r/JewsOfConscience • u/AutoModerator • Jun 03 '26
AAJ "Ask A Jew" Wednesday
It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday!
Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.
Please remember to pick an appropriate user-flair in order to participate! Thanks!
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u/Adventurous-Orange72 Jewish Agnostic Jun 03 '26
I'm an anti-zionist jew, agnostic, trans in fl and homeless due to all that lol. Ama
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u/conscience_journey Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
Just sending love. As a former Floridian, I miss it but also know because of its current politics I could never move back.
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u/rako17 Christian Jun 05 '26
Shalom - Greetings.
May I please ask what have been the basics of strong Israeli egalitarians and multiculturalists, like who their most prominent groups, leaders, and size have been?
So for instance, I recall that there was a binational faction that was stronger in the state's foundational period, like Martin Buber represented.
According to Wikipedia, the Pal. Com. Party (1923-1948) merged into Maki (An abbreviation meaning Party Com. Isr.), and had a maximum of 7 Knesset members in its history - the 1950's. It belongs to a coalition called Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) that has 4 Knesset seats. Hadash includes former speaker Avraham Burg.
The article on Hadash links to the article on the anti-occupation movement Standing Together, which says that Standing Together has 7,000 members.
Norman Finkelstein, in one of his interviews in about the last year, seeming to consider the portion of antiwar, egalitarian Israelis as pretty small.
Wishing you the best.
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Jun 04 '26
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Jun 04 '26
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u/Pridelover54 Planning to convert, humanist Jun 03 '26
Do you have any advice for someone who’s been actively planning on converting to Modern Orthodox Judaism?
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u/Current_Mongoose_844 Presently lapsed ba'al teshuva Jun 03 '26
Study, study, study. Or does this pertain to Zionism?
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Jun 03 '26
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u/Lanky-Experience-867 LGBTQ Jew Jun 04 '26
A couple things. What does it mean to “look Jewish?” We come from all over the world, with many traditions and backgrounds. Anyone who would say “you look Jewish” is a fool, and a fool enough to not be listened to. I’m also skeptical that this is a common occurrence. I’m a Jew, I’m anti-Zionist, I even would go so far as to say I “look Jewish” based on United States stereotypes. I’ve never experienced that my viewpoint on Israel has been diminished by others because of that.
Ask the Arab Jews in Israel how they are treated for the way they look. This isn’t a country that is a progressive bastion for Jewish people, it’s the opposite. The ratcheting up of antisemitism, the way Jews are made to feel unsafe in diaspora, Israel’s actions are responsible. There is no solidarity with zionists, because there cannot be. How can a project that is meant to keep us safe cause so much of us to live in fear?
Developing an anti-Zionist view as a Jew takes work. From the moment we’re born we’re fed Zionist propaganda. The biggest lie we’re told is that solidarity with Israel is the only option, because not having a land of our own means the Shoah is doomed to repeat itself. That if we don’t conform, we’ll be swallowed up too. The reality of course is that Israel and indeed the entire Zionist ideology has made it so. We can have no peace because we allow these monsters to force people from their homes and bomb children.
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u/conscience_journey Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
Hi and welcome! Glad you are here.
Can you give an example of what you are talking about with people judging you for your “Jewish” looks? Is this a specific person or lots of people?
Israel and Zionism use the existence of anti-Semitism to justify their existence. But the evils of anti-Semitism can’t be corrected by a violent campaign of colonialism and racism. Israel hasn’t made a safe place Jews. It has made a country permanently at war.
Zionism posits that the solution to anti-Semitism is the creation of a Jewish state. But for more than 75 years we have seen Zionism creates more violence and hatred. It just doesn’t make sense practically or morally.
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u/rako17 Christian Jun 03 '26
Shalom and thank you for this opportunity. I come at this issue from a progressive egalitarian humanitarian viewpoint. I have three related, open-ended questions or issues.
First, Omer Bartov wrote a recent book entitled, "What Went Wrong?," reflecting on the topic of where things went wrong from a humanitarian viewpoint for the nationalist project. Second, Finkelstein had a debate years ago, with the historian Benny Morris in which Finkelstein gave a quote from Morris's book saying that population transfer was "in-built" into the Nationalist project. Third, I recall Finkelstein treating it as an interesting, open question whether the nationalist project could have happened in a peaceful, egalitarian manner. How would you address those questions and would you agree or disagree with those theses?
Thank you, and have a great rest of your week. 🕊️👼 🕎
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Jun 04 '26
Third, I recall Finkelstein treating it as an interesting, open question whether the nationalist project could have happened in a peaceful, egalitarian manner. How would you address those questions and would you agree or disagree with those theses?
What are the aims of the "nationalist project"? I think one could imagine a world where the cultural aims of Zionism to revive Jewish Culture in Palestine in a more robust and less precarious way, and even the goal of Palestine as a place Jews can emigrate to, if under persecuation to, are mostly achieved in the context of a multinational state, That is what the Cultural Zionist and some of the left-wing of the Labor Zionists wanted, but even thogh we can imagine it, it would have been very dificult. But if the Nationalist Project means a Jewish Nation-State, no, that could not have been achieved in a peaceful or egalitarian manner.
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u/rako17 Christian Jun 04 '26
OK, you asked a good question, u/loselyconscious
I meant the "nationalist project" in the broadest sense of the term, with cultural revival in a multinational state being one variation.
I think of "Zionism's" literal, strict, technical, broad definition as simply a modern immigration movement of the community's or people's "return to Zion", with variations of the movement including those that you mentioned.All the best - Peace - Shalom.
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u/946482 Jewish Jun 04 '26
I don’t think Bartov is considered antiZionist because he thinks the Israeli cause may have been at one point pure and righteous, which it certainly never was.
Nationalist Judaism could have never worked morally, anywhere that’s already-populated, for obvious reasons.
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Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
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u/boodyclap Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
So there's 2 kinds of Hebrew, biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew
Biblical ancient Hebrew is what you hear in Tempel/synagogue and is more or less the same language Jews have been speaking since its inception. But in practice has been a dead language for most of modern Jewish history
Now "dead language" in linguistics doesn't mean "never spoken" or "unreadable" it means that it wasnt really spoken in every day life. Most Jewish communities spoke some iteration of Yiddish/ladino or other languages that were mostly mixes of language families around them
Rabbis would likely speak Hebrew fluently like a priest speaking Latin, but in daily life Jews were speaking their Yiddish/ladino/Haketia etc. and at times might speak Hebrew as a bridge between different Jewish communities that might not speak Yiddish/whatever
Modern day Hebrew is a manufactured language which was used as a way to revitalize Jewish community and create an identity within the Jewish communities that were setting Isreal. It has the same lettering as ancient Hebrew but it's really a propaganda tool to try and legitimize isrealis as a culture when in reality it was a manufactured effort as opposed to a natural progression of language
Outside of Isreal no, no one really speaks Hebrew outside of synogauge. The only people who might speak Hebrew are very religious Jews, or isrealis themselves. Yiddish is spoken mostly in Brooklyn hasidic communities but even now is a dying language spoken by very VERY religious people
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Jun 03 '26
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u/Thisisme8719 Arab Jew Jun 03 '26
So the revival of spoken Hebrew is directly tied to zionism
Sort of. Hebrew was already being modernized in the late 18th cent and the changes were real. Like my Hebrew is fine enough to understand what I'm reading, not more than that, and even I can see the difference when I've read some of the Hebrew Haskalah of some of the rabbinic works influenced by Maskilim, and it's not just the updated lexicon. That was literary but it set the foundation for early Zionists because they took the Romantic nationalist influences to the next logical step. Ben-Yehuda himself was influenced by and critical of that milieu because he thought that purely literary languages are deficient, and literature needs to come out of an environment in which the language is actually spoken as the volk's native tongue - typical of 19th cent linguistics pioneered by Humboldt.
But the revival isn't directly connected to the state. Ben-Yehuda didn't really have any political program and he started before Political Zionism. He says in a letter famous for being included in Hertzberg's Zionist Idea that Hebrew revival needs to be done in a place where there are more Hebrews than Gentiles and called for mass immigration, but that's the extent of anything that could be considered political (and thats a stretch). He actually became an Ottoman citizen and urged settlers to do the same.•
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 03 '26
The revival of spoken Hebrew technically began before Zionism and was later adopted and popularized by the Zionist movement. The main figure is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who migrated to Jerusalem before the term Zionism was first coined. The Zionist movement in Palestine then officially adopted Hebrew as their primary language around 1918-1920, and it was codified as an official language of the British Mandate for Palestine beginning in 1920. There were already second generation native Modern Hebrew speakers by the time Israel was established.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/loselyconscious Traditionally Radical Jun 04 '26
Before the rise of political Zionism, in Central Europe there was a very strong interest in reviving Hebrew as a language of secular literary and intellectual culture, including a desire to improve and formalize hebrew instruction in schools (which previously was done in a very haphazard way, especially for lower-class kids). There was a lot of effort in publishing Hebrew language, history books, scientific manuals, popular fiction, but I don't think anyone thought it would become someone's primary spoken language.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 03 '26
It became popular to learn throughout the Jewish world but it was only used as a daily language in Palestine
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u/Lost_Paladin89 Judío Jun 03 '26
Quick correction. The revival of Hebrew as a primary language, in linguistics called your native language, is directly tied to Zionism. Jews have been using medieval Hebrew as the international language for centuries. In 940, a letter asking for help to pay ransom for Jews being held hostage was written in Hebrew. In 1560, a collection of Jewish law was written in Hebrew.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
The lack of notifications seem to be a re-occurring issue in this community, I have no idea why, but me and other people have reported the same issue.
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u/conscience_journey Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
It has to do with the way the automod works and I don’t think there is a workaround, unfortunately. Many comments are flagged for manual approval, which means they are deleted until a moderator checks them. This will not cause a notification since they are automatically sent to the queue. The problem is there isn’t a notification once the comment is approved by moderator.
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u/TurkeyFisher Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
That sucks! Seems like a weird oversight on Reddit's part, but that's nothing new.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 03 '26
I don't believe there are any Jewish day schools that teach only Modern Hebrew and not Biblical/liturgical/religious Hebrew, they are typically taught simultaneously
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 03 '26
So there's 2 kinds of Hebrew, biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew
There are many forms of Hebrew in between Biblical and Modern. Modern Hebrew is based on the Mishnaic, Rabbinic and Medieval Hebrew tradition, not Biblical Hebrew which was already considered ancient 2,000 years ago in the time of the Mishna.
Biblical ancient Hebrew is what you hear in Tempel/synagogue and is more or less the same language Jews have been speaking since its inception.
Only the Torah/Tanakh itself is Biblical Hebrew. But the liturgy and prayer service is mostly Mishnaic and Medieval forms of Hebrew. Hebrew continued to evolve in Jewish communities over thousands of years, it was never stuck in an ancient Biblical form.
Modern day Hebrew is a manufactured language
This is a common misconception online but not true, Modern Hebrew is based on the Medieval/Rabbinic forms of Hebrew used throughout the Jewish world, with influence from the literary Hebrew revival of the Haskalah (particularly in terms of punctuation and simplified grammar). It's mutually intelligible with older forms of Hebrew.
It has the same lettering as ancient Hebrew but it's really a propaganda tool to try and legitimize isrealis as a culture when in reality it was a manufactured effort as opposed to a natural progression of language
It has the same lettering because it's the same language with standardized/simplified grammar and added vocabulary for modern words. A Modern Hebrew speaker can read Biblical Hebrew and understand much of it, but Medieval/Rabbinic Hebrew even more so.
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Jun 03 '26
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u/HuckleberryBoring896 Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
You are correct that most Jewish americans do not speak Hebrew in day to day life. For the most part, the only exception to this would be Israeli Americans who they or their parents came from Israel so they speak hebrew at home.
But Hebrew has not just “historically used religiously,” it is a central part of Judaism. It is believed that G-d spoke the world into existence through Hebrew. In mystical jewish practice, the numerical value of a word in hebrew has great significance. Prayers and blessings are supposed to be said in Hebrew. Almost all religious Jews, anywhere in the world, will learn some Hebrew to study the Torah. It’s even quite common for very secular Jews to go to Hebrew school, often to learn just enough Hebrew to recite a Torah portion at their bar mitzvah.
But while quite similar, this biblical hebrew is a bit different from israeli modern hebrew (what you see on social media). Historically, for the most part, Jews around the world studied Hebrew and used it only for religious purposes, using the language of where they lived for day to day speech (if not exactly the local language a sort of jewish dialect of it: Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, etc). The zionist movement revived spoken Hebrew to make it their national language, one of the many ways they’ve tried to turn judaism into nationalism. Many Hasidim and anti-zionists are quite opposed to this. It’s pretty mainstream Jewish belief that to use Hebrew colloquially desecrates G-d’s language. You’ll often hear people distinguish between loshn hakodesh (Yiddish for biblical hebrew which directly translates as holy/sacred language) and ivrit (the word for israeli modern hebrew).
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u/Lanky-Experience-867 LGBTQ Jew Jun 03 '26
Hebrew is very closely tied to the state of Israel. For thousands of years, it was primarily a religious tradition and literary language. Not one that was spoken in day to day life. Most Jews around the world spoke Yiddish, Ladino, or whatever language was local to them. It wasn’t until the last 150~ or so years that Hebrew was revived by the early zionist movement.
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u/946482 Jewish Jun 04 '26
Typically Hebrew is spoken by Israelis. If you see translated Hebrew social media it originates from Israelis. Btw, I’ve never seen a mistranslation on any of those sites that share Israeli, pro-genocidal comments. It’s real shit, sadly.
Hebrew is also used as a religious tongue universally in our faith. Throughout history there have also been religious, not-necessarily-Zionist, Hebrew poets. Many Orthodox-Ashkenazi Jews will pronounce Hebrew differently depending on whether they are praying, or just speaking. They might distinguish religious uses of the language by calling it “Lashon/Loshon HaKodesh,” “the holy tongue” rather than Hebrew/“Ivrit”. Liberal Ashkenazi Jews, even antiZionist ones, pronounce prayers using a more-or-less Israeli standard pronunciation, which maybe they will stop doing some day
I’m sure that’s more info than you needed tonight
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u/abogmonster Jewish Anti-Zionist Jun 03 '26
I have zero ties to Israel, but learning how to read Hebrew was a prerequisite for getting Bat Mitzvah’d as you need to be able to read your Torah portion unaided, which is fully in Hebrew sans vowels.
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u/starmadeshadows LGBTQ Jew Jun 04 '26
Other people have made much better points than me about historical vs. modern usage of Hebrew, but I'd like to add — Zionists are VERY insistent that their version of Hebrew is the only correct version.
If someone insists that you only pronounce the letter ת with a t sound, and never a th, that is probably a Zionist, or someone who was taught by Zionists and never unpacked their linguistic brainworms. Both can be correct depending on dialect and whether the ת has a certain diacritical mark.
If someone insists that ו is vav and never waw, also probably a Zionist.
If someone rags on the Ashkenazi o (ex. "Yisroel", "Adonoi"), probably a Zionist.
The usage of ע purely as a silent letter is also dialect-dependent, with iirc Yemeni Hebrew retaining the guttural sound it initially had.
Notice how all of these are from Diasporic dialects of Hebrew? That at least is not a coincidence, because if there's one thing Zionism hates it's acknowledgement of the Diaspora's cultural diversity.
Also, tgis is base speculation, I'm just an armchair linguist, but I suspect that Zionists are also deliberately trying to make Hebrew sound more distinct from Arabic, which has the w/th/gh sounds I mentioned, and which is a its closest living linguistic relative. It's like they want to pretend Hebrew isn't a Semitic language while at the same time pretending it's the only Semitic language. Fuckin bizarre.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 05 '26
If someone insists that you only pronounce the letter ת with a t sound, and never a th, that is probably a Zionist
The vast majority of Sephardi and Mizrahi communities have pronounced ת (without dagesh dot) as "t" for centuries, the Israeli pronunciation came from this pronunciation via the Sephardi communities of Palestine. A number of prominent early educators of Modern Hebrew in Palestine were Sephardi, and the Ashkenazi Hebraists like Eliezer Ben-Yehuda adopted local Sephardi pronunciations which became the standard way of teaching Modern Hebrew. The only extant community known to pronounce ת as "th" are the Yemenite Jews (and Ashkenazim historically pronounce ת as "s", which has the same origins as "th").
If someone insists that ו is vav and never waw, also probably a Zionist.
Definitely not, only Yemenite Jews pronounce ו close to "waw", otherwise you'll only see it in academic settings. Linguists believe it was originally pronounced somewhere in between "v" and "w", but it had already shifted to a clear "vav" at least 1,000 years ago in Masoretic Tiberian Hebrew, which became the standard and widespread Hebrew pronunciation scheme across the Jewish diaspora.
The usage of ע purely as a silent letter is also dialect-dependent, with iirc Yemeni Hebrew retaining the guttural sound it initially had.
Guttural ע is more common than just Yemenites, many Mizrahi and Sephardi pronunciations kept the distinction. But both Ashkenazim and Turkish/Mediterranean Sephardim gradually merged א and ע, which is why it's pronounced this way in Israeli Hebrew.
Notice how all of these are from Diasporic dialects of Hebrew? That at least is not a coincidence, because if there's one thing Zionism hates it's acknowledgement of the Diaspora's cultural diversity.
The present day Israeli Hebrew accent originated from diaspora accents as spoken by Jews who learned Hebrew in their diaspora communities (including Palestine), so it can even be understood as a type of diaspora accent.
I'm just an armchair linguist, but I suspect that Zionists are also deliberately trying to make Hebrew sound more distinct from Arabic, which has the w/th/gh sounds I mentioned, and which is a its closest living linguistic relative. It's like they want to pretend Hebrew isn't a Semitic language while at the same time pretending it's the only Semitic language. Fuckin bizarre.
These pronunciations predate Zionism and all come from existing diaspora accents (perhaps except for ר), it comes from the way Jews were already pronouncing Hebrew. Various Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi pronunciations never stopped being used for liturgical purposes, and many Modern Hebrew speakers intentionally switch pronunciations for religious Hebrew.
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u/starmadeshadows LGBTQ Jew Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Note that I said "if someone insists that is the ONLY WAY to pronounce it". I never said any of those were incorrect.
Because Zionists absolutely will insist their way is the only way. I had it hammered into my head that There Is No W Or Th In Hebrew Ever, and only learned about the dialects of diaspora after I deconstructed from Zionism.
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u/specialistsets Non-denominational Jun 08 '26
My point is that this predates Zionism by over a thousand years, "vav" is the pronunciation that became standard throughout the Jewish world and from there Greek, Latin and later English transliterations. "waw" is completely legitimate but also extremely rare, most Jews simply haven't heard of it.
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u/starmadeshadows LGBTQ Jew Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
If someone is deliberately saying to you, who knows "waw" is a correct pronunciation, "NUH UH, YOU'RE STUPID, MY WAY IS ONLY WAY" when confronted with actual valid alternate pronunciations, then they are probably a Zionist. If they accept it as a valid form of Hebrew, then they are at least willing to see reason linguistically.
All hardline Hebrew gatekeepers I have met and seen in the wild have been Zionists. That's all I'm saying here.
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u/ScottTheMonster Atheist Jun 03 '26
Do Jews celebrate Halloween?