Zionism is Not a Dirty word. It is Our Inheritance |
On Israel’s 78th birthday, we must choose: surrender a great idea to those who would distort it, or reclaim it as the living expression of Jewish hope.
There is a word I refuse to stop using. My grandparents’ generation whispered it with trembling reverence. Ben Gurion thundered it from a Tel Aviv platform seventy-eight years ago.
But today, a generation of young Jews has been taught to regard it with embarrassment, or worse, with shame. That word is Zionism. And on this Yom Ha’atzmaut, I want to reclaim all that it was, is, and should be: an ongoing, evolving process aimed at defining the character of the State of Israel and its relationship with the Jewish people worldwide.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks drew a distinction that never left me: the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is a passive expectation that things will work out. Hope, however, is a commitment. The willingness to act in the present for a future you may not live to see, because you believe it is worth creating.
“Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth fighting for — RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS Z”L
“Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth fighting for — RABBI LORD JONATHAN SACKS Z”L
Zionism is Jewish hope made concrete. And it has been systematically stripped of its meaning—of its roots in the Psalms, in two thousand years of daily prayer, in the dreams of refugees who drained swamps and built cities and fought for independence against staggering odds. In its place, critics have installed a caricature and stilted conversations. We must not let them succeed. Zionism is our inheritance—and our obligation.
As President of Jewish National Fund-USA, I have watched forests grow on barren hillsides. I have seen communities in the South of Israel rise from the grief of October 7. And I have seen communities in the North continue to grow and build, even as they continue to be targets of border attacks. That is Zionism in practice. It means building. If these last 78 years, or even these last three years, have taught us anything, it is that we must continue to retain our hope in that future, we must continue to have those conversations, and we must continue to build, not just the physical structures, but our ever-evolving vision for a better and more just future.
So this Yom Ha’atzmaut, I ask something of every Jew who reads these words: reclaim the word. Use it. Teach it to the people in your life who have absorbed a distorted version. Converse with those whose views may differ from yours. In 1948, an outnumbered and often traumatized people looked at the ruins of history and chose to build anyway. That refusal to surrender hope is one of the most profound acts of collective faith in human history.
Seventy-eight years on, the world is again asking whether the idea of Jewish self-determination must be apologized for. My answer is clear: We do not apologize for hope. We do not apologize for survival. We do not apologize for Zionism.
Chag Ha’atzmaut Sameach.