Jewishness is whatever you want it to be - except Jewish nationalism

I tweeted this the other day:

"I express my Jewishness through tikkun olam!"

    "Wonderful!"

"I express mine through old Yiddish plays"

    "Fantastic!"

"Jewish cuisine here!"

    "Amazing!"

"Mine is through Zionism!"

    "How dare you conflate Zionism with Judaism!"

My point is that the anti-Israel crowd loves to talk about their Jewish heritage, which can be anything from eating bagels to researching the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. This is all part of the tapestry of Judaism to them.

But for people who consider Jewish nationalism to be an integral part of their Judaism, suddenly their expansive definition of what Jewishness means hits a brick wall. 

They would consider anyone attacking any aspect of their Jewishness to be antisemitic, but attacking the Jewish state or Jewish nationalism isn't antisemitic - on the contrary, they consider it praiseworthy.

As much as they try to pretend that somehow Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism, they cannot seem to explain exactly what their boundaries are for what is Jewish. And for people who accuse others of marginalizing them as Jews, this is more than a little hypocritical.

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