A Framework for the Future: Rethinking Zionism |
In this disruptive moment, where one encounters anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in multiple spaces, there is a counter movement in play to reframe both the meaning and message of Zionism and to build the case for Israel.
Zionism is currently being re-articulated, taught, and debated, as part of an effort to communicate to younger Jews and non-Jews a new way to understand and think about this concept. Today there is a conscious effort to transform Zionism as only a slogan, framing it as lived literacy, where history, peoplehood and ethics are all integrated into presentations concerning its origins, meaning, and use.
Complexity has replaced past slogans associated with the Zionist message. In this environment, the intention is encouraging young people to internalize meaning through experience, not abstraction. The focus now is to teach Zionism as something to interpret, not inherit blindly. Educational theory emphasizes site-based learning and historical exploration tied to geography, texts, and personal interviews and experiences.
While a consensus definition of the term remains elusive today, we are rediscovering several explanatory ideas:
Zionism as Jewish Self-Determination
Many educators describe this concept as a movement affirming the Jewish right to national self-determination in their historic homeland—parallel to other national movements.
Zionism as Jewish Peoplehood, Not Only Statehood
This focus places special emphasis on the ideas of shared culture, history, and responsibility among Jews worldwide—not only political sovereignty.
Zionism as an Ongoing Project (Not Frozen on 1948)
Institutions are shifting their messages that were designed to defend the Jewish State, focusing now on teaching Zionism as a civilizational narrative.
One can identify several educational initiatives that are seeking to incorporate this specific focus:
Informal, youth-movement-style engagement blending identity, community responsibility, and experiential learning.
Educational theory reminds us that younger audiences respond better to dialogical Zionism, which involve conversations and moral wrestling with the term and its historical usage than declarative Zionism, with its focus on moral assertions.
A key shift here involves presenting the ideas around Zionism as unfinished and pluralistic, and not monolithic. An acknowledgement that some of the issues associated with Zionism and Zionist practice are generating difficult and complex questions that ought not to be avoided but rather require open conversations.
How are these educational concepts being implemented? Posted below are a few operational models:
A fellowship created by Nefesh B’Nefesh trains North American educators to teach Zionism through immersive study, mentorship, and a new curriculum aimed at “nuanced, intellectually honest conversations about Israel.” The initiative already has reached 13,700 participants in 2025, with educational materials being made available to students in Israel and North America.
Jewish summer camps are investing heavily in Israel education. In 2025 this new effort at Zionist engagement and education engaged 34,300 campers and 6,000 staff across 70 camps.
Israel’s Education Ministry has launched a national plan (“Roots”) expanding Jewish and Zionist studies, increasing funding, and experiential learning tied to Jewish history and one’s personal identity.
Even within youth movements, we are identifying new delivery models. Programs, including Machon L’Madrichei Chutz La’Aretz, gather young leaders from global Zionist youth movements to build commitment to Jewish peoplehood and Israel and prepare them to act as “agents of change” in their respective communities.
Zionism in the Public Square:
Within the broader society, Zionism is being contested in education, identity politics, and human-rights language. Even as commentators have warned that anti-Israel activism is entering mainstream cultural spaces, sometimes blurring into antisemitic tropes or double standards, some college campuses have introduced mandatory antisemitism training programs.
The current focus on training educators is designed to help students navigate complex historical, ideological, and contemporary questions. In this unsettling climate, there is also a renewed focus on understanding how political rhetoric functions, giving students the tools to constructively respond and thoughtfully engage in managing challenging educational settings.
New Learning Options: Some Theoretical Principles
Identity-education initiatives prioritize history, language, and peoplehood before geopolitics, allowing for a broader, more complex assessment of what constitutes a people’s national story. Educational theory argues that young people internalize meaning through experience, not abstraction.
Educators are suggesting, as well, that today younger audiences distrust ideology but engage with narrative and lived experience to understand how different peoples embrace their political identity, engage with the idea of nation building, and create mythologies about what they represent. Academic conflict-resolution work likewise shows that structured dialogue sessions can achieve high levels of agreement across ideological and historical divisions among civil-society participants when discussions are facilitated.
New efforts are underway by some Jewish studies, political science, and history programs to introduce students to the historical development of Zionism, an introduction into Zionist thought and an analysis of the Zionist idea as part of the broader study of nationalism and peoplehood studies.
As with other forms of nationalism, one finds an increasing focus on Zionism and Israel studies built around culture, history, and nation-building, with a growing disconnect involving an attachment to a particular government or set of political personalities or ideas.
We must constantly remind ourselves that criticism of Israel is legitimate, however, denying Jewish collective rights must be rejected.
Building a New Zionist Learning Platform:
Managing the discourse around Zionism and Israel today requires a set of new guidelines and learning options.
‘What is a people, and do peoples have rights to self-determination?
How did Jews understand themselves historically—as religion, nation, or civilization?
What problems was Zionism trying to solve in the 19th–20th centuries?
What responsibilities follow from Jewish sovereignty today?
This five-part framework for managing political discourse around Zionism and Israel would seem to be particularly beneficial:
Managing disputes over definitions (e.g., whether anti-Zionism overlaps with antisemitism), to minimize conflict involving working definitions.
Beginning conversations by defining Zionism historically and acknowledging multiple interpretations.
Introducing educational programs with an emphasis on personal narratives and shared peoplehood rather than defensive geopolitics.
Focusing on identity-based storytelling reduces ideological polarization.
Creating dialogue-driven approaches that seek common ground without erasing disagreement. Such an avenue of communication allows for critique while rejecting delegitimization.
The Educational Shift: The Reframing of Conversations
The most effective contemporary approach does not try to “win the argument about Zionism.” It shifts the focus instead on framing an understanding of Jewish history, identity, and national experience so that Zionism becomes intelligible again—whether one ultimately embraces or critiques it.
How we introduce the conversation, debate, or educational project becomes the essential strategy when embracing Zionism.