Zionism is the Jewish national movement for self-determination in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. It helped establish the modern State of Israel in 1948 and continues through support for Israel’s existence, security, and future as a Jewish homeland.
Behind that definition stands an extraordinary story: an ancient people, centuries of exile, an enduring attachment to Jerusalem, and the determination to take responsibility for our own future.
I write Zionism Today from Efrat, in the hills of Judea. Here, Jewish history belongs to the landscape around us. Jerusalem is a drive away. Hebrew fills classrooms, supermarket aisles, and family conversations. Places our ancestors remembered in prayer are places we can visit.
I am a Zionist. This guide explains what that means, where the movement came from, and why it matters.
What Does Zionism Mean?
At its core, Zionism holds that the Jewish people have the right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
Jews are a people with a shared historical origin, religious tradition, cultural inheritance, and enduring relationship with the Land of Israel. Across centuries of dispersion, those connections survived alongside the languages and customs Jewish communities developed around the world.
Modern Zionism brought those attachments into an organized movement to establish a national home. Since Israel’s independence, Zionism has included support for the country’s continued existence and development.
Its practical implications are enormous: a place where Jews can seek refuge, build institutions, speak their language, shape their public life, and make decisions about their collective security.
Jewish freedom should never depend entirely on somebody else’s willingness to tolerate us.
What Is a Zionist?
A Zionist supports Jewish national self-determination in Israel and the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Beyond that shared commitment, Zionists disagree—sometimes spectacularly.
They disagree about borders, religion, economics, diplomacy, military strategy, and the government. Religious and secular Zionists can reach their commitment through different understandings of Jewish history and identity.
The movement has always contained competing schools of thought, including political, cultural, socialist, religious, and Revisionist traditions.
Being a Zionist does not require surrendering your judgment. It means recognizing that the Jewish people’s freedom and national future matter.
Where Does the Word “Zion” Come From?
Zion is a biblical name closely associated with Jerusalem. Over time, it became a broader expression of Jerusalem, the Land of Israel, and the Jewish hope of return.
That attachment runs through Jewish prayer and ritual. Jews pray toward Jerusalem, mourn the destruction of the Temples, and remember Jerusalem beneath the wedding canopy. The Passover Seder ends with the aspiration: “Next year in Jerusalem.”
The modern movement took its name from a relationship already embedded in Jewish life.
For generations, Jerusalem remained present in homes thousands of miles away. A family in Yemen and a family in Poland could speak different everyday languages, eat different foods, and live under different rulers while turning toward the same city.
When Did Zionism Begin?
Two related histories explain Zionism: the ancient Jewish connection to the land and the modern political movement that emerged in the nineteenth century.
Abraham and the biblical roots
In the Torah, Abraham is commanded to leave his home and travel to the land God will show him. His journey takes him into Canaan, where the biblical narrative describes a covenant linking his descendants to the land.
The stories of Isaac, Jacob, the Exodus, and the return under Joshua develop that relationship further.
For religious Jews, these are foundational accounts of peoplehood, responsibility, and belonging. They belong to biblical tradition and should be distinguished from events documented through modern historical records.
Abraham lived long before political Zionism. Yet the relationship described in his story helps explain why this particular land became central to Jewish identity.
Ancient Israel, exile, and return
The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah rooted Jewish national and religious life in the land. Jerusalem became the central place of worship.
Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 BCE brought exile. Under Persian rule, Judeans returned and rebuilt their religious and communal life.
Centuries later, Roman rule, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the suppression of Jewish revolts brought further devastation.
Jewish dispersion developed over centuries. Jewish communities also continued to live in the land. There was no single moment when every Jew departed, followed by a complete Jewish absence.
Across the diaspora, Jewish communities preserved their connection through prayer, study, pilgrimage, charitable support, and migration.
The modern political movement
During the nineteenth century, Jewish thinkers and activists developed organized responses to persecution, political exclusion, and the challenges of modern national identity.
Leo Pinsker’s Auto-Emancipation, published in 1882, argued for Jews to take responsibility for their collective future. The Hovevei Zion movement supported settlement and the development of Jewish communities in the land.
Modern Zionism grew from historical attachment, national aspiration, and urgent insecurity. It transformed a longstanding hope into practical organizing.
Who Was Theodor Herzl?
Theodor Herzl was a Jewish journalist and writer who became a central organizer of modern political Zionism.
In 1896, he published Der Judenstaat, commonly translated as The Jewish State. In 1897, he convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, attended by approximately 200 delegates from 17 countries.
Herzl helped turn dispersed aspirations into an international movement with institutions, diplomatic efforts, and a political program.
Jewish attachment to Israel preceded him by centuries. His achievement was to organize toward a future in which Jews could exercise national self-determination.
Generations had preserved the destination in prayer. Herzl helped organize the political effort to reach it.
How Did Zionism Lead to the Establishment of Israel?
Israel emerged through decades of immigration, community building, diplomacy, institution building, and conflict.
Jewish communities developed farms, neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, newspapers, and institutions of self-government. Hebrew, preserved for centuries through prayer, scholarship, and literature, became a shared language of everyday life.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration expressed British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. It also stipulated that the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities must not be prejudiced. The League of Nations Mandate subsequently incorporated the national-home commitment.
In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly recommended partition into Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leaders accepted the proposal; Arab leaders rejected it.
David Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence on May 14, 1948. Neighboring Arab armies entered the conflict as the British Mandate ended, widening the war already underway.
The declaration established Jewish statehood while committing the new country to equality of social and political rights for all inhabitants, regardless of religion, race, or sex.
Sovereignty gave the Jewish people power over their collective future—and responsibility for how that power would be used.
Did Zionism Begin Because of the Holocaust?
No. Modern political Zionism was established decades before the Holocaust, and Jewish attachment to the land long preceded it.
The Holocaust—the murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators—made the consequences of Jewish vulnerability devastatingly clear.
It strengthened the urgency of a secure national home, particularly for survivors who could not rebuild their lives where their families had been murdered.
But Israel’s historical foundations extend far beyond that catastrophe.
Understanding Zionism requires understanding Jewish life, language, culture, and national aspirations alongside Jewish suffering. Our history includes what Jews built, preserved, and dreamed of becoming.
How Are Zionism and Judaism Connected?
Judaism includes religious belief and practice, while Jewish identity also involves peoplehood, history, culture, and collective memory.
The Land of Israel is central to Jewish scripture, prayer, festivals, and religious law. Zionism draws on that relationship while taking different forms among Jews with different beliefs.
For many religious Zionists, return and national renewal carry spiritual significance. Secular Zionists may emphasize language, culture, refuge, and national independence.
Some Jews have opposed Zionism on religious or political grounds. Jewish opinion has never been uniform.
For me, Judaism and Zionism are deeply connected. Jewish life in this land brings prayer, history, and responsibility into the same daily experience.
Can Non-Jews Be Zionists?
Yes. Non-Jews can support Jewish self-determination and Israel’s existence for historical, religious, democratic, or personal reasons.
Christian Zionism is one expression of that support. Others approach it through concern for Jewish security or recognition of the Jewish people’s national rights.
You do not have to be Jewish to believe that Jews deserve a secure national home.
Does Zionism Mean Supporting Every Israeli Government?
No.
Supporting a country’s existence does not require agreement with every policy of its government. Zionists can criticize leaders, demand accountability, campaign for change, and disagree about the country’s direction.
Debating how Israel should govern itself is different from denying Jewish national self-determination altogether.
A serious commitment to Israel includes caring enough to argue about its future—and accepting the responsibility to make those arguments honestly.
Why Do Judea and Samaria Matter in Jewish History?
Judea and Samaria contain places central to the biblical narrative and the history of ancient Israel and Judah.
Hebron, Beit El, Shiloh, and Shechem appear throughout Jewish scripture and historical memory. The names Judea and Samaria preserve connections to ancient kingdoms and their geography.
These areas are widely known internationally as the West Bank. Their modern political status, borders, and governance remain subjects of conflict and negotiation.
Those disputes do not erase the Jewish historical relationship with the region. Nor does that relationship make the lives and rights of its present-day Palestinian residents irrelevant.
For someone living in Efrat, these questions have an immediate weight. They concern our homes, our neighbors, our security, and the future our children will inherit.
What About Palestinians?
Palestinians have their own history, communities, national identity, and aspirations. They have rights, dignity, and legitimate concerns about their future.
The conflict includes wars, terrorism, displacement, competing claims, and the difficult question of how two peoples can live securely. During the 1948 war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled—events Palestinians remember as the Nakba.
Zionists disagree about which political arrangements could resolve the conflict.
My starting point is firm: Jewish history cannot be erased, Jewish security cannot be treated as optional, and any durable agreement must protect human life and be capable of surviving contact with reality.
Recognizing another people’s humanity strengthens the seriousness of that position.
Is Criticism of Israel Antisemitic?
Criticism of Israeli policy is not automatically antisemitic. The substance and language of an argument matter.
Criticism crosses into antisemitism when it targets Jews as Jews, blames Jewish communities collectively for Israeli actions, invokes antisemitic conspiracy theories, or justifies violence against Jews.
Supporting Palestinian rights does not inherently require opposing Jewish national self-determination.
Political arguments should be judged by what they actually say. A political label cannot turn harassment of Jews into a respectable debate.
What Does Zionism Mean Today?
The establishment of Israel fulfilled the movement’s central political objective. It also created lasting responsibilities.
Today, Zionism can involve supporting Israel’s security, helping immigrants build new lives, strengthening Hebrew and Jewish culture, contributing to Israeli society, and protecting the institutions through which citizens govern their country.
For me, it also means telling the stories that disappear when Israel is reduced to a headline.
The family making a home in Judea. The children growing into Hebrew. The neighbors organizing meals when somebody is struggling. The ordinary persistence of people determined to build a life here.
Those lives belong in any explanation of Zionism.
Why Zionism Matters
Jewish history contains extraordinary creativity and endurance. It also contains repeated reminders of how vulnerable a people can become when its safety depends entirely on others.
Zionism affirms that Jews can take responsibility for their national future in the land where their peoplehood took shape.
That freedom carries obligations: to protect life, govern responsibly, preserve human dignity, and build a country worthy of the generations who longed for it.
The Jewish people’s connection to Israel survived exile. Modern Zionism helped turn that connection into sovereignty. What we build with that sovereignty is the work of our generation.
That is the conversation at Zionism Today: Jewish history, Israeli life, difficult questions, and an unapologetic commitment to the Jewish future.
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