The anti-Zionist Jews who do not want to live in Israel

Jewish nationalism, or Zionism, is on the rise in the United States. This isn't just news, because strong tensions have been observed for some time between some Jewish communities and a growing part of American society. The wars have aggravated a conflict between Zionist Jews, traditional anti-Zionists, and post-Zionists. And the contradictionistsIt looks like a salad or the famous Monty Python movie Life of Brian.

The most prominent example of a contradictionist (counter-Zionist in English, and tsioni negdi (in Hebrew) is Rabbi Shaul Magid, 67, a professor of modern Judaism at Harvard. His doctrine seems encapsulated in the title of his latest book, The necessity of exile [The Necessity of Exile]. Unlike Zionism, Magid believes that exile has been and continues to be positive for Jews, and that only in the Diaspora, and not in Israel, exists the environment that makes the genuine ethic of Judaism possible.

Magid defines counter-Zionism as an alternative movement that rejects the Zionist model based on a central state (Israel) and seeks to replace it with the diaspora, with a distinctive ethical framework forged over millennia of exile. Logically, in the scenario advocated by counter-Zionists, Israel does not have a central role for Jews, and it is even possible that it will have no role at all.

Harvard University has just appointed him professor of modern Judaism for the next five years at the renowned School or Faculty of Theology. The appointment has raised considerable controversy in the Jewish community in the United States and Israel, the vast majority of which is Zionist and cannot understand contemporary Judaism without the centrality of Israel.

It should not be forgotten that Harvard University is in the midst of a direct confrontation with President Donald Trump regarding the definition of anti-Semitism, a very delicate issue for Israel and for the Jewish community in the United States and around the world.

In this context, Harvard has appointed a commission to investigate the presence of antisemitism at the prestigious university after Jewish institutions and personalities have said that the academic authorities of this and other universities in the United States are not defending the Jewish community as they should, especially in the wake of the attack on January 2.

Many Zionists believe that American universities are justifying antisemitism and the actions of the community. woke, a movement that rejects the globally-spreading definition of antisemitism and limits criticism of the Zionist state and its policies toward Palestinians, which have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in the Gaza Strip, which the movement considers "genocide."

Magid grew up in New York in a secular environment and later immigrated to Israel and studied with ultra-Orthodox rabbis in different outgoing from Jerusalem, until he was ordained a rabbi in 1984. At one point, he experienced a crisis with the ultra-Orthodox and returned to the United States, where he began a hectic academic career, publishing eight books and hundreds of articles.

For counter-Zionists like Magid, Judaism only reaches its full potential in the Diaspora. Israel, on the other hand, is a cultural and political factory characterized by erasing what does not interest it, and embodies Jewish supremacy and unjust military control of the Palestinians. For Magid, Zionism is a negative and failed movement that must be quickly replaced by the Diaspora.