Ki Siso, Purim, & the Avodo Zoro of Zionism / כי תשא, פּרורים, & עבודה זרה פֿון ציאָניזם

This is a weekly series of parsha dvarim written by a frum, atheist, transsexual anarchist. It's crucial in these times that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. Our texts are rich—sometimes opaque, but absolutely teeming with wisdom and fierce debate. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance. I aim to offer comment which is true to the source material (i.e. doesn't invert or invent meaning to make us more comfortable) and uses Torah like a light to reflect on our modern times. The full dvar is paywalled for four weeks to help me sustain my work as a writer; if you can't afford to subscribe, email me and I'll send you the link for free.

An appeal: It's Ramadan, which means it's a great time to donate to people in Gaza. My friend Madleen needs help to support her children. This fundraiser is run by a friend of a comrade, and I talk to Madleen regularly. Any amount helps, no matter how small.

Content note: Zionism, the Nakba, the Holocaust

Ki Siso is a parsha rich with narrative, but it begins with dry instruction. Hashem talks to Moishe Rebeynu on Mount Sinai, telling him that all men owe the same tax as "expiation for your souls", regardless of whether they are rich or poor; and giving details about how to mix the sacred incense, how to wash the hands and feet of the Kohanim, and a reiteration on the importance of keeping Shabos.

While Moishe is on the mountain, the Jews grow restless. They ask Aron to make them a new god; he tells them to give him all their golden jewelry, which he melts down into a golden calf.

The sin of the golden calf, חטא העגל, is Torah's shtarkest example of Jewish עבודה זרה—avodo zoro, idol worship. Today, there is no parallel more obvious than the avodo zoro of Zionism. We have abandoned Judaism and Hashem in favor of ethnonationalism. We have erased our diverse cultural history to become Israeli. We are loyal not to our own sense of ethics, but to the fascist state of Israel.

Aron, as the Kohan Gadol (High Priest), is the spiritual leader of the Jews second only to Moishe.

The people are misdirecting their worship, and the credit for their redemption out of exile, to the calf. Aron, however, announces that tomorrow will be a festival for Hashem, not the calf. Is Aron conflating the calf and Hashem? Does he have the foresight to see that the people erred and will return to the proper worship of Hashem tomorrow? Is Aron just stalling?

For the last century, American, Anglo, and European Jewry have abandoned Judaism in favor of Zionism.

In Hebrew school they started to teach us this Hebrew. My father had pronounced things a certain way, and I heard that. Then one day, they said we're changing the way we're pronouncing everything. For me that was a real weird message. You know, oh, we say Shabbat, not Shabos. Shabbat. And I thought, something is wrong here, what is this? I mean I was a little kid but I was really turned off by it, it really bugged me. It seemed to me like from that moment on, there was something weird about the synagogue.

—Oral history interview with Hanuka's grandmother, sampled on the forthcoming track "Narishe Tsienistn" by Chaia, New York, 2025.

Zionism has replaced the Jewish culture of Europe and America. There was an active choice to put Israeli flags on the bimah, to change the pronunciation from Ashkenazi to Israeli, to send kids on birthright trips. All the yom tovim became allegories for Zionism rather than lessons in our own history, theology, or ethics.

Aron selht wird fortgezagen
Uon des Tanzes Wahnsinnwagen
Und er selhst, der Glaubenwächter
Tanzt im Hohenpriesterrock
Wie ein Bock—
Paukenschlage und Gelächter!

Aron himself is carried away
On the dance's madness-chariot
And he himself, the guardian of the faith
Dances in the high priest's robe
Like a goat—
Drums and laughter!

Aron claims he didn't know that the molten gold, collected and melted by him, would become a calf. The claims of innocent intentions from the Kohen Gadol parallel those of our spiritual leaders who claim that their ethno-nationalism won't lead to—or isn't truly—fascism.

"Moishe saw that the people were out of control, since Aron had let them get out of control."

—Shemoys 32:25

Support for the state of Israel is policy for most synagogues and Jewish movements, and this has only increased since October 7, 2023. Our spiritual leaders have whipped up Zionist fervor. We are supposed to be loyal to the state instead of our own ethics.

The State of Israel is explicitly set up as a Jewish ethnostate—a country with an ethnic majority. It is not possible to maintain such an ethnostate without resorting to violence to uphold that majority. There is no version of ethnonationalism that does not lead to fascism. If one racial/ethnic/national group is legally and socially privileged over another, violent displacement and repression inevitably follow.

Early Zionists had plural politics; some of them considered themselves leftists. But there is no leftist ethnonationalism, no leftist colonialism. The purpose of the system is what it does. It is dishonest to claim that the point of a system, or ideology, is the thing that it consistently fails to do. Zionism is not an abstract political or theological thought experiment; it is, materially, a politic of violence.

"Liberal Zionism" has long ago revealed itself to be complicit in the displacement and murder of Palestinians, but it's been even more obvious since October 7. Jewish leaders in the Anglosphere are more disturbed by words like "apartheid" and "genocide" and "ceasefire" than about the hospitals and universities bombed. Defending the Zionist project’s mass murder and ethnic cleansing in the name of an imagined peaceful coexistence is, at best, delusional. At worst, it is a cynical attempt to reap the benefits of a state-enforced ethnic majority while disavowing its human cost.

The avodo zoro is such a great sin that Moishe asks what wrong the Jews did to Aron that they deserved this. Moishe recognizes that as the spiritual leader, Aron is responsible for the misdirection of their people. But Aron claims to lack control over his people, dodging accountability, not offering an apology of his own and instead condemning the Israelites as inevitably, irredeemably "bent on evil".

The cost—the punishment—of avodo zoro is slaying our own kin. So too in Gaza. After ordering the deaths of some those guilty, Moshe again ascends the mountain. He strongly argues with Hashem for the forgiveness of his people, as Hashem threatens to wipe out the people entirely.

Moishe is so mad at the idolaters that he instructs a slaughter of 3,000, but also demands his name be blotted out of Torah if Hashem refuses to forgive them. How can Moishe beg for Hashem’s mercy on those he himself has commanded killed for their idolatry?

Unlike Aron, Moishe understands the immense responsibility of a spiritual leader. Moishe holds the tension between accountability and forgiveness. He refuses to close his eyes to the sin of his people’s avodo zoro. He doesn’t pretend that any good intentions override the disastrous results. Yet despite this strong rebuke, he nonetheless acts out of kinship and love for his people. His intolerance for the sins of his people is inseparable from his love for them.

Palestinians and Israelis (not in equal measure) are today being sacrificed on the alter of this golden calf. Like Moishe, we must argue with Hashem for mercy for our people by condemning and fighting the evils of Zionism. As antizionist Yidn, we can emulate Moishe’s fierce love of our people by rebuking our siblings who throw the people of Palestine upon the pyre of ethnonationalism.

Zionism was not a movement of self-determination but an attempt to change Yiddishkeyt from a diverse ethno-religion to a nationality: decentering Torah and flattening Jewish culture to a manufactured Israeli culture, with a single land and language. Zionism holds our traditions in contempt. We must abandon our languages, our values, our interpretations of text in favor of Zionism. We must become the "new Jew", a colonizer, an army, a state. All the violences of kings and nations visited upon us can be avoided if it is us who do the statecraft this time.

One of the principles of Zionism is שלילת הגולה—negation of the diaspora, the assertion that Jews outside of Israel will inevitably assimilate or die, and there is no future for the Jewish people without the state. Jews have survived for over 2,000 years without an ethnostate and we will continue to survive when the ethnostate falls.

"We want to let respectable antisemites participate in our project, respecting their independence which is valuable to us as a sort of people's control authority."

—Theodore Herzl, founder of Zionism, diary entry, 14 June 1895.

Zionist thinking is, appropriately for Purim, topsy-turvy. They call antizionist Jews "self-hating" but we're nothing compared to Theordore Herzl, who called antizionist Jews Jidn ("Yidn", using the Yiddish word for "Jews" with contempt) as opposed to Juden (the German word), and wrote an essay titled "Mauschel" premised on the Jidn who opposed Zionism as mice: sub-human, Jewish vermin. All Eastern European Yidn, regardless of politics, were painted as backward and morally degenerate. We needed a new Jew—a Hebrew-speaking, masculine muscle Jew who colonized like every other respectable European nation—to replace the meek, weak, feminine, money-grubbing, sneaky, socialist, honorless, parasitic mouse-Yid. There is so much raw material evidencing antisemitism in early Zionism that I couldn't possibly reference it all here. Herzl's liberal use of antisemitic canards puts him in stiff competition with Hitler.

Why did the powers of Europe allow Jews to create a state? As Herzl made so clear, the evacuation of Jews from Europe to Palestine suited Zionists and antisemites alike. It still does.

In 1959, a group of Haredi authors wrote אור לשירים (Light for the Righteous), a book of letters clarifying their opposition to Zionism. The letter by the Lubavitcher Rebbe Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (the Rebbe Rashab), written in 1903 Imperial Russia and included posthumously, is the shtarkest:

ואם חס וחלילה יעלה בידם להחזיק בארץ כמו שמדמים בנפשם, יטמאו וישקצו אותם בשיקוציהם ומעלליהם הרעים, ויאריכו בזה את אורך הגלות. ... בהָגלות הזה עלינו לצפות לגאולתנו וישועתינו של הקב"ה שלא ע"י בשר ודם ... וכל שכן בכוחות ובתחבולות גשמיים, דהיינו לצאת מהגלות בכח הזרוע אין אנו רשאים.

And if, God forbid, they manage to hold on to the land as they imagine in their souls, they will defile and detest it with their abominations and evil deeds, and thereby prolong the length of the exile. ... In this exile, we must expect our redemption and salvation from God, not through flesh and blood ... and even more so through physical forces and tricks, meaning that we are not permitted to leave the exile by force of arms.

The Rashab also warned that Zionism is a bigger danger to Yiddishkeyt than assimilation because Zionists see themselves as kosher Jews even though "כל דתם היא לאומיות" ("their entire religion is nationalism"). His son and successor, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (the Fridiker Rebbe), wrote in a letter later published in Igrot Kodesh, "I am against the proposed Jewish state. It would be a calamity for the Jews, and in a short time they will realize what a calamity it is."

The nationalist concept of the Jewish people as an ethnic or nationalistic entity has no place among us, and it's nothing but a foreign implant into Judaism; it is nothing but idolatry. And its younger sister, "religious nationalism (l'umis datis)", is idol worship that combines Hashem's name and heresy together (avodah zarah b'shituf).
—Elchonon Wasserman (1874–1941)

Reb Wasserman saw Zionism not as the end of exile like some claimed, but the beginning of a new, deeper exile. "Antisemites want to kill the body, but Zionists kill the soul. Better to die than consort with the Zionists." Reb Wasserman discouraged migration to Palestine, even facing Nazism. He was murdered in the חורבן (Holocaust) הי“ד.

"The Zionists have already won because they got the Jews to look at themselves as a nation."

—Chaim Brisker, the Brisker Rebbe who lived in Imperial Russia and Poland, 1853–1918

Medinas Yisroel already exists. The antizionists lost—furthermore, they were murdered by antisemites. What are we to do? Throw Israeli Jews in the sea?

We cannot be fatalistic. Jews have been living in Palestine for thousands of years and will likely continue to do so after the fall of medinas Yisroel. My theological opposition to mass Jewish migration to Palestine, and my moral opposition to displacing other people, make antizionism a clear ideological choice.

But when [Ester] came before the king, he commanded: “With the promulgation of this decree, let the evil plot, which [Homon] devised against the Jews, recoil on his own head!” So they impaled him and his sons on the stake. For that reason these days were named Purim, after pur [lots, fate].

—Megillas Ester, 9:25–26

Purim is routinely trotted out as a triumphant Zionist action story: they tried to kill us, we killed them instead, let's drink! It's one of the few stories of Jewish military power that we have. There is no historical record of the events of the Megillah; it's a revenge fantasy. It's a story of the underdogs, the condemned, outwitting the king and not just reversing the decree against them but defeating—slaughtering—their enemies.

Even if we read "enemies" as an existential threat to Jewish life rather than a preemptive strike or collective punishment, this is a revenge fantasy marked by blood lust. First, 500 enemies in Shushon, and Homon's 10 sons, are killed. Then Queen Esther asks, and is granted, another massacre of 300 and that the corpses of the 10 sons are impaled. Further, 75,000 enemies across the land were killed by the recently and unexpectedly powerful Jews. The only restraint shown is that spoils were not taken.

Despite how it's weaponized, I love Purim. There is catharsis in the revenge fantasy. But the revenge isn't a fantasy today. The death toll in Palestine is at least 48,503 as of March 2025, with Israel claiming to have killed 17,000 combatants—suggesting that 71% of the dead are civilians. How many more people need to die before we stop? How many Palestinians must we kill for Europe's sins? Is the slaughter on Purim aspirational?

As soon as Moishe came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged.

—Shemoys 32:19

How do we talk to Zionists in our families and communities after so much death? When he comes down from Sinai to see the Jews dancing and worshiping the golden calf, Moishe is angry. He burns and grinds the calf into power, strews it across the water, and makes the Israelites drink it (32:20). Drinking the golden calf powder water is guilt. Live with what you've done. Soak it up and really integrate it into your body. Extending the metaphor to Zionism: as Jews we need to collectively reckon with the harm we've done to Palestinians (and ourselves). But before any reckoning, hand-wringing, soul-searching, or tshuva, we need to stop the violence. We need to abandon Zionism.

אוי איר נאַרישע ציאָניסטן
מיט אײַער נאַרישן שׂכל
איר מעגט דאָך גיין צו דעם אַרבעטער
און לערנען בײַ אים שׂכל

איר ווילט אונדז פֿאָרן קיין ירשלים
מיר זאָלן דאָרטן גאָלאָדײַען
מיר ווילן בעסער זײַן אין רוסנלאַנד
מיר וועלן זיך באַפֿרײַען!

Глупенькие сионисты
Вы такие утописты
Вы бы лучше шли в рабочие
Или в трубочисты

В Иерушалаим
Идти за вами не желаем
Мы в Рассее останемся
Бороться с Николаем!

Oy you foolish Zionists
With your foolish reasoning
You can still to go to the worker
And learn intelligence from him

You want us to go to Yerushalayim
So we can starve there
We'd rather be in Russia
We'll liberate ourselves!

—Jewish socialist folk song, first recorded 26 November 1930 in Kiev by ethnomusicologist Moshe Beregovski (1892–1961), as sung by house painter Ts. Lakhman (Ц. Лахман) Gersh of Medzhybozhe, Ukraine. Russian translation by Psoy Korolenko; English translation mine. Modern recording by Brivele.

Ki Siso continues with Hashem commanding us to destroy the idols of other nations. I don't believe it is possible nor desirable for us to undertake any such thing before we destroy our own idols. The parsha finishes with Moishe refusing to leave the desert unless Hashem leads the Jews; he asks to see Hashem's face, but only gets to see His back.

We don't get to wait to see G-d before leaving Zionism behind. People are still dying; we are obliged to do everything in our power to materially interfere and stop the violence.

That we see an end to war. That Palestine be free within our lifetime. That Moshiakh come swiftly and in our days. That we genuinely change our grief and mourning into festive joy.

אַ פֿריילעכן פּורים.