As A Jew

[May 2026]

If you spend enough time in online Jewish discussion spaces, especially on Reddit, you will eventually run into the idea that anti-Zionist or post-Zionist converts are somehow fake Jews. And if they are non-Orthodox converts on top of that, forget it. According to a loud section of the community, our conversions are invalid, our sincerity is suspect, and the only reason we converted in the first place was so we could march into pro-Palestine spaces and say “as a Jew” for social clout. We supposedly want to be praised as “one of the good ones.” We supposedly converted for internet virtue points.

This is absolute bullshit.

I am a post-Zionist Diasporist Jew. I converted because I've felt a pull towards Judaism since childhood. I converted because Judaism spoke to my soul with a force I could not ignore. I converted because Torah became sacred to me. I converted because Jewish history, Jewish survival, Jewish argument, Jewish ethics, Jewish grief, Jewish humor, Jewish stubbornness, and Jewish spiritual life got under my skin and into my bones. I converted because I found holiness there. I converted because I love the Jewish people.

Also, the food.

I did not convert so some nineteen-year-old on TikTok with a watermelon emoji in their bio would clap for me.

And yes, during my geirus (conversion process) in 2024 I learned very quickly to keep my mouth shut about Israel. Anyone paying attention learns that fast. I knew perfectly well that being openly post-Zionist and critical of Israel and calling for a ceasefire would likely jeopardize my ability to convert. That doesn't mean I converted under false pretense, it means I read the room and knew that in a space where the descendants of Holocaust survivors are grieving October 7th and see the rise of antisemitism and are afraid for the future, it's insensitive (at the very least) for me to be like "well aCtUaLly Israel is doing bad things". But I lack community now: in 2025 I moved to a rural area prohibitively far from shul, because that was where my roommate and I could afford to live after her divorce. It is an hour drive one way, and not worth it to sit through prayers for the IDF every Shabbat while Gaza burns and dead children pile up in the rubble. It's lonely and it's not ideal, but it is what it is.

That does not mean I hate Jews, or even that I hate Israel. It means I am horrified by what is being done in our name.

And contrary to what some people insist, being pro-Palestine does not mean I want Israel destroyed. I do not oppose Israel’s right to exist. I oppose genocide. I oppose ethnic supremacy. I oppose endless occupation and dehumanization. I want a fair future where Jews and Palestinians both live in dignity and safety, whether that ultimately takes the form of two states or one democratic state with equal rights and law of return protections for both peoples. That's not for me to decide, over here in the States.

Frankly, I think Israel’s long-term survival depends on learning to coexist with its neighbors instead of trying to dominate them forever through force. Military superiority is not a substitute for peace. Trauma is not a substitute for ethics. And no nation on earth can bomb its way into moral legitimacy.

The Torah demands that we pursue justice and compassion. Not selectively. Not only for Jews.

We are commanded over and over again to care for the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt. The prophets scream about oppression, corruption, cruelty, exploitation of the vulnerable, and the worship of power. Isaiah does not say, “Seek justice unless you are afraid.” Amos does not say, “Let justice roll down like waters, except during wartime.” Judaism at its best demands moral courage. It demands self-examination. It demands remembering that power can corrupt us too.

One of the most horrifying things about this era has been watching some Jews invoke Jewish suffering as justification for inflicting suffering. “Never again” was supposed to be a universal warning to humanity. It was not supposed to become a tribal slogan meaning “never again to us, but everyone else can get fucked.”

And this is where being post-Zionist becomes deeply uncomfortable, because I often find myself alienated from both Zionists and anti-Zionists alike.

A lot of American Jews will tell you “all Zionism means is the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.” Fine. I understand why they say that. But words exist in public context, not private definition. To much of the world, “Zionism” is associated with settlements, apartheid, dead civilians, military occupation, racist rhetoric from far-right Israeli politicians, and the idea that Palestinian lives matter less than Jewish lives. You cannot simply lecture the world into ignoring what they are seeing with their own eyes.

And unfortunately, Zionists are not doing a great job of backing up that Zionism "only" means the right of the Jewish people to self-determination and not agreeing with everything Israel does. Because I don't support the State of Israel's actions, I've been called a kapo, a fake convert, and a self-loathing Jew by Zionist-identified Jews.

At the same time, a lot of anti-Zionists chant "from the river to the sea" and talk about “sending the Jews back to Europe” like human beings are pieces on a fucking Monopoly board. Apart from the obvious cruelty of advocating mass displacement, where exactly are Mizrahi Jews supposed to go? Iraq? Yemen? Morocco? Countries many of their families fled under threat and violence? And from a practical perspective, people advocating fantasies of expelling millions of Israeli Jews are playing with genocidal fire whether they admit it or not.

You do not rectify one historical displacement with another.

And anyone with the slightest understanding of human history should grasp what would happen if Israeli Jews were somehow forcibly expelled. Palestinian nationalists who have spent generations carrying the trauma and rage of the Nakba have not forgotten. Trauma reproduces trauma. Violence reproduces violence. Within a generation or two you would likely see retaliatory bloodshed on a horrifying scale. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. We do not need another catastrophe piled on top of the existing one.

That is part of why I reject simplistic slogans from all sides. Reality is more tragic and more complicated than internet activists want it to be.

There is also something darkly funny about the accusation that Jews like me are trying to become “one of the good ones.”

There is a Jewish joke:

A Zionist and an anti-Zionist walk into a bar and the bartender says, “We don’t serve Jews here.”

That joke exists because antisemites generally do not give a shit where Jews stand politically.

I live in a deep red MAGA area full of actual white supremacists. Not hypothetical ones. Real ones. People fly the Confederate fucking flag around here. I have encountered antisemitism directly from Christian Zionists who supposedly “love Israel.” Some of these people literally believe diaspora Jews need to move to Israel so Jesus can come back. They think enough antisemitism will help push us there. I have heard the “Jews killed Jesus” and "Jews rejected Christ, therefore they deserve everything bad that's happened" bullshit to my face. I have heard “synagogue of Satan” to my face. I have gotten "k*ke" to my face. I have heard Christians claim they are "the real Hebrew nation", that "the Jews control everything", again to my face. My roommate's family thinks I'm rich. I could go on and on. But to make a long story short, I know exactly what these people think of us.

They do not care that I am post-Zionist.

To them I am still a Jew.

And meanwhile, in real life, my actual stance on Israel has cost me Jewish community. It has made synagogue life more difficult. It has isolated me socially. So the idea that I converted for social approval is laughable. You think I deliberately made my life harder for a few internet brownie points and approval from a handful of Gen Z activists young enough to be my children?

Go fuck yourself.

I am not a self-loathing Jew. I am a Jew who takes Judaism seriously.

I love Torah enough to believe we are accountable to it.

I love Judaism enough to believe Jewish ethics matter even when it is painful, inconvenient, lonely, or socially costly.

I love my people enough to want better for us than endless war, endless trauma, endless siege mentality, endless moral corrosion, and endless dead children.

And frankly, one of the most Jewish things imaginable is arguing passionately about what justice requires. Jews have been fighting with each other about ethics, law, survival, identity, and G-d for thousands of years. Argument is part of our inheritance. Wrestling is part of our inheritance. Israel literally means “one who wrestles with G-d.”

So yes, I say “as a Jew.”

Not because I want applause.

Because I am one.