Anti-Zionism Has No Legitimacy in Reform Judaism
In recent times, even within the Reform Jewish movement, a fortunately very small fringe of non-Zionist or openly anti-Zionist Jews has become more vocal. This is a phenomenon that must be named clearly, without ambiguity and without fear: it is a position incompatible not only with the historical, spiritual, and collective trajectory of contemporary Judaism, but also with belonging to Reform Judaism.
Reform Judaism today is a Zionist movement because Judaism, in its living and responsible form, cannot be separated from its bond with the Jewish people, with its history, with its land, and with the State of Israel. Zionism is not a marginal political current and it is not a decorative element of Jewish identity. It is the modern expression of the right of the Jewish people to live as a historical, free, sovereign, and responsible subject in its own land.
For this reason, Zionism is an integral part of Jewish identity. It is also an integral part of the identity of the Reform movement, as its positive and necessary evolution. If Reform Judaism has truly managed to move beyond a purely diasporic, religious, and privatized vision of Jewish identity, and has affirmed that Judaism is not only individual faith, liturgy, ethics, or memory, but also belonging to a people, then a people has a language, a history, a destiny, a collective responsibility, and a bond with a land.
Zionism represents precisely this passage: the return of the Jews to history as protagonists, not merely as a minority........
