Going to hell with no possibility of redemption

…and the power of nationalism

I don’t have time to write something very long, but I’d like to present you with something weird and kinda of important: An open letter from the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post trying to convince the Jewish mainstream to permanently banish Jews who are not sufficiently Zionist and/or don’t 100 percent approve of Israel’s current mass slaughter in Gaza.

Using religious references and equating Zionism to the Jewish faith, he wants people like me to be cast out as nonbelievers…nonbelievers who will be relegated to the lowest parts of hell and be irredeemable, even when the messiah comes. It’s a bizarre piece of writing: secular but also extremely religious. And the religion that it promotes is ethno-nationalism, all while invoking Joan Rivers as the ultimate Good Jew.

Here’s a taste of what Avi Mayer thinks:

Drawing on various rabbinic texts, I explained that Judaism has long considered those who separate themselves from the broader Jewish community to be utterly despicable. According to the Talmud in Tractate Rosh Hashanah, they are condemned to Gehenna (hell), and “even when Gehenna will be destroyed, they will not be consumed.”

In his seminal work, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides went on to describe what such a separation looks like: “One who separates himself from the community, even if he does not commit a transgression but only holds aloof from the congregation of Israel, does not fulfill religious precepts in common with his people, shows himself indifferent when they are in distress, and does not observe their fasts, but rather goes his own way as if he were one of the nations and did not belong to the Jewish people — such a person has no share in the world to come.”

Dwelling in a lake of fire with no possibility of redemption? Feels somehow very Christian. I always thought that we Jews weren’t big on the whole hell thing.

Avi in South Africa

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This holy fury isn’t just the work of a single man bent on vengeance and out for blood after the Hamas attack. As you’ll see if you read his text, Avi quotes other people in the Israeli and American Jewish mainstream who have been arguing the same thing — some of them long before October 7th happened, and that includes the most famous Soviet Jewish Zionist: Natan Sharanksy.

What’s interesting is that to all these people a Jew doesn’t have to be a very committed anti-Zionist to be expelled from the Community of Jews. Criticizing Israel’s brutal occupation or providing historical and political context for why people in Gaza or the West Bank might be pissed off — pissed off enough to want to kill Israelis and commit atrocities — is enough for you to be an “un-Jew,” what Sharansky comically calls people like me.

It’s pretty clear that a big split is happening among American Jews: the nationalist majority vs a minority that’s become increasingly uncomfortable with having a violent ethnonationalist project carried out in its name. I think that’s a good thing. But I will say this:

Even though the Jewish anti-Zionist/anti-nationalist side is strong in moral terms, it’s very weak in terms of cultural identity. As far as Israel and Palestine, it has a powerful and righteous position: an end to the occupation, the coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians as equals. But as far Jewish identity goes, it begins to wobble. It is mostly against — against Zionism a definition of Jewishness in the modern world. But what kind of Jewish identity is it actually for? What does being Jewish mean in America, if stripped of its Zionism? The Jewish religion is one answer. But as far as I understand, most anti-Zionist Jews are secular. So where to go?

The grandparents and great grandparents of today’s American Jews had it easier. They could be not Zionist and be Jewish without a problem. That’s because their Jewishness was naturally much stronger. It was tied to Yiddish and the culture of the Old World and socialism and Jewish labor organizing. That world is gone. Secular American Jews today are just Americans.

I think this is a big weakness. People are drawn to a strong positive wholistic identity in our atomized individualistic world: A feeling of belonging and rootedness, spiritualism, a transcendental belief in something bigger than you. People crave this kind of thing. Jewish nationalism and Zionism offers that in a way that today’s anti-Zionism doesn’t really seem to.

Most secular Jews in America have been ethnonationalist for at least two generations. So they don’t have any other identity, nor have they thought about what it means to be Jewish outside of Zionism. But things do change…

—Yasha

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Want to know more? Listen to Antisemitism über alles (Part One) and read Introduction to The Soviet Jew: Realizing I'm part of the story.