Part 1: A Personal Journey to Truth

Note: In the Spring of 2022, after Jessie was fired for being anti-zionist and subsequently sued the synagogue, we received an outpouring of support and outreach that far overshadowed the hateful interactions. One of these people who reached out was Dr. Bill. Bill emailed us and told us about himself a bit, and expressed that he had a whole collection of old anti-zionist literature that informed his own anti-zionist journey decades ago. One Sunday, we went to Queens for lunch with Bill and his wonderful wife, and talked and he gave us some of the books to read. After sharing some of these texts with our community online and seeing people resonate with them, Bill decided he wanted to share his own journey. These are his words, unedited by us, and his journey. We hope it brings folks hope in justice and change and love.

My name is Dr. Bill. I am going to omit my surname for the time being. The doctorate is DMD, which stands for Doctor of Dental Medicine. I was in my own private practice for over forty years until a nearly fatal heart attack forced me to retire twelve years ago.

I’m currently seventy-six years old and in reasonably good health.

I am a Jew, I’ve always been a Jew and I am also an anti-Zionist.  In spite of the accusation that some Zionists like to make; I certainly don’t hate myself, and never have. However I was not always anti-Zionist, and it is that journey that I will describe in this essay. 

“In spite of the accusation that some Zionists like to make; I certainly don’t hate myself, and never have.”

As a preteen, up until bar mitzvah I went to afternoon Hebrew school at a Young Israel which is part of the Modern Orthodox movement.  This was not because of any religious conviction on the part of my parents. That synagogue just happened to be across the street from our apartment building in the Bronx.  The next nearest congregation was five blocks away and happened to be Conservative.  No one knew what Reform and certainly not Reconstructionist were, and if they did they assumed those were for gentiles.

I remember at a certain time of year we were given those little blue boxes to go and ask our neighbors for spare change to help plant trees in Israel to “make the desert bloom”.  Nothing wrong with being ecologically minded, even in the late 50s, and who doesn’t like trees?  It was only many years later that it occurred to me that the desert was still a desert, and the planted trees were placed over the depopulated and destroyed Palestinian villages caused by the actions of the Haganah, the Irgun and later what became the IDF.

In 1967, when the Six Day War occurred, I was in Montreal on a trip with my college fraternity brothers. I remember how we cheered with reflected pride.  It was similar to how a fan feels when their favorite college or pro football team wins. “Yay,the Jews won!”  Eighteen to twenty year old males, as a general rule, don't have reflective abilities as a strong suit.  Hopefully that comes later as one matures.

The 1973 war was another thing altogether,and by that time I was in dental school. I remember, as the treasurer of our Jewish dental school fraternity, going around to the faculty and other students to ask for donations to the Israeli Red Mogen David. Although many faculty were quite generous, it was also my first experience with overt Jew-hatred.  I was told by one faculty member that if it wasn’t for me he’d hate every Jew in the school.

I want to just digress here for a moment. This incident wasn’t the first time; it was the first time that feeling had been verbally expressed to me.  As a teen, we used to get into fights with some of the local Catholics, who were told by their parish priest that we were “Christ killers”.  That of course is the classic religious pretext for Jew hatred or what is more popularly called “anti-semitism”.   I really don’t like that latter term.  In the first place it began as a 19th century euphemism used by Jew haters, so they wouldn’t have to say “I hate Jews”.  “I’m an anti-Semite” sounded more polite. But, the vast majority of European Jews were not then, or are now, Semites. They are ethnically Ashkenazim from north Eastern Europe and Russia.  The only thing Semitic is the Hebrew language used in the prayer books and Torah scrolls. When rabbis gave their sermons, it was in the native spoken languages of where they lived: English, French, Yiddish etc.  The other living Semitic language is Arabic, and Arab people ARE semites.  The Jews native to the Arab countries are also semites.  But 19th century European Jews haters were never referring to those two latter groups. Apparently, also in the 19th century, the word “Jew” was also considered pejorative.

“But, the vast majority of European Jews were not then, or are now, Semites. They are ethnically Ashkenazim from north Eastern Europe and Russia.”

Thus the Reform movement which began in Germany and then traveled to the United States decided to describe themselves as “American Hebrews” and Reform Judaism became The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) until the very end of the 20th century when they decided the word Jew was not so bad after all and morphed into The Union of Reform Judaism (URJ).   However from its inception until the end of WWII, the UAHC was non or even anti-Zionist, while the URJ is practically 100% Zionist.

I now return to my regularly scheduled journey.  After graduation we followed the familiar process, marriage, building our careers , raising a family.  I didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on in the world.  We joined three Reform congregations; the first two in Queens depending on where we lived at the moment; and the last one on Long Island where I built a home office.  We were members more for social reasons than religious ones.  I confess I am not religious at all, at least not in any conventional sense of the term.  I did however religiously read the Sunday New York Times: just about all of it.  In those days you’d spread the sections around the coffee table and sofas in the den. There was no internet. Sometimes I miss those days; now it seems primitive.

One of my favorite sections was the NYTimes Book Review.  It was here in 1978 that my anti-Zionist journey began.   

Part Two available soon!