The Ends of Jewish Nationalism: Abandonment, Exile, and Repetition

The state of Israel was purportedly founded to ensure the safety of Jews whose lives had become precarious in Diaspora. Zionism claims that the state’s establishment signals the end of Jewish exile. How, then, do we explain the increasing numbers of Israeli Jews leaving the country? Some of them speak about being abandoned by the state and choose instead a form of self-exile. Jewish emigration rose following recent Israeli elections of a far-right governing coalition and the extreme violence of October 7, 2023 and its aftermath. Their departures mirror the state’s withdrawal of support from historically secular ways of being Jewish and the imaginary of a negotiated peace, in favor of alliances with political factions which envision the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The paper builds on preliminary fieldwork in conversation with the extensive scholarship on exile to consider the limits of nationalist ideology and the precarity of national sovereignty.