The Outcasts of Zion

Published 22 Aug 2025 by Richard Kuper

The Jewish world has moved a long way from its radical past, captured in this image of the successful New York shirtwaist strike of 1909 primarily involving Jewish women, the largest strike by women workers up to that date. Image: U.S. National Archives, public domain

JVL Introduction

Benjamin Balthaser’s review essay looks at some recent books that focus on the changing relationship of Zionism and liberalism in the USA.

It is rich and nuanced account of how various writers grapple with the tensions and contradiction in this relationship.

“The perversity at the centre of American Jewish liberalism, “ writes Balthaser, “is the fact that American liberalism’s towering achievement, the end of Jim Crow, is precisely what Israel violates.”

And that was well before the Gaza genocide, “the final betrayal of American liberalism”.

The essay covers much ground including a fascinating account of once-mainstream, now largely forgotten, Jewish critics of Israel after its formation and how they were purged from even liberal American Jewish institutions.

It culminated in the post-67 American consensus on Zionism, a “consensus” quite coercively constructed from the top down, with Israel also meddling in diaspora affairs in pursuit of its own self-interest.

That consensus is now falling apart, representing a crisis of both American liberalism and of Zionism; the writers under review have different perspective on how these crises relate as well as on any possible resolution.

This article was originally published by Boston Review, Spring 2025 on Mon 2 Jun 2025. Read the original here.