Let’s start by getting this out of the way: I have never identified as a Zionist. Nor do I identify as an anti-Zionist. I suppose you could call me a non-Zionist, but really I find that unnecessary—to center my Jewishness around Zionism at all. Because really, I am just a Jew. Better yet, a Hebrew. Since Jew is a particular kind of Jew descended from the Tribe of Judah, and it is the Hebrews, really, where our story as ancient Israelites begins.

Hebrew—ivri, one who crosses over or passes through. A nomad. In the in between. A participant in the both/and. Because really—more than anything—that’s what I feel my birthright to be: liminality. One whose rituals deal with the liminality of time and space, one who is right now caught up in the in between in this particular time about a particular space.

And I arrived here—this desire to live in the liminality—through conversations with rabbis, scholars, thinkers, educators, loved ones, research, and the many ways I’ve metabolized and integrated it all into the Hebrew I want to be. 

A few days after October 7, I realized this: my politics haven’t changed. I remain consistent on Palestine and Israel. Consistent on wanting the occupation to end. Consistent on wanting for both Israelis and Palestinians to be safe, and for there to be a pathway to keep Israelis safe that isn’t contingent on making Palestinians unsafe, that doesn’t revolve around perpetrating ongoing discrimination, state-sanctioned violence, occupation, and death of Palestinians. And the death of Israelis. 

But what has shifted for me, is a clicking into place around my Jewish identity. I have unwaveringly tuned in. The antenna is clear. I must be unapologetic about being a Jew.

Which means I must divest from assimilation. 

For me, assimilation means conforming into the constructs of supremacy and hierarchy. Perpetuating, enabling, and emboldening narratives that require us to separate and disconnect from each other as human beings under a guise to survive. 

Throughout history, our assimilations have been vast. Always as a means for survival. As an attempt to save ourselves from discrimination, state-sanctioned violence, occupation, and death.

I believe that healing and transformation find their alchemy in examining pain’s roots. The origins of transgression. For even our Torah literally begins with “in the beginning,” beresheet.

I believe our Hebrew assimilation began around the 10th Century BCE. (And p.s. I’m basing this off of what I’ll call an “academic” timeline. More on what we’ll call “traditional”––read: religious––timelines in a bit). 

I like to say that before then, we were radical moon worshippers wandering around the desert. 

Based on this academic timeline, on the dusk of the second millennium BCE, during the Iron Age, the ancient Israelites rock out of their happenings in Canaan and settle down in the Southern Levant in what will become the Kingdom of Israel in the north, and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

Now, the Neo-Assyrian empire comes through and conquers the Kingdom of Israel circa 720 BCE. There are Israelites that head to the Kingdom of Judah, there are those who stick around in Samaria (which had been capital of the Kingdom of Israel). No matter what, regarding who goes where, it’s clear that our upcoming repetition of exile is starting to kick itself into high gear. 

Cool.

Now, the Kingdom of Judah will itself become part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. And ultimately, there will be a bunch of Jewish revolts. And Judah will be destroyed. And Jews will be exiled from Babylon. This is all going down in 587/586 BCE, which is when the Israelites’ First Temple in Jerusalem is razed. Another temple will be built, and we’ll end up calling the Second Temple period the years ranging from 516 BCE to 70 CE. 

Cool.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about the Torah, the holy scripture text that many of us Jews hold sacred. Because since we Jews are not a monolith, there are those among us who read it like a story; those among us who follow it to the dotted “I” and crossed “T;” those among us who study it every single day; those among us who use it as a metaphor; those among us who don’t really care about it at all. And so on and so forth. The joke is: one Jew, two opinions. If there are 15 million of us currently alive on the planet, we’re talking roughly 30 million opinions. At least.

I personally see the Torah as an op-ed, aka opinion piece. There’s stuff I dig and embrace—I’m a sucker for the creation story and the notion of twilight as itself a kind of liminality; and shit if it isn’t incredible to think about an exodus and redemption out of the narrow spaces that oppress us as we forge together into collective liberation; and I rock hard on the building of the Mishkan slash Tabernacle, and the infinite metaphors one can pull from the power of co-creating art, dwelling, sanctuary, and spaces for divine connection all together as a community. There’s also plenty I’m down to miss. Like how I get super tripped up in Deuteronomy, which starts to read like a preachy speech centered around conquest and sovereignty which personally feels entirely antithetical to the radical moon worshipping in the desert, or the twilight in beresheet.

And it’s those parts of Deuteronomy—especially 7:1-3 that are all about G-d promising the Israelites land in the land of milk and honey after 40 years of wandering in the desert, that seems to say conquer anyone who’s there, and don’t intermarry with any of them (it keeps going and I don’t love it), all of which feels pretty clearly like imperialism to me—that let me know we went from being Hebrews of the both/and, to being a people of the either/or, assimilating into a belief that supremacy might keep us safe and allow us to survive.

If we examine the time periods during which the Torah was allegedly written down, we’re talking the 7th Century and onwards BCE ranges that run parallel to our ongoing exiles.

And what’s an allegedly good way to counter exile? Gain power, usurp resources, and set up shop.

Now, before we go any further, I promised I’d get into the traditional timeline, aka religious, that gets its rundown from Seder Olam Rabbah (which means “The Great Order of the World”), which is a text from the second century that provides a timeline of everything that happens in the Torah, from creation (one of my favs!) to Alexander the Great’s razing of Persia (not my fav, because we know how I feel about conquest!). Traditional timelines put Joseph (and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat) receiving his fam’s arrival in Egypt circa 1522 BCE. And more importantly, the traditional timeline puts the Torah’s being given to the ancient Israelites at 1312 BCE, which is before the ancient Israelites get to the Kingdoms in the academic timeline, and therefore puts the writing of the Torah at 40 years later (post-desert wandering) circa 1272 BCE. 

But in the academic timeline, during which the Torah is written down––with dates still subject to debate even amongst academics––beginning in the late 7th and 6th Centuries BCE, the Torah’s backdrop and context of Assyrian captivity and exile cannot be removed from the context within which Torah is scribed, which therefore makes sense that the sections I don’t love in Deuteronomy, let alone the literal practices of conquest that begin happening behaviorally IRL, push for a right to inhabit land by way of occupation, supremacy, and force.

This matters because, remember: one Jew, two opinions. This means I’m running on a timeline that’s based on my opinion, my approach, my lens. But if I’m making an argument here for the both/and, then that needs to also note the different timelines, especially because this means that the context and backdrop I’m using differentiates from someone using the traditional lens. 

And still. Forget the Torah. Forget the specific dates. It’s the actual history of what goes down.

Because to me, the push to conquer becomes an act of assimilation. To me, the act of turning the area of the Levant into the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah in the first place, is an act of assimilation. Because if prior to that, we’d been the Hebrews—the nomads who went from one space to the next—then settling down roots within the context of a Kingdom is assimilation.

To me, this begins a cycle of reactivity, rather than honoring what is traditionally innate.

If both/and-ness is innate, then how do I untangle myself from assimilating into either/or?

Assimilation leads to antisemitism. Antisemitism leads to assimilation. It’s a vicious cycle.

How might we reclaim liminality without harming each other, harming others, or being harmed?

I think one pathway is by first freeing ourselves of Jewish sovereignty as a people, and the story we tell about ourselves as Jews—Hebrews—in relation to other people who are not Jews.

And second, by relinquishing our stronghold on a single narrative within our diaspora.

When I say diaspora, I mean all Jews, throughout history, everywhere on earth we might live.

And listen, I know that part of how we’ve survived is by building the resilience we had to build in exile, by being diasporic, and wandering, and crossing over, and passing through.

I get that our survival has been reactionary—also—to that.

But this—right now—is the first time in history we have this much power. Specifically because a nation state was created—with the full-throttle support, backing, funding, and fervor of white Christian Zionists in Europe, the United States, and worldwide—that has allotted us an ability to assimilate globally. To assimilate into bordered, governmental structures of either/or, rather than both/and.

I believe our strength and sovereignty as humans—not only for Jews—comes from our relationships with each other. I believe we are all divine. And so in that way, it’s our relationship to witnessing one another’s holiness, sacredness, and divinity, and not placing anyone’s worth on a pedestal as more valuable, but finding the ecosystem, equilibrium, and containers for a society and world that holds us all collectively sacred, from a place of equity, justice, and balance.

And while I am making a case for our birthright as Hebrews to be the both/and, versus a singular space, I am also trying to determine: what is reactive, and what is innate? 

Some might say Zionism was founded to be reactive. Some might say Zionism is innate. Some might say anti-Zionism began as reactive. Others might say anti-Zionism is, in fact, innate.

And I feel like we’re getting so caught up in centering our diasporic identity around a singular space, that we’re losing the literal diasporic throughline from which we actually came.

We’ve come to worship mythologies and false idols around safety that beg us to assimilate, rather than honoring and proactively responding to the live narratives we carry as a diaspora.

I refuse to pretend that living on one side of space will somehow keep me safe.

I want to survive by living in the both/and.

Assimilation is actively killing us, and actively allowing us to kill other people. En masse.  

I have never felt connected to the mythology of safety that Israel was marketed to maintain. I have been experiencing anti-Jewish oppression and antisemitism and othering my entire life. Some covert. Some overt. But consistent nonetheless. And therefore my safety both in America and in the world at large has always felt flawed. The jig has always been up. And while plenty of Jewish American friends look to Israel as a space to save themselves from that, I never did.

And I am a fourth generation born American Jew. I am as assimilated as it gets.

But the illusion never took hold.

If I wasn’t buying a myth that safety was ever going to exist in the current makeup of an oppressive world, why was I going to center my Judaism around Zionism or Israel?

I’ve always just wanted to be a Jew. That’s it. A Jew. A Hebrew. An unassimilated both/and.

Diaspora is Greek for scattering about.

The first entries for “diaspora” in Merriam-Webster are all about the Jews:

One, a: “the Jews living outside of Israel.” One, b: “the settling of scattered communities of Jews outside ancient Palestine after the Babylonian exile.” One, c: “the area outside ancient Palestine settled by Jews.” Now, a lot of other people use diaspora these days for their people. Wikipedia, for example, has a whole lot of a lot to say. But the origin story of the notion of diaspora seems to have something to do with us. And again, for me, that’s all Jews. Not just those outside Israel.

But what does it mean that we can be from forced diaspora by way of expulsion into settling in somewhere after some time, to having turned the term diaspora into differentiating ourselves between the Jews in Israel and the Jews not in Israel, rather than: all the Babylonian exiled Jews.

We have bifurcated ourselves when what originally bonded us together was our inherent collective bifurcation. Bifurcation as an identity. Rather than amongst it.

So instead of being a people whose nature is ivri, we’ve let a space divide us entirely.

Are you a Zionist? Are you an anti-Zionist? Are you a good Jew? Are you a bad Jew? Do you support Palestinian liberation? Do you support Hamas? Do you support Israel? Do you support the IDF? Do you support peace? What about the hostages? Don’t you care about them? Do you hashtag ceasefire? Do you hashtag bring them home? Pick a side if you want them both.

Guess what made us either/or ourselves?

Imperialism.

White Christian hegemony.

White supremacy.

Capitalism.

Patriarchy.

Inherited trauma.

Assimilation.

And what’s our greatest assimilation?

Becoming conquerors. Taking on the behaviors of imperialism three thousand years ago as a mythology that it would keep us safe from harm, by assimilating into a single space.

Rather than being diasporic. A both/and.

And listen.

I get it.

Wandering is fucking exhausting.

Being displaced is traumatic.

What greater horror is there than being pushed out? Or occupied? Oppressed? Violently killed?

At some point, we have all been both conquered and conquerors.

Trying to assimilate into any direction or space takes us out of who we once were.

I keep asking myself: why am I writing this piece?

Perhaps I want some kind of something that feels like a through-line for the Jewish diaspora at large. Everyone. Every one. Every Jew, no matter where they live, if or how they believe or pray. Perhaps I naively or idealistically think it is by way of the possibility that lives inherently in the in-between, in the liminal, in the both/and that we might find our way through these current horrors. That we might stop thinking that slaying others will avenge those who were slain.

I remember shortly after October 7, an Israeli friend shared that the singular thing that aligns and connects all Jews—regardless of any other social identity, level of religiosity, or ideology—is the Hebrew calendar. I liked that a lot. The days, times, moments, and festivals our calendar acknowledges throughout the seasons and cycles of a year are what keep us connected as one.

And.

A calendar is a thing that marks time. What I love about Jewish ritual is that it marks time and space. But what I don’t love about what has become of our diaspora—worldwide—is the pedestaling of one space to have more importance for us than any other space by allowing a space to become a singular place, and that in that pedestaling, we have come to perpetuate a kind of Jewish sovereignty that worships the either/or.

There’s a reason we were othered. That the Greeks named us Hebrews, ivri. It was radical to have been a nomadic people who went from one space to the other. It was radical to refrain from assimilating into believing that one piece of land was more holy than another. To believe that one kind of person had more worth.

We are killing Palestinians. Israelis, too—Jewish and non-Jewish—are dying and being killed. This is not behavior that lives in the both/and. This is behavior that assimilates around a false mythology that killing people will keep us safe.

But if one person is unsafe, we are all of us unsafe.

Which includes Israeli hostages, who of course, I want brought home—G-d willing alive—too.

When I say I want Palestinians to live, I mean that I want all of us to live. Everyone. Worldwide.

What if we oriented our values around the liminality we’ve been dealt as a diaspora?

What if we lived in the twilight of nuance, instead of divisively dividing each other and others?

What questions might we then instead ask?

What behaviors might we shift?

What solidarities might we build both within and beyond Hebrews, Jews?

What collective liberation might we help achieve for the entire world at large?

In what spaces—in both time and space—might we find ourselves if we return to our both/and?