A Jewish Home

Roger Berkowitz

Peter Beinart acknowledges what he calls “the painful truth” that there is not going to be a two-state solution in the Middle East. Given that reality, Beinart asks, what is the path forward? Growing numbers of Palestinians embrace a one-state solution. But in Israel and amongst Jews, the one-state solution crosses a red line, since it would likely mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. For Beinart, it is time for Jews and Israelis to pivot from thinking about Israel as a Jewish state to being a Jewish homeland. 

Beinart’s critique of a Jewish state and his call for a Jewish homeland mirrors Hannah Arendt’s skepticism around nation-states, which she argued must always elevate one nationality above others who have second-class status. Arendt herself proposed that Israel imagine itself as a federated state rather than a single nation state. As a federalist state, Israel could offer constitutional guarantees for both Jewish and Palestinian homelands. Beinart considers this and proposes something similar, a binational state. 

That after more than half-a-century of animosity, war, and terror these two people can form a common state that respects both of their justified dreams requires a leap of faith. Beinert makes the argument it is more possible than it might seem.  I imagine no one will agree with all of what Beinart writes in this essay; I certainly do not. But Beinart’s essay is well worth thinking about.

The painful truth is that the project to which liberal Zionists like myself have devoted ourselves for decades—a state for Palestinians separated from a state for Jews—has failed. The traditional two-state solution no longer offers a compelling alternative to Israel’s current path. It risks becoming, instead, a way of camouflaging and enabling that path. It is time for liberal Zionists to abandon the goal of Jewish–Palestinian separation and embrace the goal of Jewish–Palestinian equality.

This doesn’t require abandoning Zionism. It requires reviving an understanding of it that has largely been forgotten. It requires distinguishing between form and essence. The essence of Zionism is not a Jewish state in the land of Israel; it is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that both offers Jews refuge and enriches the entire Jewish world. It’s time to explore other ways to achieve that goal—from confederation to a democratic binational state—that don’t require subjugating another people. It’s time to envision a Jewish home that is a Palestinian home, too.

Jews have distinguished between form and essence at other critical junctures in our history. For roughly a thousand years, Jewish worship meant bringing sacrifices to the Temple in Jerusalem. Then, in 70 CE, with the Temple about to fall, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai imagined an alternative. He famously asked the Roman Emperor to “Give me Yavne and its Sages.” From the academies of Yavne came a new form of worship, based on prayer and study. Animal sacrifice, it turned out, was not essential to being a Jew. Neither is supporting a Jewish state. Our task in this moment is to imagine a new Jewish identity, one that no longer equates Palestinian equality with Jewish genocide. One that sees Palestinian liberation as integral to our own. That’s what Yavne means today.