Do Labels Still Matter? Rethinking Zionism, Charedism, and Jewish Identity

Now, a person is going to say, what do you mean? Zionism? It's Zion.

Right.

I'm talking about especially considering the situation where Israel has found itself in.

When people are defending Israel about, I don't know, the war... giving over Israel's position in the world.

Zionism is at best a red herring, at worst it's detrimental.

How so? Because you move yourself into a position where you're defending an ideology.

You're defending a label.

Are you a Zionist? Do you think Israel has a right to exist? In a way, both of those are silly questions.

We should start treating Israel as a fact, a reality on the ground that we are inhabiting, not a label that needs to be justified.

Israel exists, and that's the end of the conversation.

Rather than, am I a Zionist? In a weird way, like, what's it got to do with anything outside my tefillah in the morning? Zionism, as an ideology, from a religious standpoint, has no relevance.

But even from a secular standpoint, Herzl wouldn't have wanted people to still consider themselves Zionists.

He would have expected people to become a nation like all other nations and stop apologizing for your situation.

And that's a way that you could say... that the label Zionism in a PR sense of the word is just damaging because you get people defending quasi-religious concepts when you should just be accepting or presenting Eretz Yisrael or Israel as a fact on the ground, not a label that needs to be defended.

Now, I thought this was a really interesting approach.

Why I thought it was relevant directly to our conversation, and I'm sure there's going to be a to and fro regarding the concept of Zionism, but it also made me reflect on Haredism.