Emerging Communities and the Memetic Future of the Jewish People (abstract)

Erez Sherman

In December of 2025, I received a call from Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles, inviting me to teach a course entitled Ideas of Zionism.

For many years, I had spoken from the pulpit about the increasingly difficult climate faced by Jewish students who openly identified as Zionists on the college campus. Students shared firsthand accounts of hiding their Jewish stars. One student even asked whether he should omit his Jewish identity from his dental school application for fear of rejection.

In April of 2024, just over a mile from my synagogue, Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, helicopters hovered overhead as they monitored the UCLA encampments. Hundreds of students chanted slogans without understanding the geography of the river or the sea. Jewish students were barred entry into parts of campus. Days later, the Jewish community organized a rally that ultimately contributed to the removal of the encampments by local law enforcement.

While I could describe from the pulpit the physical and emotional dangers many students faced, the truth was that I had not experienced those realities myself.

That is why, when Loyola Marymount first approached me about teaching Ideas of Zionism, I politely declined.

What if uttering the word Zionism led to the cancellation of the course? Who might enroll in the course—not in pursuit of understanding, but in an effort to silence discussion of Zionism altogether?

Loyola Marymount University had not offered this class since before October 7, 2023, before the word encampment entered the academic lexicon, and before Israel and genocide were routinely uttered in the same sentence.

While I do not possess a PhD in Israel studies, I do possess rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a Master of Hebrew Letters degree, and a profound love for Israel: the land, the people, and the state.

Bret Stephens, writing in the Sapir Journal, in his essay, “Israel Studies Can Redeem Academia,” observes

The answer to the problem of capture is to refuse to get captured. Perhaps that means recruiting people whose credentials don’t include the letters P, H, and D. Perhaps it means insisting that the purpose of an Israel studies program is scholarship, not advocacy.¹

With Bret Stephens’ inspiration, I refused to be captured. I answered the call to teach thirty college students the history, intricacies, nuances, failures, and beauty of Zionism.

On the first day of class, I placed four signs in the corners of the classroom. Each sign contained a different definition of “home.”

Home is the place where you were born.
Home is the place where you find spirituality.
Home is the place where you currently reside.
Home is the place of your people’s origin.

Students stood beside the definition that resonated most deeply with them. As they debated and defended their choices, deeper questions emerged. Can one have more than one home? Can there be both an individual and a collective sense of home? Can identity emerge from a synthesis of these categories?

The students began studying a passage from Yossi Klein Halevi’s Letters To My Palestinian Neighbor, exploring the tension between the need for a homeland and the longing for one. To what extent was Zionism a response to physical insecurity, anti-Semitic violence, and pogroms? To what extent was Zionism an enduring yearning for land, language, and culture regardless of the conditions of Jewish life elsewhere?

Not until the third class was Zionism defined as the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. A student raised his hand and asked, “What is problematic with that?” That moment revealed the essential truth that teachers must cultivate questions, trust, and an intellectual foundation before offering answers. Zionism must be taught patiently, deliberately, and textually, one layer at a time.

The dates 1948, 1967, 1973, and the names Yitzchak Rabin, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin were unfamiliar to almost every student. Yet, terms such as apartheid, colonialism, and genocide could immediately evoke in them associations with Israel.

Over the next five months, using Gil Troy’s The Zionist Ideas textbook, students explored six schools of Zionist thought: labor, political, revisionist, religious, cultural, and diaspora. Troy organizes each movement into three historical phases: the pioneers of the late nineteenth century through statehood, the builders of the twentieth century, and the contemporary thinkers of today. His work updates Arthur Hertzberg’s 1959 book, The Zionist Idea by incorporating female Zionist thinkers such as Golda Meir, Rebettzin Esther Jungreis, and Ruth Wisse, while still omitting non-Jewish Zionist thinkers.

As the next chapter of Zionist thought is shaped, it is imperative that the conversation be broadened to include Zionist allies beyond the Jewish community: Evangelical Christian leaders such as Bishop Robert Stearns and Reverend Johnnie Moore, who so tirelessly advocated for every hostage to be brought home with the risk of putting their own careers in jeopardy; African-American community leaders such as Pastor Michael Fisher and Pastor Dumisani Washington who travel to Israel and preach the moral and spiritual significance of Zionism; Muslim voices from moderate Arab societies such as Loay Alshareef and Anila Ali; organizations such as Sharaka, whose members march alongside the Jews at March of The Living; and the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha community, whose guru traveled to Israel in 1999 and placed a flower in the crevice of the Western Wall, praying that every prayer ever inserted there be answered.

The Zionist conversation must also recognize a new generation of Zionist heroes: released hostages such as Eli Sharabi and Omer Shem Tov, the brilliant writings of witness Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the thousands of NOVA musical festival massacre survivors, and the brave young men and women serving in the Israel Defense Forces who put their lives on hold to defend Jewish people worldwide.

The book of Zionist ideas is not complete. Each generation must contribute its own chapter.

It was only with a core foundation of Zionist thought that students could engage intellectually with current events that could not have been expected prior to the start of the semester.

What should the students make of the conversation between Tucker Carlson and Ambassador Mike Huckabee? How should the students understand LeBron James’ remarks during NBA All-Star weekend that he heard Israel was a “good country” and might one day wish to visit? How should the students understand the action of Javier Bardem wearing a red hand pin at the Oscars while shouting “Free Palestine” from the stage?

In a class called Zionist Ideas, reading text does not suffice. The students needed face-to-face conversation. Guest lecturers included Rabbi David Wolpe, IDF veterans, Christian Zionists, Gazans who had fled Hamas rule, Israeli AI experts, and Hollywood producers engaged in creating the genre of “October 7th” media that will shape how the next generation learns about that fateful day.

As the class dissected primary texts and grappled with the complexity of Zionism, they were forced to confront this question: Now that the Zionist project belongs to them, how will they become responsible stewards of it?

It may appear odd that a Conservative pulpit rabbi was chosen to teach this class. But given the strong historical connection of the Conservative Movement to Zionism, it makes perfect sense that Conservative rabbis throughout the United States should be teaching this class to Jews and non-Jews alike.

Why Conservative Rabbis?

To understand why Conservative rabbis are uniquely positioned for this work, it is important to unpack the teachings of the foundational thinkers of Conservative Judaism.

Their ideas are not Israeli government policies. Rather, they concern the relationship between Diaspora Jews and the Land and the State of Israel.

Solomon Schechter and Zionism

Naomi Cohen, in her essay “Diaspora Plus Palestine, Religion Plus Nationalism,” writes that Schechter once remarked, “Zionism was, and still is, the most cherished dream I was worthy of having.”² Theodor Herzl willed the dream into political reality, but Schechter believed the dream required continual spiritual, religious, and cultural renewal.

Born in mid-nineteenth-century Romania, Schechter came to America in 1902 to lead the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His Zionism synthesized political, religious, and cultural Zionism. For Schechter, a Jewish state would combat assimilation, would plant a divine seed into the Jewish people, and inspire a renaissance of Judaism in America.

In his 1906 essay, “Zionism: A Statement,” Schechter argued that the anti-Semitic attacks he was witnessing were not new. Over a century later, Schechter’s words connect to the twenty-first-century Diaspora Jews, with the steep rise of violence Jews face daily. Jews are attacked in front of a synagogue in Los Angeles, Jews in England are stabbed getting off a bus, a synagogue in Michigan is attacked by a runaway car, and Jews are massacred on Bondi Beach.

Yet, there is one critical difference between Schechter’s era and today. Schechter dreamed of an Israel that he did not have. Today, Jews have an Israel that must be preserved and kept sacred, so that any Jew in danger will always have a home.

Schechter insisted Zionism encompass multiple interpretations.

For some it is a rebirth of national consciousness; to others, it is Jewish culture; and to yet others, it is a physical refuge for Jews to live safely. Each of these paths share one principle: a unified agreement that “Palestine, the land of our fathers, should be recovered with purpose of forming a home for at least a portion of the Jews, who would lead there an independent national life.”³

Schechter distinguished between Americanization and assimilation. To be an American was admirable: to understand American history and comprehend American literature. To become assimilated was tragic. We must not lose our Jewish dignity. Schechter teaches, “It is this kind of assimilation, with the terrible consequences indicated, that I dread most; even more than the pogroms.”⁴

In other words, the worst enemy of the Jew is too often the Jew himself.

One student in particular embodied Schechter’s warning. He admitted that when friends expressed anti-Israel views, he remained silent because, “they weren’t talking about me.” He could not recognize how anti-Zionist rhetoric was directed precisely at Jews like him.

Schechter’s warning had come to fruition a century later.

This student’s story did not end there. At the conclusion of the semester, after immersing himself in Zionist texts, he presented to the class how he now identified most with religious Zionism. He saw Israel as a place of spiritual resonance and he hoped to pursue Jewish leadership on campus. His study of Zionism became a rediscovery of Jewish identity itself.

For Schechter, Zionism must be as relevant to Jews who choose to live in Israel as to those who continually choose to live in exile, whether by choice or by necessity.

What will be the marker of Zionism’s success?

Schechter writes that the focus must be on not only what happens in Jerusalem or Zion but what will happen for Jerusalem or Zion.⁵ In other words, the Diaspora Jew cannot be disconnected from the religious connection of the land.

Today, even within the Conservative Movement, the younger generation is disconnecting from Israel in the same way Schechter warns against, separating Zionism from Judaism. Some Conservative synagogues refuse to recite the prayer for Israel, pulpits are no longer adorned with the Israeli flag, and rabbinical students protest the presence of Israel’s president at their own ordination ceremony at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Conservative Jews must not waver from Conservative Judaism’s roots.

For the last decade, millennials who attended Camp Ramah and USY and Jewish day school now say they were misled. They proclaim the Zionism taught in Schechter day schools, on USY Shabbatons and in Camp Ramah is not the Zionism that matches their universal values.

Students today must ask themselves, What does a world without Israel look like?

A world where six million Eastern European Jews were marched to the slaughter house.

What does a world with Israel look like? A world where over 2 million Jews in Arab lands, in the former Soviet Union, and in Ethiopia travel to the promised land from homes where they were no longer welcome.

At the same time, Jewish sovereignty in Israel, with a functioning military and democratic parliament, begs a different question, posed brilliantly by Ambassador Michael Oren in his essay “Jews and the Challenge of Sovereignty:”⁶ What does the responsibility of power look like and entail?

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion coined the term mamlachtiyut, the principle of how Jews must act in power of a sovereign state. Each step along the way, a Jew must ask if he is doing the moral thing, the right thing, and the Jewish thing.

Oren writes, “Our responsibility today is to prove to ourselves, and the world, that the phrase “Jewish state” is not in fact a contradiction in terms. We cannot simply rest on our laurels and promote the innovations of the stand-up nations, but we must also be able to claim that with our strength we have compassion.” ⁷

Moshe Hess, writing a few years before Schechter in his essay “Rome and Jerusalem,” describes the dishonorable Jew, not as the pious Jew with head bowed, but the Jew who is ashamed of his identity.⁸

Students today must walk through the world as Hess’ honorable Jew, with Schechter’s dream alive, and with Michael Oren’s ownership of responsibility that comes with the reality of fulfilling Herzl’s dream.

Heschel, Kaplan, and Ben-Gurion

The idealism of early Zionist thinkers must also be balanced against the realities of sustaining a sovereign Jewish state.

In his essay “Israel: An Echo of Eternity,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes

What is the meaning of the State of Israel? Its sheer being is the message. The ultimate meaning of the State of Israel must be seen in terms of the vision of the prophets: the redemption of humanity. The religious duty of the Jew is to participate in the continuous process of redemption.⁹

How are Jews to participate in this continual redemption?

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan offers an answer in “A New Zionism,” arguing that Zionism must “reconstitute our peoplehood, reclaim our ancient homeland and revitalize our Jewish way of life.”¹⁰

Kaplan’s three directives will lead to deep interpersonal relationships and fulfill our religious mission.

Despite their theological differences, Heschel and Kaplan converge on a critical point: Zionism must not sever the Diaspora from the Land of Israel. The opposite is true; reclaiming our homeland has the ability to revitalize Judaism everywhere, and bind together Jews across the globe.

Policies and politics must not be the disturbance that prohibits Jews from reclaim the ideals of Zionism.

That is what Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion articulated when he wrote Am Segula: Memoirs, in 1970, when Israel was only 22 years old.

What is Israel? It is two things: an Ark and a Covenant; in other words, a refuge and a dynamic. I think the dynamic, the covenant, takes precedence over the concept of refuge.¹¹

Israel cannot be a static geographic location. Israel cannot only be a place for Jews to hide from the antisemitism of the outside world. Israel must be active, always growing, challenging itself as a sovereign state described by Michael Oren while refusing to become the ghetto that Kaplan sought to avoid. A covenant is not only for the present moment; a covenant when acted upon correctly is everlasting, a relationship that is continually built upon.

Covenants appear throughout the biblical tradition: Noah and the rainbow, Shabbat as a sign between God and the Jewish people. That continual covenant begins with revelation at Mount Sinai.

Rabbi David Hartman emphasizes that covenant in his essay “Auschwitz or Sinai,” as he responds to the argument that the Holocaust is the reason behind the creation of the State of Israel.

It was not Hitler who brought us back to Zion, but rather belief in the eternal validity of the Sinai covenant….we will mourn forever because of the memory of Auschwitz. We will build a healthy new society because of the memory of Sinai.¹²

If Israel only lives in the state of victimhood, then the covenant cannot and will not be renewed. Living with the optimism that each Jew has a part in the renewed covenant allows the Jewish people, with all the disagreements that are part of the people, to strive for the dreams of Schechter, Kaplan, Herzl, and the myriad of Jews over time who could only have hoped for the challenges and opportunities that the Jewish world has been gifted today.

How do Conservative Jews participate in that covenant living across the ocean? How do Jews who are not citizens of the State of Israel—who do not serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, but as Diaspora Jews—feel a deep connection to building the covenant of tomorrow?

From 1985-1988, the Conservative Movement published Emet v’Emuna, Conservative Judaism’s foundational philosophy. Within this document, the leaders of the movement articulated a vision of mutual dependence between Israel and the Diaspora.

Both the State of Israel and the Diaspora have roles to fill: each can and must aid and enrich the other in every possible way; each needs the other. It is our fervent hope that Zion will indeed be the center of Torah and Jerusalem a beacon lighting the way for the Jewish people and for humanity.¹³

This cannot be more true than in Los Angeles, California, the city with the third largest Jewish population in the entire world.

For the last five years, Sinai Temple has participated in the ShinShinim program in partnership with the Jewish Agency. Israeli high school graduates come to Los Angeles, live with host families, and teach the community about Israeli culture, society, and Hebrew language. They plan Yom Ha’atzmaut festivals, teach in our religious school, and instill Zionist pride in Diaspora communities. They often arrive with no religious background, having rarely or not at all set foot in a synagogue sanctuary.

Without fail, Jewish Diaspora communities learn a great deal from the ShinShinim, and equally without fail, the shin shin returns to Israel with a deep understanding of Conservative Judaism, of an egalitarian expression of Judaism that still struggles to take hold in Israel. To witness the magic of the ShinShinim program is also to comprehend the critical mission to further cement the Israel-Diaspora relationship.

Similarly transformative was the winter of 2024, when Sinai Temple hosted teenagers from the Eshkol Regional Council on the Gaza border for a week of respite after October 7. These young men had been members of a basketball team that disbanded after their homes were destroyed and their families murdered or help captive.

Initially, the teens and their coaches were resistant to entering a synagogue until their host families dragged them through the door. When they felt the warmth from the community and witnessed the welcome they received, they concluded Shabbat tefillah with a rousing rendition of Am Yisrael Chai standing on the bima with arms wrapped around each other.

The following year, the teens returned to Los Angeles. Synagogue attendance was optional, and yet every teen chose to come to Shabbat services because of the prior year’s experience. This is the covenantal relationship that the Conservative movement must nurture. Diaspora Jews strengthen Israeli Judaism even as Israel depends on Diaspora Jewish identity.

As the semester of Ideas of Zionism at Loyola Marymount University concluded, the students were administered an oral exam. There were two questions:

What led you to take this class?
How do you connect with Zionism after learning about it?

Student after student remarked, “I barely knew the word Zionism existed before I entered this classroom.”

These courageous students were not afraid to say, “I don’t know.” After months of study, they now know how to know. They were given the opportunity to learn, to engage, to ask difficult questions, and to think.

At the end of the semester, these students could identify that Zionism manifests differently across communities and individuals. They recognized that a Jewish democratic state is pluralistic, filled with arguments, and still under one flag. They understood that whatever Zionism one holds as their own, the central principle stays the same: the right of the Jewish people to have self-determination in their ancient homeland.

The complexity and beauty of Zionism can be seen in the composition of the Prayer for the State of Israel, Avinu Shebashamyim. Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Chai Uriel, who was exiled to Damascus in 1917 and returned to Israel in 1920, worked with Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi to unite the two distinct communities. In September 1948, Israel was only 4 months old, but these two rabbis came together to compose this prayer now recited in congregations around the world. Its central phrase, reshit tzemichat ge’ulateinu, that Israel should be the beginning and flowering of redemption, rings true through each text of every Zionist thinker.

As Gil Troy notes, the irony that two very different rabbis wrote this prayer, edited by the novelist Samuel Yosef Agnon and printed in a secular newspaper, is the epitome of what defines the Jewish homeland. It represents the dreams of the past whose echoes are still heard, the covenant that is renewed each day, and ultimately the hope felt when Hatikvah is sung toward the blue and white flag.

Be More

At the recent Leffell Rabbinic Zionism Conference in March of 2026, Ahmed al Khatib addressed 150 Zionist diaspora rabbis.

Ahmed was born in Gaza and lost his hearing due to an Israeli air strike. He also lost more than 30 members of his family in Gaza after October 7. At the same time, Ahmed speaks courageously against Hamas rule and for the moral reform within Palestinian society.

In front of 150 rabbis, Ahmed was asked how the Jewish community can help him after he has done so much for them?

Without hesitation, Ahmed looked at this group of rabbis representing thousands in their respective communities, and gave the group two answers.

He said, “Be more Jewish….and be more Zionist.”

His words were sincere. He meant it in the deepest way, in that Zionism must be more than a blanket love of a geographic location. Zionism must be a moral responsibility.

The students at Loyola Marymount also had the opportunity to engage with a Gazan, Hamza Howidy. Hamza left Gaza before October 7, after he was threatened by Hamas when he protested in the “We Want To Live” movement.

Hamza was asked, “What is your view on Zionism?”

He responded, “I am not sure what type of Zionist I am or even if I am one at all. But I do know what Zionism has done for the Jewish people, and I hope my people will work toward that same goal in the way your people have done.”

Sometimes it takes an outsider to remind us of the blessings we ourselves take for granted.

How many Jews take the time to study their own history in a deep way? The answer is not enough. For if they did, they would have the same response as the students when they were asked to describe their feeling toward Zionism in one word at the end of the semester.

One young man quietly said, “Healing. In a world where my entire knowledge of Israel came from my phone with posts and reels, it was healing to sit in a room, to learn these ideas, to process the history, to look at the maps, to see the pictures, to have face to face conversations with people—Jews, Arabs, Christians, faith leaders, politicians, and citizens, that live this reality each and every day.”

Od lo avdah tikvateinu—the hope is not yet lost.

The Conservative Movement, and particularly the Conservative rabbinate, has a critical role to play in sustaining this covenant for future generations. Zionism must not only be taught in afternoon religious schools and Jewish day schools. Conservative rabbis must be the ones to enter the college campus, bringing their intellectual rigor, theological depth, historical honesty, deep understanding of Zionism’s intricacies, and an enduring love of Israel.

The Conservative Movement stands on a mighty foundation. Let those dreams of the past enable the dreams of tomorrow, so that the eternal covenant will never be shaken between the Jewish people and the people of Israel. Students on college campuses are thirsty for knowledge, for a connection to a land and a people they barely know thousands of miles away. The Conservative Movement can quench that thirst and engage today’s generation in the eternal living covenant.

Rabbi Erez Sherman is the Senior Rabbi, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, CA. He directs the Flesh Family Sinai Temple Israel Center and founded the Sinai Temple Israel Center Rabbinical School Fellowship.

¹ Bret Stephens, “Israel Studies Can Redeem Academia,” Sapir Journal 20, Aspiration (2026): 84.
² Naomi W. Cohen, ‘‘ ‘Diaspora plus Palestine, Religion plus Nationalism’: The Seminary and Zionism, 1902-1948,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., Tradition Renewed: A History of The Jewish Theological Seminary, vol. 2 (The Jewish Theological Seminary, 1997), 115-176.
³ Solomon Schechter, “Zionism: A Statement.” Published in pamphlet form by the Federation of American Zionists, December 28, 1906. Reprinted in Mordecai Waxman, ed., Tradition and Change: The Development of Conservative Judaism (The Burning Bush Press, 1958), 457-466.
⁴ Schechter.
⁵ Schechter.
⁶ Michael Oren, “Jews and the Challenge of Sovereignty,” in Gil Troy, ed., The Zionist Ideas (Jewish Publication Society, 2018), 334.
⁷ Oren, “Jews and the Challenge Of Sovereignty,” 335.
⁸ Moses Hess, “Rome and Jerusalem,” The Zionist Ideas, 247.
⁹ Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Israel: An Echo of Eternity,” The Zionist Ideas, 247.
¹⁰ Mordecai M. Kaplan, “A New Zionism,” The Zionist Ideas.
¹¹ David Ben-Gurion, Am Segula: Memoirs, in Gil Troy, ed., The Zionist Ideas, 150.
¹² David Hartman, “Auschwitz or Sinai,” The Zionist Ideas, 257.
¹³ Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism (The Rabbinical Assembly, 1988), quoted in The Zionist Ideas, 33.