{"id":306497,"date":"2026-02-23T20:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/306497\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T20:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:13:08","slug":"the-blogs-theory-and-practice-seth-goren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/306497\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blogs: Theory and Practice | Seth Goren"},"content":{"rendered":"

My colleague Jay Solomon recently wrote<\/a> about the impact on Jewish students and Jewish identity of treating \u201cZionist\u201d as a slur.\u00a0 He shares illustrations of their experiences on campus and how students are pushing back on narratives that dismiss Jewish perspectives and trample Jewish narratives.\n<\/p>\n

Part of Jay\u2019s point bears emphasis: There\u2019s a gap between general, philosophical discussions about definitions of \u201cZionism\u201d and the practical reality of what students face on campus.\n<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve recently seen a number of conversations about definitions and perceptions of Zionism, with Bob Brym\u2019s review<\/a> of the term\u2019s semantic drift among Canadian Jews and For the Sake of Argument\u2019s qualitative research conversations<\/a> being two examples.\u00a0 These are incredibly important and help us understand how our community defines, uses, and responds to \u201cZionism\u201d and related words, as well as our underlying relationships with Israel.\u00a0 As a researcher myself, I\u2019d be curious to see these investigations expanded beyond the Jewish community to better grasp how non-Jews describe \u201cZionism.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In our work on campus, we\u2019re a bit more in the thick of things than these more theoretical discussions. Yes, Jewish students are affected by how others \u2013 especially non-Jews \u2013 interpret \u201cZionism,\u201d and abstract thinking is relevant to a certain degree. However, \u201cZionism\u201d and \u201cZionist\u201d are regularly weaponized and toxified regardless of the precise definition, with the impact on Jewish students direct, significant, practical, and negative.\n<\/p>\n

The radioactivity of \u201cZionism\u201d hampers student growth as Jews. From a learning perspective, they have few spaces in which they can explore the diversity of Zionism and how it meshes with their Jewish identity, and all of those streams of thought are off limits for anything short of harsh criticism outside of places like Hillel. Engaging with Zionism to enable more flexible exploration, including students\u2019 personal relationships with the term, their relationships with Israel, the context in which Zionism arose, and implications for the future, is severely constrained, and their Jewish identities are likely to reflect those limitations and confinement.\n<\/p>\n

More problematically, the broader conversations don\u2019t reveal (and, to be fair, aren\u2019t intended to dive into) how antagonistic understandings of Zionism make Jewish students\u2019 lives harder by providing fuel for antisemitism on campus.\u00a0 When \u201cZionist\u201d is used interchangeably with \u201cJew,\u201d with both having reinforcing negative associations based on superficial perceptions, students\u00a0 become targets for verbal, social, or even physical abuse. Moreover, epistemic closure and a lack of intellectual humility make dialogue and exchange, and however one might conceptualize \u201cZionism,\u201d it\u2019s regularly wielded against Jewish students.\n<\/p>\n

As a result of all of this, when they\u2019re facing antisemitism \u2013 which they do regularly \u2013 the nuances and subtleties of definitions often aren\u2019t of interest to Jewish students.\n<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed to complement the excellent and useful overarching takes on Zionism is further investigation of the role these definitions play in Jewish students\u2019 lived experiences, as well as their relevance in encounters with antisemitism and the impact on Jewish identity exploration and development.\u00a0 By probing how definitions of Zionism play out for students empirically, we\u2019ll be better able to support them in taking pride in being Jewish and standing up for themselves and each other.\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tOriginally from Philadelphia, Rabbi Seth Goren lives in Toronto and is Hillel Ontario’s Chief Executive Officer.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My colleague Jay Solomon recently wrote about the impact on Jewish students and Jewish identity of treating \u201cZionist\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-306497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}