Judaism vs Zionism: MEMO In Conversation with Hadar Cohen

Israel coats itself in Jewish identity and purports to speak on behalf of all Jewish people, while critics of Israeli policy or its treatment of Palestinians are often branded anti-Semitic. Before the Second World War, however, support for Zionism in Jewish communities was limited. Moreover, Zionism was a European Jewish movement. As a result, for the millions of Jews living in the Middle East and wider Muslim World, Zionism was a foreign movement formed outside their own historical reality. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews in Israel today are culturally underprivileged and are expected to integrated into a European Jewish society. While internationally Israel uses the Bible to justify its colonisation of Palestine, the Israeli state is deeply secular and has acted as a secularising force in Israeli Jewish life, alienating many God-conscious people. For many Jewish people, the oppression and dispossession of Palestinians runs contrary to Jewish ethics and traditions. MEMO Conversation is joined by Hadar Cohen who says that it is within Jewish ethical traditions that the seeds of anti-Zionism can be found.

Cohen is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic and artist whose work focuses on multi-religious spirituality, politics, social issues and community building. She is the founder of Malchut, a spiritual skill-building school teaching Jewish mysticism and direct experience of God. Her podcast, Hadar’s Web, features community conversations on spirituality, healing, justice and art. Hadar is a 10th-generation Jerusalemite with lineage roots also in Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran.

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