Leah Shakdiel
Smol Emuni Conference
March 30, 2025
Zionism is a revolution in Jewish identity, from victimhood to a people that is a historical subject with responsibility, among other nations who share the same responsibility towards their respective citizenries and towards each other. In other words, Zionism means joining the modern world order of democracy. If Jews demand not only individual civil and human rights but also the collective right to self-determination, Jews must acknowledge these same rights in others, including Palestinians.
Unfortunately, most Israeli Jews today have not undergone this necessary identity conversion. They perpetuate the mentality of victims-- victims who have acquired military power used to take unmitigated and irresponsible revenge on their enemies. Zionist responsibility requires that we keep the army for defense only, and avoid war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid in the Occupied Territories.
The litmus test of our responsibility is how that Jewish nationalism deals with the non Jews inside Israel and around it, that is, with the Palestinians and the Arab world--just as the Dreyfus Affair served as a litmus test for France at the time when France needed to choose between the values of the ancien régime (monarch and church) and the values of the Revolution (liberté, egalité, fraternité).
All of this is well put in Israel's Declaration of Statehood (the official title of the 1948 document).
The Jewish people belongs to the land where it established its national identity by the composition of the Book of Books, which is a national asset as well as the gift of the Jewish people to the world, of particularist as well as universalist value.
World War II is not only about the Shoah and the need for safe haven, it's about the Ivry (that is, Zionist) community joining the free world of the future United Nations in the battle to defend freedom and justice against evil in the world at large.
Equal rights are declared for all citizens of the State, including the Palestinian Arabs, including joint economic development of the land for all, including those outside the Jewish state.
In the midst of the bloody attack on the Jews in Palestine, we offer peace as our vision for the future.
It also means that, as far as the public sphere goes, in law and in national policy making, the only Judaism that can be Israel's "civil religion" is the Judaism that is compatible with democracy, be it secular or ultra-orthodox. I believe that the Smol Emuni is not only about prioritizing the return of the hostages over the continued war; it is about propagating a democratic state of Israel, at large.
I will finish by saying something about my decision to wear this dress today. I bought this dress in a village in Masafer Yatta, because I go there with the Machsom Watch women. For the past 20 years we’ve been going there, and recently the situation has become so horrible, that we, against our better judgement, bring food to those people whose livelihood has been totally destroyed. We bring staples such as rice, oil, and sugar. When I saw a woman sitting there and embroidering, I immediately bought this dress from her.
I think that as Jews, we must make present those who are the most destitute, even if they are not in the room. Minimally, I wanted to put that woman here with me on the stage.
