Zionism, What’s in a Name? (Part I)

Friday February 13, 2026 – כ״ו שְׁבָט תשפ”ו

The recently released Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) survey has sent shockwaves through Jewish communal conversations over the past week, and for good reason. According to the survey, less than four in ten American Jews today describe themselves as “Zionist,” even as nearly 90 percent affirm that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. This disconnect has prompted soul-searching among leaders and commentators across the Jewish world and should be seen as an invitation to a conversation, as the answers we choose and the ways we respond will define the future of Jewish peoplehood.

Has the term Zionism outlived its usefulness and become a term that does more harm than good?  Well, as Shakespeare famously wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II). Which is to say that even if we retire the term Zionism, we might be able to maintain affection for and adherence to the liberation Movement for the Jewish people, fulfilling our age-old dream for self-determination, sovereignty, and to live as a People free in our own land. Some responses to the JFNA data treat the decline in Zionist self-identification as inevitable, or even as evidence that there’s more to it than that. Others argue that insisting on the label (or not letting go of “Zionism”) only alienates younger Jews or potentially flattens the rich diversity of Jewish opinion about Israel and the Jewish future. I feel that these interpretations, whether well-intentioned or not, mistake the symptoms for the disease.

What the data actually reveal is a significant confusion and even a distortion regarding the meaning of Zionism, not a crisis of commitment to Jewish life/living or to the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. In other words, people don’t reject Israel or Jewish peoplehood — they are rejecting a word (i.e., “Zionism”) that is loaded with many different meanings, assumptions, and ideologies that many Jews no longer recognize as reflective of their values.

This is both a challenge and an opportunity.

The survey shows that among North American Jews, an emotional connection to Israel remains strong, and it has intensified and grown among many cohorts since 2020 — especially younger Jews who are deeply engaged with questions of justice, a sense of belonging to the Jewish people, and what is to be our collective Jewish destiny. Too many of us in organized Jewish life have allowed Zionism to be defined by others who do not share our values and by their policies, politics, and nationalist expressions that are far narrower than ours and the historic promise of Jewish self-determination in our historic Homeland. This has given space for those inside and outside the Jewish community to define “Zionism” for us in ways that are reductive, exclusionary, extremist, and politically fraught.

Zionism, properly understood, should be seen as a broad platform upon which Jews worldwide can express our highest Jewish values and aspirations for our people in Israel and Diaspora communities. Amos Oz, the renowned Israeli author and intellectual, famously stated that “Zionism is not a first name, but a family name,” implying that Zionism represents a diverse, argumentative, and broad “family” of ideologies regarding Jewish national self-determination, rather than a single, monolithic ideology. Being a Zionist was never meant to be a litmus test or a club badge. It was and must remain inclusive of the idea that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination, to safety and security, to the flourishing of the Hebrew language and culture, to moral and spiritual autonomy in the Land of our ancestors, and as members of the modern world. It is the idea that the Jewish future is not just about survival. It is about the redemption of the Jewish people from a state of homelessness and victimization, and that our future must be generative, ethically based, and in partnership with other peoples with whom we interact regionally and internationally. This is the Zionism worth reclaiming.

If we simply allow “Zionism” to fade as a self-identifier, we don’t just lose a label; we lose a framework for future-rooted Jewish belonging. We lose the idea that Israel can be simultaneously Jewish and democratic, vibrant and pluralistic, reflective of Jewish memory and boldly engaged with the world. We lose a common language for intergenerational dialogue about Israel’s challenges and aspirations. And we lose the ability to anchor that debate in a shared affirmation of the State of Israel’s centrality to Jewish destiny in our ancient Homeland and throughout the world.

There’s no question that our community is wrestling with complexity. Many Reform Jews – in many different generations – rightly raise questions about justice, human rights, and a democracy in our conversation about Israel. These are not sidebar issues. They are core Jewish ethical imperatives and concerns that our Movement and the Zionist Movement must take seriously. And yet, answering these questions outside of or in opposition to Zionism misunderstands both the importance of our Jewish past and our Jewish future.

Let me be clear: Zionism doesn’t demand unquestioning loyalty to any government, nor does it erase moral critique of specific policies and actions taken by the State of Israel. It is not about assuming blind support for the Jewish State because one is Jewish, nor is it about some supremacist views concerning the Jewish people and our identity. Rather, Zionism as we should reclaim it calls for courageous engagement, the kind that loves our people, our Land, and is sufficiently committed to the future of the Jewish and democratic State of Israel enough to question, to struggle, and to build. Our Movement should not shrink from that work. We should lead it.

Reclaiming Zionism is not about insisting upon a single, static definition of what Zionism is. It is about reclaiming a generative, values-aligned understanding of Jewish self-determination that resonates with Jewish hearts and minds today—especially with a younger generation that is asking the big ethical questions about the world that they want to inherit and the news they are watching coming out of Israel and the Palestinian territories. It is about giving that younger generation something worth inheriting and of which they and we older Jews can be proud, rather than trying to spin whatever is happening, apportion “a better PR/Hasbara campaign,” or deflect criticism of Israeli government policies as disloyalty or lacking in commitment to the Jewish people and Jewish State.  And reclaiming Zionism is certainly not abandoning young Jews to the self-destructive siren song of dismissal or defeatism.

The alternative to the aggressive PR campaign that justifies whatever Israel does is allowing the Zionist movement to drift without defense or definition. Both cede our historic inheritance to forces that misunderstand and misrepresent it. That’s not a future our Reform Zionist Movement can accept. The JFNA survey didn’t show that American Jews are turning away from Israel. It showed that they’re searching for meaning, clarity, and integrity in the language we use to define Zionism for us today. Let us give them that. Let us redeem Zionism (in accordance with our Reform Zionist values and tradition) and create a future that is hopeful, just, compassionate, and unmistakably Jewish.

Shabbat Shalom.