WHAT IS DIASPORISM?
Diasporism is a concept or ideology developed by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, founding director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ). It is growing in popularity among antizionist Jews and draws on the Bundist principle of doykeit, meaning “hereness.”
Diasporists reject Zionism as a Jewish political movement and national project and instead believe Jews should pursue the Diaspora as home.
I believe Diasporism is an incoherent ideology, whether analyzed through a political, historical, or religious lens.
FIRST, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Diaspora (noun)
(a) the Jews living outside of Israel; (b) the settling of scattered communities of Jews outside ancient Palestine after the Babylonian exile; (c) the area outside ancient Palestine settled by Jews
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Diasporists name themselves after the Jewish Diaspora, a term that inherently acknowledges that Jews in the Diaspora are outside of their national homeland.
The etymology of Diaspora traces back to the Hebrew word גלות (galut), describing the concept of the Jewish perception of the “condition and feelings of a nation uprooted from its homeland.” Galut not only describes the physical dispersion of the Jewish people, but also the negative emotions associated with it. It’s a term that doesn’t fit neatly into Western constructs.
When the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, was translated into Greek, the Greeks used the term διασπείρω (diaspeirō), meaning “I scatter, I spread about,” in place of galut.
POLITICAL INCOHERENCE
Diasporism, in theory, draws on the Jewish Labor Bund, but the anti-Zionism of the Bund and the antizionism of today are two different ideologies entirely.
- Pre-1948 Jewish anti-Zionism emerged within a specific political context, in which Jews in Europe debated the merits of assimilation, integration, and sovereignty. Pre-1948 Jewish anti-Zionists opposed the establishment of a non-existing state, not the destruction or dissolution of an existing one. Importantly, the Bund acknowledged the historical, cultural, and religious connection between Jews and the Land of Israel. However, they argued that Zionism was an unattainable or escapist idea. Obviously, they were wrong, as the State of Israel now exists.
- Today’s antizionism calls for the destruction of an already existing state, with its 10 million citizens. It relies heavily on Soviet era propaganda that projected age-old antisemitic tropes, conspiracies, and stereotypes onto the State of Israel.
"Where Zionism says go home, Diasporism says we make home where we are."
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
If Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz were still alive, I’d ask her...
- Did the Sephardic Jews who settled in Ottoman Palestine after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition not try, for 1,500 years, to make a home in Spain?
- Did the Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Ottoman Palestine in the mid-to-late 19th century after fleeing the pogroms ravaging the Russian Empire not try, for nearly 1,000 years, to make a home in Eastern Europe?
- Did the Jews who settled in British Palestine after fleeing the Nazis not try, for 2,000 years, to make a home in Europe?
- Did the Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews who settled in the State of Israel after fleeing retaliatory pogroms not try, for over 2,000 years, to make a home in the Middle East and North Africa?
HISTORICAL INCOHERENCE
In the decades preceding the Holocaust, the Jewish political climate in Europe was characterized by a fierce debate between the Bundists and the Zionists. The Bundists believed that Jewish survival was dependent on the ability of Jews to integrate as full members of the societies in which they lived. The Zionists, on the other hand, believed that Jewish safety and Jewish sovereignty went hand in hand.
The Holocaust squashed this debate. After all, Hitler had risen to power in Germany, where Jews enjoyed the highest degree of integration in all of Europe, so much so that Eastern European Jews referred to German Jews as “more German than the Germans.” Most Bundists, as most Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Indeed, after the Holocaust, the surviving members of the Bund formally changed their stance on Jewish immigration to Palestine, going so far as to call on the British to reverse their anti-Jewish immigration policy. It’s ironic that, 80 years later, Diasporists are invoking the Bund while trashing the Bund’s main takeaway from their experience during the Holocaust.
A PRIVILEGED POSITION
Every single living Jewish person today is the descendant of people who were once refugees. If you are an American Jew, or a Jew anywhere else in the Western world, that was the luck of the draw.
Your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents did not end up in the West, rather than in Israel, because they made a morally superior choice. Your parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents ended up in the West because they had the immense and exceedingly rare privilege of acquiring a visa.
Millions upon millions of Jews tried, in vain, to reach safety in the West, only to have the doors shut in their faces. Most did not survive. Those who did had nowhere else to go but Israel. The fact that you ended up in the West and other Jews did not does not make you a more righteous Jew in any capacity. What it does make you, however, is incredibly fortunate and incredibly blessed. So many others weren’t so lucky.
Only a person with the immense privilege of knowing nothing but life in a free society would ever support exile at the expense of half of the world's Jewish population.
RELIGIOUS INCOHERENCE
In antiquity, national, ethnic, and religious identity were entirely interlinked. Think of the Ancient Greeks, with their Greek pantheon, or the Ancient Egyptians, with their Egyptian pantheon. Jews were no different. Until its destruction – twice – Jewish practice entirely centered around the Temple in Jerusalem. This has obviously since changed.
However, understanding the history and development of Rabbinic Judaism is crucial in understanding why the concept of Diasporism, or a Judaism divorced from the Land of Israel, is entirely antithetical not just to Jewish peoplehood but to Judaism as a religious practice.
The Babylonian Exile laid the earliest foundations for what would later become Rabbinic Judaism. With the Kingdom of Judah’s elite class banished from its homeland and severed from its Temple, the Babylonian exiles began canonizing the books of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, determined not to lose their identity, culture, and connection to the Land of Israel as a displaced people.
Half a millennia later, when the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple and banished Jews from Jerusalem, Jewish sages, led by Yochanan ben Zakkai, established a Jewish learning academy in Yavneh, to democratize and decentralize Jewish learning away from the High Priests and the Temple and bring it into the Jewish home, a decision that is credited with saving Judaism from destruction at the hands of the Romans.
Ben Zakkai did not decentralize Judaism out of choice, but out of survival. He and subsequent Jewish sages found a way to preserve a land-based practice, even when the physical connection had been cruelly and painfully severed. Had it not been for their foresight and ingenuity, Jewish traditions, laws, beliefs, and practices would have gone the way of most indigenous ancient religions; that is, Judaism would no longer exist.
HELPFUL PERSPECTIVE
In 1990, the Dalai Lama met with a group of Jewish rabbis and scholars in Dharamsala, India, to discuss survival, interfaith work, and share spiritual wisdom. Relating to his own experience as a Tibetan exile, Dalai Lama was eager to understand how Jews managed to survive as a people in exile for thousands of years.
The dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Jewish delegation provides important insight into understanding what Rabbinic Judaism really is: a portable vehicle for preserving ancient Israelite land-based customs, heritage, laws, spirituality, and traditions, even in the face of displacement.
"Every Jew is to be reminded of the exile in the sacred round, during the holidays, and daily life. At the end of every wedding, we break a glass. Why? To remind people they cannot be completely happy. We are still in exile, we have not yet been restored. When you build a new home, you leave one little place unfinished. Why? As beautiful as the home is, I am not home."
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg in dialogue with the Dalai Lama
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