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

The modern state of Israel was purportedly founded to ensure the survival and flourishing of Jews whose lives had become precarious living in Diaspora. Conceived as a country of refuge (eretz miklat) for Jews from around the world, the modern state of Israel, according to Zionist ideology, signals the end of Jewish exile and the beginning of modern Jewish self-determination. Nevertheless, Israeli Jews also sometimes choose to leave the country that was established on their behalf. While there has always been outmigration from Israel, Zionist historiography has primarily been concerned with Jewish migration to Israel. However, the most recent census showed that more Israelis are leaving than coming (Aderet 2024).

 Modern political Zionism promised to create a place where people would be free to be Jewish, but some Israelis have long struggled to be Jewish as they see fit and some experience a sense of alienation even in their purported homeland. If Israel is understood as a settler colonial society, then it should not be surprising that forms of Jewishness that coincide with its settler project have become prominent there. Israel’s most recent elections ushered in the most extreme right wing religious governing coalition in the country’s history. This government’s extreme expressions of ethnonationalism, its plans for depriving its Supreme Court of authority over adjudicating the law, and shifts toward increasing religious rules have raised such severe concerns over civil rights and secular freedoms that a growing number of Israelis have begun seeking residence in other countries. Following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the number of Israelis seeking refuge out of the country has continued to grow. Some of those seeking to leave the country suggest that they see parallels to pre-Holocaust Europe. In my most recent visit to Israel I spoke with people who told me that just as it was important for Jews in 1930s Europe to know when to leave Europe, now it is important for Israelis to know when it is time to leave Israel. This sentiment might suggest the failure of national sovereignty, but nationalist (Zionist) narratives continue to point to rising antisemitism around the world and claim that Jews will never be safe anywhere but in Israel. This tension demonstrates the limits of nationalist ideology and practice, showing the precarity of national sovereignty. 

While some people have been leaving Israel because of the high cost of living, my interest is in those leaving because of the far right/extremist government’s threats to the country’s judicial system and the ongoing “situation,” which is how Israelis discuss war and security threats. In the case of the current wars in Gaza and Lebanon, many Jewish Israelis blame the government for having abandoned them, breaking the implied contract of the nation-state that demands national loyalty in exchange for physical security. Their growing rates of self-exile mirror the state’s withdrawal of support from historically secular ways of being Jewish and the imaginary of negotiated peace, in favor of alliances with religiously motivated political factions which envision continued violent dispossession and elimination of Palestinians, an ethnic cleansing currently centered on Gaza but extending and deepening in the occupied West Bank as well.

In the context of Israel/Palestine, the term “exile” generally refers to Palestinian refugees from war and those who are internally displaced. Edward Said famously wrote that exile is “the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted” (2000:180). But such a rift need not be geographic. The places we live may be transformed to such a degree that one can longer be “at home” in them. Invasion, colonization, or shifting politics can make people feel exiled at home or abandoned by their home. Indeed, Said himself argued that exile can also be a feeling of alienation or of being "out of place" even when you are physically present in your home country

     With rising tensions on multiple fronts Israelis on the northern border as well as those near the Gaza border increasingly expressed a sense of abandonment (netisha), deserted, cut off from assistance and care by the state; being left to fend for themselves. On Israeli Independence Day in 2024, a number of communities in northern Israel symbolically seceded from the country. Suggesting the government had disengaged from them, they symbolically declared their own state in a form of exile at home.

     The idea of exile or diaspora has long been debated in Jewish studies. Framed by some scholars as divine punishment since the Babylonian exile, the idea of exile can also be understood as essential to Jewishness and specifically as an ethical position in opposition to territorial nationalism. Exile, while never easy, is a means of doing good in the world and specifically a way of promoting social justice and ending the violence inherent in the nation-state form. 

Building on preliminary fieldwork and on the work of Jonathan Boyarin, Daniel Boyarin, Judith Butler, Susannah Heschel, Shaul Magid, and Amnon Raz-Krakottzkin, this paper examines discussions about exile as an ethical alternative to the violent outcomes of modern political Zionism that offer models of living together with others who we do not choose (Butler) or as minorities among minorities none of whom has hegemony over others.

Whether or not such ideological positions underly the current exodus of Jews from Israel, it seems that Diaspora may have come full circle; from exile to return, to diaspora again. Or, in Gershom Scholem’s terms, it might be considered a form of Jewish messianism, which rather than pointing to an improved future instead suggests restoration to a better past, restoring ways of living before the advent of political Zionism’s territorial nationalism. In other words, this shift can be understood as more than simple “migration,” as it takes place within a broader Jewish temporality of continuity and repetition. When nationalism loses its appeal, can self-exile restore an exilic vision of Jewishness?