Episode
Who’s Afraid of the Z-Word
- Podcast
- On the Nose
- Published
- Feb 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3676
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://jewishcurrents.org/whos-afraid-of-the-z-word
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Summary
Recently, the Jewish Federation of North America released a poll they conducted last year that shows that while 88% of respondents said they “believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state,” only 37% identified as “Zionist.” A small number identified as “anti-Zionist” and “non-Zionist,” 7% and 8% respectively, with a plurality answering “not sure” (18%) or “none of these” (30%). These numbers are confusing; they seem to indicate that while Zionist identification is waning—perhaps due to the stink of the term amid the genocide—the underlying commitment to a Jewish state, albeit one paradoxically imagined as “democratic,” is not. At the recent Conference on the Jewish Left at Boston University, nearly every presentation discussed or confronted questions about the terms “Zionist” and “anti-Zionist,” and whether they had enough of an agreed-upon meaning within the community to be useful terms to organize around. On this episode of On the Nose , editor-in-chief Arielle Angel speaks with Ari Lev Fornari, senior rabbi at Kol Tzedek in Philadelphia; Dove Kent, interim executive director of Diaspora Alliance and former executive director of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice; and Fadi Quran, the senior director at Avaaz and a Ramallah-based strategist and organizer. They try to make sense of the recent polling numbers and discuss different strategic considerations about using the Z-word in organizing contexts, including how to welcome newcomers to the Palestine liberation movement without coddling them. Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).” Media Mentioned and Further Reading JFNA Survey of Jewish Life since October 7 – Zionism Findings “ The ‘Zionism’ gap: Wha…