Noaḥ and Zionist monoculture / נח

This is a weekly series

of parsha dvarim (Tōrah commentaries) written by an orthodox atheist transsexual anarchist, with guest posts from comrades. It's the work of each generation to extricate meaning from our cultural and religious inheritance, and it's crucial that we resist the narrative that Zionism owns Judaism. We aim to offer comment which is true to the pshat (i.e. engages with the plain meaning of the text) especially when it's difficult, and uses Tōrah like a light to reflect on our modern times.

This dvar was researched and written without using AI. It includes excerpts from the dvar I wrote on Noaḥ in 2024:

Nōaḥ and Righteous intervention / נח און רעכפֿאַרטיקער אַרײַנמיש

We should be angry when our ancestors—those in Torah, and those commenting on Torah—fail to do right by us.

Misha HollebMisha Holleb

Read more leftist commentary on parshas Noaḥ.

Nōaḥ and Perfect victims / נח און פּערפֿעקטע קרבנות

The mitsve of pidōn shvuyim urges us to advocate for all prisoners, not just the morally uncomplicated ones.

Misha HollebMisha Holleb

Content note

Zionism, genocide

The second part of the parsha is devoted to the Tower of Bovel: all of humanity united in language with the shared goal of reaching heaven.

Today, speaking a Jewish language other than Modern Hebrew is derided by Zionists as divisive, kitch, and (if that language is Yiddish) "Ashkenormative". It is incredibly insulting for Zionists to accuse Yiddish speakers of erasing linguistic diversity for daring to speak what is, more often than not, our ancestral language, when for years the state of Israel suppressed all languages other than modern Hebrew. Yiddish is a vastly under-resourced language and it is a testament to its richness that it survives among native- and heritage-speakers alike. We should be encouraging the proliferation of all minoritized Jewish languages; but that would undermine the carefully constructed ethnonationalist narrative which says that we are one people with a single shared language (modern Hebrew) and culture (Israeli).

There's a clear parallel between Bovel and Zionism: self-worship, one language, a focus on survival above all else, and creating a name for ourselves lest we be scattered. At its loftiest, Zionism imagines itself to be a project of Jewish self-determination, a reconnection between the people and the land, and a guarantee of our continued survival through cooperation and solidarity among our people. The Lubavitcher Rebbe offers this comment on Bovel in a sikha (שׂיחה, "conversation") in 1959:

At its heart they planned a tower which would be visible for miles, a landmark to beckon to those who had strayed from the city, and a monument to inspire commitment to their common goal—survival. ... Where did they go wrong? But precisely that was their error: they saw survival as an end in itself. Let us make a name for ourselves, they said; let us ensure that there will be future generations who will read of us in their history books. But why survive? For what purpose should humanity inhabit the earth? What is the content of the name and legacy they are laboring to preserve? Of this they said, thought and did nothing. To them, life itself was an ideal, survival itself a virtue. ... We, too, are a generation struggling to recoup after a holocaust of destruction that threatened to erase us from the face of the earth. Reconstruction and survival are uppermost in our minds, and together, with G‑d’s help, we are succeeding. At a time like this, it is extremely important that we not repeat the error of the builders of Babel. Rebuild we must, but the objective must be more than a more enduring name, a greater city, a taller tower. If we are to survive, we must give import to our survival, reiterate the why of our existence. We must fill our name with value, our city with significance, and crown the tower of our resurgence with the higher purpose for which we were created. [Emphasis mine]

The ethnonationalist project of Zionism is a modern Bovel. In the post-Holocaust era we must reconstruct and we must survive, but we've grievously erred in exporting European statescraft and colonialism to Palestine. That we have proves that Zionism is, and always has been, dominated not by utopic socialist kibutzniks but by fervent racists. The rhetoric now obscures its origins—they wanted to band together and create a beacon of hope to Jews and all the world's downtrodden, "the only democracy in the Middle East", "the most moral army in the world"—but instead they created a government which goes against Jewish values. Every affront to decency is in the name of "Jewish safety". I deeply believe that there is much to preserve in Yiddishkeyt, that we have good cause to want our cultures—as well as our people—to survive. But Zionism flattens global Yiddishkeyt into a single experience of desperation, the need for a "homeland" in the form of a state despite Jews living there for thousands of years without one. Zionism is more interested in שלילת הגלות (shlilas hagolus, "negation of the diaspora") than in Jewish safety. If the state cared about Jewish safety, it wouldn't keep a concentration camp on its borders and it wouldn't conscript its children into the meat grinder of war.

As a Jew, that's the most insulting lie about Zionism. The unacceptable cost of "safety"—the apartheid, the violence, the death, the staining of our collective soul—doesn't even keep us safe, and it wouldn't be worth it if it did.