Zionism and Judaism as Distinct but Related Realities

Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing and should be distinguished clearly.

Judaism is the ancient faith and way of life rooted in the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Torah given through Moses, and the subsequent rabbinic tradition. It is a religious identity.

Zionism is a modern political-national movement that arose in the late nineteenth century. Its central aim is that the Jewish people should return to their ancestral homeland and establish a sovereign nation-state there, with the normal rights and responsibilities of any modern state. Early Zionism, especially in its leadership, was often quite secular. Many of its leading figures were not observant Jews in a traditional sense, and significant portions of the orthodox and Hasidic world initially opposed or at least distanced themselves from Zionism.

In its beginnings, Zionism had notable Gentile support as well, through instruments such as the Balfour Declaration and other diplomatic efforts. It was not, in essence, a religious revival movement but a political-national project that, of course, concerned Jews and their safety, self-determination, and homeland.

There is overlap: many Jews today are Zionists, in the sense that they support the right of the Jewish people to a national home in the land of Israel, and the modern State of Israel self-consciously serves as a Jewish homeland. But the two concepts remain distinct. One can be:

• A religious Jew who is anti-Zionist or non-Zionist (this is especially visible in some ultra-orthodox groups).
• A Zionist who is secular or non-observant religiously.
• A Christian or other Gentile who is a political Zionist without being Jewish at all.

So why are Jewish people so often simply called "Zionists’’? Largely because of ignorance and reductionism. Many critics collapse the Jewish people, the religion of Judaism, the modern State of Israel, and the political program of Zionism into a single undifferentiated target. The term "Zionist’’ then functions as a catch-all label, often with pejorative overtones, for anything related to Jews and Israel.

A careful and informed use of language will keep the categories distinct: Judaism is a religion; the Jewish people are an ethnic-religious people; Zionism is a political-national movement; and the State of Israel is a particular modern polity. Conflating them obscures both history and theology.

questiontransition