Nadine Epstein recently argued that Jews should retire the word Zionism because it has become too divisive, too distorted, and too burdened to remain useful. That argument is not brave. It is a polished form of Jewish retreat. At a moment when Jewish legitimacy is under organized assault, the answer is not to abandon the language of Jewish survival, but to defend it with greater clarity and greater nerve. This is the sort of argument institutions make when they can no longer shape Jewish life through clarity or courage and try instead to make themselves relevant by staging surrender as sophistication.

Nadine Epstein’s essay in Moment, “The Word Zionism Is Dead,” is not an act of insight; it’s an act of cowardice. She is not a naive student exploring concepts too vast for her; as the editor of a Jewish publication, she has a duty to uphold moral and historical clarity. To suggest, in this moment, that Jews should retire the word Zionism is not just an analytical mistake. It’s a failure of judgment from someone who should understand what is truly at stake.

Not personal cowardice, which one can pity. Institutional cowardice, which is far uglier. The cowardice of a Jewish publication looking at the organized war against Jewish legitimacy and deciding that the problem is not the hatred directed at the word Zionism, but the word itself. The cowardice of people so exhausted by the burden of defending Jewish nationhood that they now mistake retreat for sophistication. The cowardice of surrender in a blazer.

Let us be honest about what this essay really is. It is not a serious attempt to clarify Jewish language. It is a plea for permission to abandon it. It is the old exilic reflex in its latest polished form: if a word that names Jewish dignity has become costly, controversial, or difficult to defend, perhaps we should stop using it. Perhaps we should soften ourselves. Rename ourselves. Reduce ourselves. Become less offensive to those who already despise our strength. This is not wisdom. It is appeasement dressed up as nuance.

And what makes it especially contemptible is that it comes at precisely the moment when Jewish clarity is most needed. Jews are not living through an age of excessive confidence. We are living through an age in which Jewish legitimacy is under assault in the streets, on campuses, in media, in elite institutions, and in the grammar of international morality itself. Zionism is not being misunderstood in good faith. It is being targeted because it names the one thing the enemies of the Jews cannot tolerate: the end of Jewish helplessness. It means the Jew is no longer merely a tolerated minority, a wandering conscience, a decorative victim, a body for exile, conversion, pity, or slaughter. It means the Jew returned to history as a people with memory, power, borders, and a home. That is why they hate the word. They do not hate it because it is confusing. They hate it........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)