Zion vs. Zionism
Some of my best friends are fiercely anti-Zionist Jews and they have taught me many things. Jews have always been at the core of every social justice movement in our country because Judaism is a movement of prophets who live in ceremony with the earth (whether or not they “believe in God”).
Zion is the dream of the Hebrew prophets: a mountain of יהוה where the lion and the lamb lie down together and the nations bend their swords into plowshares to receive divine wisdom.
Zionism is the blasphemous perversion of Judaism that writes its prayers on Uncle Sam’s golden calves of war. It has forfeited its future in our world through the exposure of its contemptuous brutality. Only in the complete renunciation of Zionism can the Zion of יהוה reveal itself in a land trembling with the curse of rape, theft, and lies. It may be impossible without a devastating earthquake like the one that rebuked the blasphemy of Uzziah, ancient Israel’s most militaristic king who tried to usurp the priesthood.
The true Israel is the diasporic nation of god-wrestlers who continuously work for the world’s healing and deepen the wisdom of Abraham’s legacy.
Palestine is the land where יהוה will restore harmony to the branches of Abraham’s tree. Perhaps if war and theft and cheating are renounced absolutely enough, the land can be called Zion because then the people will have fulfilled the dreams of their ancient prophets.
But be guaranteed of this: יהוה will melt the golden calves to make the bullies drink their poison. She will give you nightmares until you repent and when you die, your nightmare will become permanent.
Not one stone will remain upon another in the city of war. It must be reduced to rubble so that finally a city of peace may arise. May the earthquake be the dance of divine daughters healing the land of men’s egos. This is the hour of the daughter, the burning bush of the wild.