An Open Letter to the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation

The JRC Must Denounce Zionism

To my friends and kin at the JRC:

Over the past many months, I have refused to go to services at the temple I belong to and quite love, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation. The main catalyst for this was our Rabbi, Rachel Weiss, consistently placing Israeli lives and suffering over that of the Palestinians — whose plight was obviously far worse — during sermons, and an email I received from the Rabbi in which she described herself as a so-called “Progressive Zionist”.

This is an oxymoron, and it’s ahistorical. One cannot be progressive and a Zionist at the same time, because Zionism is an ethnonationalist ideology that seeks to create a state in which Jews are superior to all others, and progressives believe in the opposite of that. We have seen this in action in the existence of Israel, since its founding in 1948 (over the objections by the Palestinians who were already living there) through the forced migration and/or murder of 700,000 people in the Nakba. We have seen this through the unequal treatment of Palestinians (not “Arabs”, a term people like to use to obfuscate the issue, specifically Palestinians; Palestinians are not the West Asian people who have political power in Israel) in Israel and in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. And we can even read this in original writings of Zionist leaders in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

In this open letter to my congregation, I hope to show that this is the case, utilizing sources from the original creators of Zionism (and thus the progenitors of the only version of Zionism that exists, the one currently committing a genocide), as well as words from Israeli leaders. I also wish to go into how ethnostates are always bad, and how comparisons to the Nazis are apt and reasonable, and how that should make good people uncomfortable. The Zionist project has never been about safety of Jews, and it is ahistorical to pretend otherwise.

It is my hope that our supposedly progressive institution can take a real stand against this conflict, specifically by taking a stand against Zionism. Those in the congregation who identify as Zionists will hopefully do some self-reflection about how they have been propagandized to hate Palestinians and to think that an ethnostate is a good idea. In my view, we suffered a horrible atrocity at the hands of the Nazis and Nazi Germany, an ethnostate looking to destroy all those who didn’t fit their specific category of righteous human, and then we turned around and went “We should create an ethnostate and destroy all those who don’t fit into our specific category of righteous human,” without seeing any irony in that.

— —

Theodor Herzl was one of the main founders of Zionism. He is specifically listed in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and was one of the main people pushing to form a Jewish State.

He was also an antisemite who hated those who did not agree with his desire to form said state.

In his 1897 article entitled “Mauschel” (A derogatory term akin to the slur “kike”), he declares that a “Mauschel” is an anti-Zionist. He says that they are “a distortion of human character, something unspeakably base and repulsive. Where the Jew feels pain or pride, Mauschel has only abject fear or a sneer on his face.”

“In hard times,” he continues, “the Jew straightens himself up, while Mauschel, on the other hand, debases himself even more.”

He is speaking of his own kin here. Jews. Us. People who simply didn’t agree with his political ideals and aspirations. And using a slur to do so. His goal was never to provide safety for the Jewish people.

His right-hand man at the time, Max Nordau, also began as an antisemite, and published multiple works in the 1890s (Conventional Lies of Our Character and Paradoxes) in which he speaks of Jews as “circumcised & diseased” (Foster 2024). Much later he joined the Zionist movement, and his feelings apparently changed dramatically. He stated, in an interview with a French antisemitic newspaper entitled Libre Parole that “‘I am a nationalist myself, but a Jewish nationalist. When a race has a character as distinctive, as recognizable as mine, it cannot and need not blend in with other peoples. It must become a nation again. There is no question of religion here, only of race…Meussieur Drumont, a French nationalist, says: France belongs to the French! And my nationalism shouts: Palestine belongs to the Jews!” (Veszprémy 2024).

This is particularly telling, as he became the second most popular Zionist of the time. He was a nationalist. An ethnonationalist, one that began as a strict antisemite, and eventually embraced Zionism and believed Jews were superior to all other ethnicities and wished to form an ethnostate in Palestine. Zionism, therefore, has always attracted people who love ethnonationalism and not the Jewish people.

Any progressive, modern person could not possibly believe that the creation of an ethnostate is a good thing. And yet I hear people nowadays arguing constantly for a “safe Jewish state,” without thinking much harder about what that might entail.

I would like everyone who has said at one point in their lives that a “Jewish State” was the goal to think about what that actually means.

If you had your druthers and a land where no one needed to be forcibly migrated, where you could wave a magic wand and create the state you wished, what would a “Jewish State” look like?

I have studied politics and been involved in politics for some time. In my estimation, there are two ways that a “Jewish state” could be created and enforced.

Since Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity, one can either:

1. Make Judaism the national religion of the state. Even with “Freedom of Conscience” laws, this necessarily “others” everyone who isn’t a Jew. If you were a Christian or a Muslim in this state, the state would not consider you as important as the Jewish people, national events would happen that would be specifically Jewish, etc. This, I hope I don’t have to explain, is not good. It would be like if Trump decided to make Christianity the national religion of the USA. We, as progressives, would be against that. I certainly hope.

2. Be rigorously ethnonationalist in your immigration laws. Zionist ethnonationalism and eugenicist beliefs operated in Palestine well before 1948. Specifically, they looked at poor Jewish refugees from various other countries (like Russia due to the pogroms) as a “burden on the [Zionist] executive committee.” (Foster 2026). In the book “An Unpromising Land, Jewish Migration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century” by Gur Alroey, it says “Zionist historiography…stressed the importance of Zionist ideology in this wave of migration, seeing it as the chief motivation. The key criterion according to these historians was quality, no quantity.” The important part here is that the Zionist project was never about taking care of Jews who needed somewhere safe, but instead about creating a Jewish state with Jews as the superior race. This option should also be horrific to those who believe themselves progressive people.

To quote Zachary Foster, a historian of Palestine and PhD scholar, in his article “The eugenist history of the Zionist movement”, “By the early 1900s, an office was established in Jaffa to screen Jews hoping to settle in Palestine. Menachem Sheinkin and Arthur Ruppin reviewed application letters sent from prospective migrants and told 61% of them not to come, primarily because they were too impoverished.”

In December 1919, the head of the Zionist movement at the time, Chaim Weizmann, said that “Even 1% that’s bad will spoil a great many good people,” speaking of the impoverished Jewish refugees from Ukraine.

Is this saving Jews?

As far as ethnonationalism goes, Israeli immigration policies strongly favor Jewish people, and makes it incredibly difficult for those of non-Jewish descent to immigrate there. One can argue that that is the point of a Jewish State, but that is my point: We shouldn’t do this.

Here in the United States, progressives recognize that draconian immigration policy which prevents certain people from arriving, preferring white immigrants over brown, is evil. But for some reason, even people I know and love seem to have a blind spot for when the exact same thing happens in Israel.

We as modern Jews must decide whether we wish to be a progressive people or one that still believes in the formation of ethnostates and rigorous ethnonationalism. And as far as religion goes, you are free to be a Jew in Israel, but The Pew Research Center lists Israel as one of the states with High restrictions on practicing of other religions.

We have seen this in action as the IDF and Israeli Police constantly attack the al-Aqsa Mosque in Old Jerusalem. Freedom of religion for me, but not for thee, it seems.

So is it worth it to create such a state? Is it worth it to maintain one? Especially as they commit horrific atrocities and speak openly about the wish to destroy Palestinians.

My goal, and the goal of anti-Zionists across the world, would be to create a single, pluralist state in which all peoples can live peacefully with equal rights under the law. The “single-state” solution. If you believe in such a thing, you’re not a Zionist.

Oh, yeah, I guess I should talk about what Israeli leaders have said since October 7th and before. It’s important to listen to what they say when they’re speaking Hebrew and not the propaganda and lies they spew in English for the Western population. Israeli leaders and spokespeople are known for lying, but they tend to say what they really feel in Hebrew.

These quotes are all taken from Al-Haq, an independent human rights organization based in the West Bank.

Benjamin Netanyahu, an obviously monstrous man, invoked Amalek from the bible on October 28th, 2023, saying “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” Amalek is a nation in the Book of Samuel. The passage states that we must smite Amalek and completely destroy them. Destroy everything, including babies, property, animals, everything. This was not a slip of the tongue.

Bezalel Smotrich, January 2, 2023, said, well before October 7th, “Gaza is an incubator of two million people, who get up every morning and want to destroy, rape and kill us all…Again, like I said, a country like Israel won’t have two million people who want to destroy it, that are four kilometres away.” This is furthering the idea that there are no innocent Palestinians, including children, and this was before the attack in October.

Avi Dichter, Minister of Agriculture, November 11 2023, ““[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”. Another Nakba? Surely one can’t say that with a straight face and think it’s reasonable, but here they are, doing exactly that.

Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, on October 7th, 2023, “Now we all have one common goal — erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.” This is utilizing the attack on October 7th as an excuse to commit a genocide and openly admitting the intent to do so.

Moshe Feiglin, October 12, 2023, “It is not Hamas that should be eliminated. Gaza should be razed and Israel’s rule should be restored to the place. This is our country.” Yet again, openly calling for genocide and the destruction of the people of Gaza.

Israeli Analyst Eliyahu Yossian, December 30, 2023, “Israel should level the ground in Gaza, kill as many as possible & spare no one. ‘the woman is an enemy, the baby is an enemy… the pregnant woman is an enemy.’”

I could go on, the list is long and always growing. All of these genocidal statements, from either leaders or public figures in Israel, specifically speaking of murdering civilians cannot be ignored. This isn’t a fringe view in the state of Israel, it is the main one. The anti-war side is a small minority.

In 2023, a poll of a representative group of Jewish Israelis conducted by Professor Tamir Sorek of Pennsylvania State University and published in Ha’aretz found that 82% of Israeli Jews supported expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. The number may have changed since then, but the fact that it was at that amount at all, ever, is horrific!

The state itself is a Nazi state, and it cannot be ignored. And my comparison to Naziism isn’t out of nowhere, it accurately matches what is going on. The dehumanization of Palestinians, the propaganda and lies about the actions of the Israeli military, the consistent disgusting nationalism that causes people to believe they have a right to take over another land, kill all the people, bulldoze it, and build condos for rich Jews. All of this is the same ideology that the Nazis had; they’re just targeting a different group.

And I see so many of my fellow Jews sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending that Israel has never targeted civilians directly. But that is obviously untrue! There are no more hospitals in Gaza, the cities are gone, they’ve murdered aid workers and journalists. The number of children they’ve killed has far surpassed the number of Israelis that Hamas has ever killed.

It is ridiculous, dangerous, willful ignorance to ignore this and pretend it’s not real. And all I can guess is that they’re…embarrassed to have been propagandized? Or they’re so propagandized that they believe what Israel has been saying: That all Palestinians deserve to die in favor of the Zionist project. And do we really want to be sitting next to people who believe such horrific things during worship?

You can be mad about the attack on October 7th, but you can’t ignore the history of Israel that brought it about. You can’t ignore the decades of oppression and occupation endured by the Palestinian people, and you can’t ignore that that oppression comes directly from the Zionist ideology. Every human rights organization across the world has called Israel an apartheid state, and unless you want to pretend that all human rights organizations are somehow antisemites, you must understand the actual truth of the matter.

To me, calling oneself a “Progressive Zionist” is like saying you’re a “Progressive Nazi”. The latter would be a ridiculous statement no matter who said it, and you sound just as ridiculous saying the former. Frankly, you sound ignorant and foolish. The history of Zionism has always been ethnonationalist, the same ideology of the Nazis, from the original writings of the shitty men who created it in the first place, to the Zionism currently committing a genocide.

And before you get on my case about whether it’s a genocide or not, let’s go over the definition of genocide based on the Genocide Convention of 1948 from the UN:

“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

All of these have been done by Israel besides the 5th, and I have shown the intent to destroy in the above quotes. Certain other actions prove this, too. For example, telling people to evacuate and attacking the evacuees on the road as they leave, blowing up the specific refugee camps they were told to go to, or handing out bread but firing at the people coming to try and get it. The state of Israel is:

1. Intentionally killing members of the group by dropping massive bombs on people’s homes and refugee tents and shooting babies in the face.

2. Causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of the group through the same actions and displacement from their homes and families.

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. They are doing this by starving them, destroying hospitals, dropping bombs, etc.

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group by destroying hospitals, killing aid workers, intentionally preventing aid and food from reaching potential mothers, etc.

These facts make it a genocide. There is no argument against it unless you are a sympathizer with the actions above.

The only reasons one might make the argument it isn’t a genocide is to either 1) assuage their own guilt for being a Zionist and desperately grasp at any hope that maybe their ideology isn’t evil to the core, or 2) keep the Zionist project going because they believe that the actions of Israel are correct, and that Palestinians deserve to be killed. The latter cannot be accepted in our society, nor should it be accepted in our congregation.

— —

The final thing I wish to talk about before my conclusion is the increase in antisemitism across the world. It seems obvious to me that antisemitism is on the rise due to the actions of Israel.

Let me give you an example. If you were a young Palestinian child and you watch a bunch of soldiers murder your whole family and blow your arm off all while waving the most famous symbol of Judaism, the Star of David, around, what would you think? If you had never met any Jews ever, and these were the only ones who you know, of course you would hate the Jews.

This is not isolated to Palestinians, though. One cannot pretend that everyone knows a bunch of Jews. All they see is Israel waving that flag around and murdering children. All they know is that the Jews (ie. the Israelis) are genocidal freaks. And Israel’s insistence that any criticism of the state or of Zionism is an attack on the Jewish people further ties us to the genocide. It calls us, directly, fundamentally genocidal people.

Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing, and Israel and its supporters insist that it is, and that makes people hate us.

And the idea of continuing to support the existence of such a state, which has only caused horrible conflicts and destabilized the entire region throughout its entire existence, and is increasing hatred for our people who have already faced so much persecution over the years, is ridiculous and short-sighted. And accepting those who support such a state in our community and not taking a direct stand against it is cowardly and dangerous.

— —

No matter what propagandists say, Zionism is not inherently tied to Judaism. There have been anti-Zionists since Zionism started being talked about. From Zachary Foster’s article, “The forgotten history of Jewish anti-Zionism”, “In Eastern Europe, the most popular Jewish political party was the anti-Zionist Bund, founded in 1897… The Bundists had bitter memories of Herzl’s attempt to partner with the Russian Empire’s most notorious antisemites, such as Minister of the Interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, and the Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte. The latter even told Herzl that he advised Tsar Alexander III he would have had no objection to ‘drowning our six or seven million Jews in the Black Sea.’ The Bundists were very popular and they despised the Zionists.”

In the 1930s, most American Jews were anti-Zionist. From the same article, “The Reform movement made clear its institutional rejection of Zionism in its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform and in an 1898 declaration, since ‘the mission of Judaism is spiritual, not political.’ After World War I, 299 prominent US Jews wrote an open letter protesting ‘the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State.’”

In Western Europe prior to the Great War, Jewish leaders were avowed anti-Zionists. After WWI, Ashkenazi Jews sought to convince the British, who had been busily supporting the Zionists for their own purposes (most of which were antisemitic; the British didn’t want Jews in their country anymore, and many British leaders believed in the nonsense antisemitic idea of “world Jewry”), to recognize the anti-Zionist rabbinical authorities in Palestine, but Zionist operatives assassinated their spokesperson (Foster 2024)!

All over the world during that time and even after WWII there were large numbers of Jewish anti-Zionists, many seeing the obvious problems of forming an ethnostate in response to being killed by people who tried to form an ethnostate. It was obviously wrong.

— —

So.

Are we a progressive institution if we allow Zionists, believers in the forced creation of an ethnostate through the murder and displacement of thousands of innocent people, to stay? At a certain point, having a big tent that lets everyone in means “Nazis welcome!” At a certain point we must take a real stand and stop being so cowardly. Do we really believe in a peaceful future where everyone can live in harmony, or do we think that Palestinians deserve to die for the creation of our supposed “safe state”?

Those are our choices. And I for one believe in the former. And if you do, too, stop calling yourself a Zionist. It’s not worth it to hold onto that word, since it has never meant anything other than the belief in a violent ethnostate and the expulsion of those deemed undesirable from said state. Are we going to be like the Nazis and believe in a state where we are better than everyone else, or are we going to trust our hearts and know that that belief is evil?

I want to believe that our organization really is progressive, really does support goodness and joy and Judaism as a hopeful religion, but I cannot support it if we are so “big tent” that we let such a violent, despicable ideology run rampant within our congregation. If we can’t take a stand against something so obviously wrong, especially after the full understanding of where it came from and those who created it, then what are we even doing?

We are lying is what we’re doing. And personally, I always learned that lying was wrong.

With love,

Zoya Evesque Davis

Citations:

Foster, Zachary. “A Brief History of Zionist Anti-Semitism.” Palestine Nexus, December 28, 2024. https://palestinenexus.com/articles/brief-history-zionist-antisemitism.

Foster, Z. (2026, February 17). The eugenist history of the Zionist movement. Palestine Nexus. https://palestinenexus.com/articles/eugenicism

Theodore Herzl. Theodore Herzl, Mauschel (1897). https://www.panarchy.org/palestine/mauschel.html

Alroey, G. (2020). An unpromising land: Jewish migration to Palestine in the early twentieth century. Stanford University Press.

Veszprémy, L. B. (2024, January 9). Max Nordau: A scion of Budapest who dreamt of a “muscular Jewry.” Hungarian Conservative. https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/culture_society/max-nordau-a-scion-of-budapest-who-dreamt-of-a-muscular-jewry/

A warm welcome for some: Israel embraces immigration of Jewish diaspora, sharply restricts labor migrants and asylum seekers. (2020, June 5) https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/israel-law-of-return-asylum-labor-migration

Global restrictions on Religion II 1 September 2012 Rising tide of. (2012). https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2012/09/RisingTideofRestrictions-fullreport.pdf

Al-Haq. Statements by Israeli officials, soldiers and civil society on genocide. https://www.alhaq.org/cached_uploads/download/2024/01/10/official-translation-of-statements-informal-translations-final-list-1704917626.pdf

Foster, Z. (2025, November 29). The forgotten history of jewish anti-zionism. Palestine Nexus. https://palestinenexus.com/articles/jewish-antizionism?rq=zionism

Hazkani, S., & Sorek, T. (2025, May 28). Yes to transfer: 82% of Jewish Israelis back expelling Gazans. Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-magazine/.premium/yes-to-transfer-82-of-jewish-israelis-back-expelling-gazans/00000197-12a4-df22-a9d7-9ef6af930000

United Nations. Definitions of genocide and related crimes. United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition