by Eliana Fishman and Isaac Brooks Fishman

Sukkot, celebrated recently, involved a lot of preparation: putting up and decorating a Sukkah, buying lulav and etrog, planning holiday meals with friends and family. Palestinians also had to prepare for Sukkot. It was a week of complete closure across the West Bank, when Israel closed its checkpoints to allow Israeli soldiers a vacation, and ordered Palestinians to stay in their towns and neighborhoods on pain of being shot. It was a week when Palestinians could not go to work or school, because the ten-minute drive to a nearby town (lengthened to an hour by checkpoint bottlenecks) is made impassable. For those in small towns, or enclaves surrounded by settlements, it was a week in which they could not even go to a grocery store.

This year, amidst the famine in Gaza, Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing for the Jewish holidays—over 3 weeks—closing the crossing through which many of the life-saving aid trucks enter. This closure exacerbated food shortages, to the point where a kilogram of potatoes (about two pounds) cost $40 USD, and a tray of eggs more than $80.

We used to think Judaism was separable from Zionism. But the more we see the symbols, practices, and observances of Judaism become part of the system oppressing Palestinians, the more we have come to believe that Judaism itself is guilty of what Zionism has done. We can’t exonerate Judaism for Israel’s atrocities any more than we can exonerate Christianity for the Inquisition and pogroms committed by its adherents.

In 2017, Eliana was in the South Hebron Hills for the 49th night of the omer, the 7-week period between the Passover and Shavuot holidays.She made a blessing and counted the 49th day—7 complete weeks. The practice is to only make the blessing if you remembered to count every single night, and she was feeling proud of her achievement. Next to her, a group of teenaged Palestinian boys were hanging out and speaking Arabic far more advanced than her basic level. All of a sudden, the language shifted to Hebrew, as one of the boys was on the phone with the Israeli Civil Administration, asking “yesh seger machar?” – “Is there a closure tomorrow”? 

The boys knew they would lose their ability to leave their homes during the holiday. What they didn’t know was whether they could live their lives on the eve of the holiday, which only began at sunset.

Hearing that pulled Eliana out of her pride in Jewish practice, out of pre-holiday joy. She had counted the days between Passover and Shavuot to commemorate the biblical period between slavery and revelation. These kids were marking the time between military closures, figuring out when they could go shopping and visit friends, and when they would be trapped in their communities.

In the diaspora, non-Jews have never heard of Shavuot. When we explain to our non-Jewish bosses that we are going to stay up all night learning Torah and eating cheesecake, they shrug their shoulders and approve our time-off requests. That Palestinians are one of the few communities of non-Jews who know what Shavuot is and when it falls on the Gregorian calendar, is astonishing. And it is shameful, as this happens because Israel has turned the Jewish calendar into a weapon of war.

West Bank Palestinians need a comprehensive Jewish education to be ready for the violence against them. They need to learn what Amalek is to understand when Netanyahu’s speeches are calling for genocide against them. In Hebron, they need to know when the Parashah of “Chayei Sarah” comes out in the calendar—because that parashah tells of Avraham buying the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, it is a week of an annual Jewish pilgrimage to the city, with accompanying violence from the pilgrims and soldiers accompanying them.

Israel has turned Judaism hateful in other ways. Take Jewish symbols. In 2017, there was much debate over whether the anti-Zionist queer event Chicago Dyke March was antisemitic for banning a flag dubbed the “Jewish Pride Flag,” a flag that took the Israeli flag’s Star of David but put it against a background of the rainbow flag instead of Israel’s two blue stripes. The defenders of the flag argued that it was wrong to ban the Star of David itself, a purely Jewish symbol, as a Zionist symbol.

But a few minutes of listening to Palestinians shows the hollowness of that defense. The Star of David is a symbol used to enact constant violence against them. Settlers graffiti Stars of David on their homes alongside “Death to Arabs,” using it as a symbol of intimidation much the way the Ku Klux Klan in this country used burning crosses. Israeli soldiers brand Palestinians with Stars of David as means of torture.

Lively singing of classic Jewish songs is a core bonding experience in Jewish communities, especially Orthodox ones. Most of the songs we sing at Shabbat meals have lyrics taken from the Torah or other Jewish texts; knowing the tunes is as much part of Jewish literacy as any story in the Talmud. 

This too is tarnished. On Israel’s Jerusalem Day holiday, Palestinians are forced out of the Old City of Jerusalem for the far-right “Flag March,” where thousands of Jews march through the Old City waving Israeli flags, ransacking Palestinian storefronts, and beating any Palestinians they come across. Throughout these riots they sing many of those same songs, such as “Am Yisrael Chai,” mixed with the lyrics “May your village burn.” 

As we prepared for Simchat Torah, a holiday filled with joyous singing and dancing, we considered the melodies that we sing. Have we recently watched a video of Israeli soldiers singing the same melody as they prepare to kill innocent Palestinians? Did Israeli prison guards force Palestinian prisoners to sing those chants at the Sde Teiman torture camps? 

Any time a Jew disconnects from the world to enjoy a holiday, that is a day when Palestinians are trapped in their homes on threat of death. Any time a Jew enjoys spirited singing on a Shabbat afternoon, those are songs used by rioting teenagers as they attack Palestinians and bond over their supremacist ideology. Any time a Jew reads from the Torah, that Torah is being used to justify violence against Palestinians.

When Zionism has turned Judaism into a tool of oppression, how should Jews practice Judaism? How should non-Jews engage with Judaism? And how should Palestine advocates interact with Judaism?

 We don’t have easy answers to these questions. But we know that it is not possible to simply declare our Jewish practice separate from Zionism. Some would rather we focus our values on other issues, fighting for progressive causes in the United States and leaving Israel aside. But one way or the other, Zionism necessarily impacts how we live Jewish lives.

Isaac Brooks Fishman is an attorney. Eliana Fishman works in political data. They both live and work in Washington DC.