria about Jewish power; an underlying culture that teaches people that Jews are different, they don’t belong, they aren’t on our side—and ultimately, that they are our misfortune. It draws an invisible line between Jews and the broader society, step by step normalising their marginalisation and disappearance….

Continues here. Izabella Tabarovsky is a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute and author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide (Wicked Son, 2025).

Read "Open Hiding" at Quillette

David H.—What are the most important new ideas coming out of the Jewish world?

I launched “Jewish Priorities” in 2023 as a showcase for the essays appearing in the book Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, published later that same year (about two weeks after October 7, actually). I’ve long believed that unlike books, which require a reader’s commitment and focus that work best in print, essays have found their natural home online—where they can be instantly shared, discussed, rebutted in real time, and where with a simple link they can serve as validation for a whole worldview.

After October 7, it became clear that the Jewish community is filled with questions about our future, and not enough answers. And so, in 2024 I joined the Z3 Project and helped launch the Z3 Institute. Since then we’ve brought together an amazing group of scholars and writers, each of whom is working on a book of significance for our collective Jewish future. So far, in addition to Jewish Priorities, we’ve published six new books, including 4 since last fall.

I’m thrilled that we’ve decided to re-launch “Jewish Priorities” to provide new content from our fellows and a selection of the most influential writers and scholars, with the aim of asking hard questions, and offering new answers, about Zionism, Judaism, communal life, philanthropy, education, and more. Each month we’ll post an original essay, alongside cross-posts from our fellows’ Substacks, short pieces, excerpts, announcements, updates, and more.

And if you’d like to meet the fellows in person, be sure to come to the Z3 Conference in Palo Alto November 1—most of them will be there!

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Stay tuned.

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David H.—When , one of the most important voices today about Palestinianism, UNRWA, and the nature of Zionism, submitted her path-breaking 2023 Jewish Priorities essay “Zionism as Therapy,” I knew it was worth expanding. Teaching Zionism: Reflections from a Skeptical Classroom (Wicked Son), walks you through a course she taught in 2021 at Georgetown University, which had a simple goal of exploring Zionist thinking from its earliest phases, and pairing it with objections to Zionism coming from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers. As I explain in the foreword to the book, we discover two crucial things: First, that Zionism began not as a political platform but rather as a critique of Jewish life after many centuries of exile—and second, that this critique resonates powerfully among Jewish students today. The book follows the course, its primary sources, and the reactions of students, and includes a curriculum that can easily be replicated.

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At the same time, , director of the Jewish Education Project and a Z3 fellow, has written a fabulous work aimed specifically at educators. Heroism and Hope: Recharging Israel Education in a Post-October 7 World (Wicked Son) explores the unique position Israel education finds itself in, along with the author’s own personal story as an educator, and reaches a powerful-conclusion: That ultimately the aim of teaching Israel to Diaspora student’s isn’t to make them better advocates against anti-Zionism or scholars of the Jewish state’s history, but foremost to help them find their own Jewish self-understanding through their exposure to Israel.

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Both books are available now on Amazon and other stores, and are published by Z3 in collaboration with Wicked Son Books. Through our fellowship program, we help authors develop and bring to publication a range of books covering the future of Jewish life. To take a look at all Z3 books click here:

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David H.—This was one of the most challenging—and most important—interviews I’ve done. I was delighted to join Rabbi , director of the and host of the Long Path Podcast, for an hour-long exploration of the Jewish future: Zionism, Judaism, institutions, and the difficult path to a renewal of life in the wake of October 7, antisemitism, and the crazy political moment we live in.

The Jewish people are locked in a battle for survival, more so than at any point in the last half century. We know we should fight antisemitism—but what are we fighting for? What does Jewish life need to look like in our new hybrid reality of sovereignty-and-Diaspora? A lot of what we talked about had been germinating in my head for more than two years. Some of it I’ve managed to put into writing, but most of it is new. Kudos to Amitai for asking the most important, hard questions.

This is what the Z3 Project, and the Z3 Institute I lead within it, are actually about. Leave your thoughts in the the replies! Watch below:

David H.—We are just four days into the war, and the Middle East is changed forever. For half a century, the Iranian regime has been by far the largest source of war and instability, through its nuclear ambitions, ballistic missiles, and above all its proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

But while so much of our attention is focused on the details of the joint U.S.-Israeli operation and the Iranian military response, bigger questions loom: How will this affect the global antizionist movement and the “Red-Green Alliance” that has assaulted the foundations of Western society? Now that Qatar has come under attack, will it continue supporting anti-Western movements? With the demise of Shiite political Islam, what will happen with Sunni Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood?

To start asking these questions, I’m thrilled to host Z3 Institute fellow for a 45-minute conversation via Zoom webinar.

See the video here:

David H.—In my previous post I announced the publication of Izabella Tabarovsky’s Be a Refusenik, which has taken Jewish readers by storm. It’s a great book!

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I’m thrilled to announce that Izabella will be joining me at the Jerusalem’s Begin Center on Monday January 5 at 7:30pm (with live-streaming online: 9:30am PT / 12:30pm ET / 5:30pm UK). Better still: We will be joined in conversation by the legendary Natan Sharansky, along with rapper and writer Noah Shufutinsky, who was interviewed in the book. The event is co-sponsored by the Z3 Project, which also co-published the book.

Tickets are still available! Click here for tickets, or to register (free) for the live-stream.

I hope to see you there!

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How to Be a Refusenik

I'll Be There on January 5!

David H.—If you aren’t familiar with Izabella Tabarovsky, you should be. She has been one of the most important voices exposing the Soviet origins of today’s antizionism (see examples here, here, and here.) She’s also a Senior Fellow at the Z3 Institute, and author of a powerful new book, Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, that combines her scholarship with interviews and great writing to produce a fascinating retelling of the story of the Refuseniks, the strategies they employed, and how those strategies are being put into practice on American campuses today.

By juxtaposing the stories of the original Refuseniks with the stories of young activists, the book brings those Jewish heroes from decades ago, many of whom were themselves in their 20s and 30s, back to life—while giving a wonderful guide to students who want to emulate their heroism.

It also acts as a great companion volume to Young Zionist Voices, which we published a year ago. Some of the students profiled in Be a Refusenik also contributed to that book, including Shabbos Kestenbaum, Noah Shufutinsky, Eyal Yakoby, Adela Cojab, and Alissa Bernstein.

Be a Refusenik is published by the Z3 Project together with Wicked Son books, and is available on Amazon here:

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SAVE THE DATE: I’m delighted that Izabella will join me at the Menachem Begin Center, along with Natan Sharansky and Noah Shufutinsky, on January 5, 2026. Stay tuned for ticket info!

How to Be a Refusenik

David H.—Across the Diaspora, Jews are facing questions of physical security and the long-term viability of their communities. Do we wait for the antisemitic storm to pass? Do we make plans to move to Israel or elsewhere? Or is there a third option, to stay and fight?

Benjamin Kerstein, a longtime friend and colleague of mine, and now an Associate Fellow at the Z3 Institute, has written a powerful book arguing for the third option. In SELF-DEFENSE, he goes deep into both the nature of the moment we’re in and the pervasive Jewish culture that blinds us to the merits and possibility of fighting back—not just spiritually and politically, but also physically. Is it “goyish” to buy a gun, to bulk up and learn to fight, or to embrace not just “security” but also offensive strategies that take the fight to the enemy? Or has self-defense, in all its forms, always been fundamental to Jewish identity?

After the murderous attacks in Washington DC, Boulder, Manchester, and elsewhere, it feels like the threat of violence against Jews is everywhere. Is there something we can do about it? If you care about this question, you must read this book now. Order here:

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Also I’m also delighted that the author will appear at the upcoming Z3 Conference in Palo Alto on November 9. There are still tickets available! Get them here:

TICKETS Nov 9 Z3 Conference

DEFEND YOURSELF NOW

I’ve known Joe Schwartz for years as a deep thinker, passionate Jew and Zionist, and a wise and creative analyst. He’ll be working on a study of Jews and cities—why we are so attracted to urban life, what it reveals about us, and how we have contributed to societies through them.

Hussein is a newer friend, a brilliant scholar, who will be researching the “green” side of the modern antisemitic radical Left, also known as the “red-green alliance.” In the tradition of scholars like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, Hussein looks deep into the rise of jihadism in the Arab world and its surging influence in Western countries.

Both of their bios are below. Welcome aboard!

To learn more about the Z3 Project and the Z3 Institute, click here:

Z3 Institute Web Page

Joseph Schwartz is an educator, rabbi and attorney. He is the Director of Makom: the Israel Education laboratory of the Jewish Agency for Israel, where he focuses on developing tools for conveying complexity simply. He has taught groups from across the Jewish world and lectured widely. Joseph has been a Jewish entrepreneur, a congregational rabbi in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and a litigator. He has published in Jewish Priorities, the Forward, Ha’aretz, and in many other outlets, as well as on his Substack, Bones of Joseph. Born and raised in New York City, in 2020 Joseph made Aliya with his family. He is married to Avigail and is kvelling father to Zev, Paz and Shai. They live in Tel Aviv.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is an Egyptian-American writer specializing in modern intellectual history. His work focuses on Arab political thought, Arab intellectual history, and the globalization of antisemitism and revolutionary radicalism. Hussein previously served as an assistant professor of Hebrew language and culture at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. His writings have appeared in Commentary, Tablet, Mosaic, and the Athens Review of Books. Hussein is a sought-after commentator and speaker on issues of antisemitism and extremism in the Middle East. In 2022, he was awarded the Per Ahlmark Award by the UN Watch for his advocacy for human rights, and in 2024, he was awarded the German Mercator Fellowship from the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien in Heidelberg. He is a senior research fellow at ISGAP, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.

Save the date! The Z3 Conference is returning to Palo Alto this year on November 5. I’ll be there as well as many of the Z3 Institute scholars. Learn more here. Tickets will go on sale soon—stay tuned.

Learn More & Vote

David H.—In a previous post I announced that nominations were open for the Z3 Bridge Builder Award. Nominations have closed. Now it’s time to learn about the nominees—and cast your ballot!

I often feel like there’s a great deal of talk about Jewish unity and peoplehood in the abstract, but few actually take action that makes a difference in real life. It’s the biggest reason why I launched Jewish Priorities in 2023: to showcase the fact that despite all our differences, we are still one people.

Last year, the Z3 Project launched the annual Bridge Builder Award to recognize individuals whose work brings Jews together in ways that make a difference.

Take a look at the nominees—and place your vote by August 27.

VOTE NOW

Here is the announcement from the Z3 Project:

The Z3 Project is proud to offer the Bridge Builder Award for its second year, recognizing individuals who are working to bridge divides within the Jewish people—between communities, across ideologies, between the Diaspora and Israel and more.

The tumult of the last few years has posed new and unique challenges to the Jewish world. While in some ways we have rallied together, in others our divisions have become more pronounced, with new fault lines appearing and new internal tensions rising—whether around the war in Gaza, politics in Israel and the U.S. or widening religious and cultural differences.

The Z3 Bridge Builder Award honors individuals who are creating spaces for connection, understanding, and dialogue between Jewish communities.

Bridge building is never easy, but it is essential. This award shines a light on those helping to hold the Jewish people together even when everything around us seems to be pulling us apart.

We’re seeking individuals who:

• Have shown outstanding leadership in bringing together Jewish communities.

• Have launched innovative projects that promote collaboration and understanding.

• Are committed to bridging gaps and creating a stronger, more inclusive Jewish world.

The winner will be presented the top prize of $10,000 at the Z3 Conference 2025 on Sunday, November 9. The two runner-up finalists will each receive $1,000.

VOTE NOW

Meet the Nominees & Cast Your Vote

David H.—Last Wednesday in Jerusalem, I spoke with Nolan Lebovitz, Z3 Institute adjunct fellow, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, and author of The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews. This was a great conversation—I hope you’ll agree.

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For generations, American Jews have been afraid of the accusation of “dual loyalty.” But when they walk into a synagogue, they often see two national flags, of the U.S. and Israel. This, Lebovitz contends, creates a conflicting message that undermines one of the most important pillars of Jewish identity: Loyalty to Jews around the world. In our own time, Jewish loyalty, or “peoplehood,” is expressed powerfully through our connection to Israel. Instead of rejecting the possibility of multiple loyalties, Jews should embrace what he calls the “Jewish double-helix,” in which loyalty to country and loyalty to the Jewish people intertwine and build each other.

The lesson is powerful and simple: Jews must embrace Jewish loyalty as a non-negotiable, essential part of a strong and proud Jewish identity. Watch it here:

I’m proud to be able to host Z3 Project’s ongoing Jerusalem Series at the Begin Center. Many thanks to all involved!

Buy the Book Now

NOMINATE SOMEONE NOW

David H.—What binds us together as a people? We have been hearing about “peoplehood” for decades as a major concern both in America and Israel. Our viability as a people is threatened by division, infighting, competing allegiances, and threats from without—and our behavior suggests the very idea of a single “Jewish people” may be on the rocks.

More than a century ago, Theodor Herzl was consumed by the revelation that “We are one people,” which drove him to embark on a lifelong mission to establish the first Jewish nation state in thousands of years.

Peoplehood, however, doesn’t happen by itself. It is built one step at a time, through education, communities, books, beliefs, and practices. It was the idea of peoplehood that inspired me to create Jewish Priorities, with the goal of sharing the voices of our people from all its major religious, political, geographical, and demographic groups, in a single book.

For this reason I’m thrilled that the Z3 Project has launched the Bridge Builder Award to recognize those who are making a real contribution to healing divides within our people. Through their example, we can gain the tools and inspiration to help the Jewish people grow stronger together.

If you know someone who is doing the hard work of bringing Jews together across our divisions, please let us know through a simple nomination form. Nominations are closing in the next week—submit by next Monday, August 4.

NOMINATE SOMEONE NOW

Here is the announcement from the Z3 Project:

The Z3 Project is proud to offer the Bridge Builder Award for its second year, recognizing individuals who are working to bridge divides within the Jewish people—between communities, across ideologies, between the Diaspora and Israel and more.

The tumult of the last few years has posed new and unique challenges to the Jewish world. While in some ways we have rallied together, in others our divisions have become more pronounced, with new fault lines appearing and new internal tensions rising—whether around the war in Gaza, politics in Israel and the U.S. or widening religious and cultural differences.

The Z3 Bridge Builder Award honors individuals who are creating spaces for connection, understanding, and dialogue between Jewish communities.

Bridge building is never easy, but it is essential. This award shines a light on those helping to hold the Jewish people together even when everything around us seems to be pulling us apart.

We’re seeking individuals who:

• Have shown outstanding leadership in bringing together Jewish communities.

• Have launched innovative projects that promote collaboration and understanding.

• Are committed to bridging gaps and creating a stronger, more inclusive Jewish world.

The winner will be presented the top prize of $10,000 at the Z3 Conference 2025 on Sunday, November 9. The two runner-up finalists will each receive $1,000.

Nominate someone today!

https://www.z3project.org/award

NOMINATE SOMEONE NOW

David H.—In the few years I’ve gotten to know Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in Los Angeles, and a contributor to Jewish Priorities. When he told me he wanted to make the case for embracing the concept of loyalty to the Jewish people, not only as a central component of Jewish identity, but also living alongside loyalty to one’s country—to explore how these two loyalties coexist—the common accusation of “dual loyalty” naturally came up. “We have spent generations trying to refute that accusation,” he told me. “But the truth is, you walk into a synagogue and you see two flags. We need to tackle this head on.”

So I invited him to join the Z3 Institute as an adjunct fellow, where he worked on an impassioned manifesto called The Case for Dual Loyalty: Healing the Divided Soul of American Jews. Because raising hard questions about the Jewish future—and developing innovative new answers—is what we are all about.

Now that his book has come out, I’m thrilled to invite you all to a public conversation in Jerusalem at the Begin Center, on Wednesday July 23 at 7:30 pm. (There’s also a Zoom option.) Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. Tickets available here.

This is the latest installment of the Z3 Project’s Jerusalem Series, which has included book events for Jewish Priorities, Young Zionist Voices, Melanie Phillips’s The Builder’s Stone, and Yardena Schwartz’s Ghosts of a Holy War. I hope to see you there!

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Order "The Case for Dual Loyalty" Now

Get Tickets Now

David H.—Last Wednesday in Jerusalem, I spoke with Yardena Schwartz about her important and beautifully written new book, Ghosts of a Holy War.

The conversation was about history, but it was just as much about our the present war: How a single event, the 1929 Hebron massacre, not only foreshadowed but directly led to the conflict in its present shape. It was the Grand Mufti, of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini, who took the lead in creating Palestinian nationalism on the basis of the complete rejection of Zionism and, later, the State of Israel. He took his maximalist position with him to Berlin, where he headed up the Nazis’ Arabic-language propaganda machine—and inspired a new generation led by Yasser Arafat and the PLO, the forerunners of today’s Hamas.

The lesson is powerful and simple: This conflict will remain stuck where it is until Palestinians abandon the dream of Israel’s destruction. Watch it here:

I’m proud to be able to host this ongoing Z3 Project Jerusalem Series event at the Begin Center. Many thanks to all involved!

David H.—I’m thrilled to share with you my latest essay in the journal Sapir. In it I critique the classical Diaspora model of allyship, in which we make allies only with those who share our broader vision of democratic, liberal values. and show how it has failed. I then propose an alternative “Druze model” that more appropriately fits the tumultuous moment we currently live in. As I write:

In the wake of October 7, when Jews around the world find themselves in the thick of an existential battle, arguments of this type no longer seem to make sense. True, we should never partner with outright antisemites, Left or Right. But we should no longer impose broader litmus tests on allyship. We should no longer, to use Hirsh’s formulation, “keep some distance from those who do not share our values.” We have tried this. It has failed us.

Instead, we should ally with whoever helps us win.

Read the essay here.

Read the Essay in Sapir Journal

David H.—I’m delighted to announce that Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People, is now available in paperback!

Order Jewish Priorities paperback now!

Jewish Priorities came out in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, and struck a powerful nerve: Never has it been more poignant to bring together the opinions and aspirations of Jews from all stripes, collected in a single volume. Through public and online events across America, Israel and the UK, Jewish Priorities gave the Jewish people a voice at its most perilous moment. Now you can buy it in paperback—along with hardcover, ebook, and Audible editions.

READERS’ GUIDE: To mark the paperback publication of Jewish Priorities, the Z3 Project is proud to present the Jewish Priorities Reader's Guide, offering tools and resources for educators, program directors, and general readers. It includes a sample 8-session course with recommended essays organized thematically, including questions for discussion, which can be adapted for adult education, teens, or college courses. This Guide is offered free of charge (registration required).

I hope you enjoy it!

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