Is being “Non Zionist” enough for this progressive Chicago Jewish community?
JVL Introduction
The Congregation at Tsedek Chicago was founded in 2015 and from its creation their core values have included “A Judaism Beyond Nationalism”. While acknowledging the importance of the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition they state “…We are non-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against its indigenous people—an injustice that continues to this day.”
We reprint the questions and answers that Rabbi Rosen published about why the congregation felt it was important to be non zionist and why they are now considering stating that they are antizionist, including the importance of opposing the clamour to conflate antizionism and antisemitism and to reject those pejorative labels on non and antizionist Jews of being “Jews in Name Only”.
This article was originally published by Shalom Rav (Blog). Read the original here.
A Jewish Congregation Considers Affirming Anti-Zionism as a Core Value
At our December 2021 meeting, board of my congregation, Tzedek Chicago, voted unanimously to recommend amending our core values statement to state explicitly that anti-Zionism (rather than “non-Zionism”) should be articulated as one of our core values.
Recognizing the significance of such a step, the board also agreed unanimously that this decision should be processed, discussed and ultimately put to a membership vote. To this end, Tzedek Chicago is holding a series of town hall meetings and will send out an online ballot to members in March.
Here, below, is the text of a Q/A that the Tzedek board drafted and sent out to its members to explain its decision:
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