So, you want to colonize space?

Depending on how launch mass costs, space based industry and the politics of spaceflight all work out, it's not actually inconceivable that, at some point in the future, a non-trivial amount of people will live away from Earth full time.

Contrary to what certain asshole-trillionaires-who-shall-not-be-named believe, however, putting them on a planet doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

We have not yet found a planet suitable for sustaining human life, and the closest we've gotten are pressures and temperatures that wouldn't be immediately lethal. Meaning, a space colony would be a completely self-contained ecosystem, which would need to survive through endless recycling, and shipping or harvesting materials.

And if you're going to do all that, there's no real reason to do it on a planet.

Enter, space colonies.

If you're going to build a self-sustaining artificial ecosystem, there's no real reason to sit inside a gravity well to do it, and several good reasons not to.

Sure, a planet lets you easily utilize whatever resources are available, but it comes at the cost of making shipping to and from it a lot more expensive. Meanwhile, a floating habitat could have earthlike gravity, which Mars will not get you.

Given all this, it probably makes much more sense to park all your people in orbit. Use materials from low gravity bodies and asteroids to build it for relatively cheap in terms of launch mass. Harvest and ship in water from icy bodies. Take advantage of the nearly free power from massive solar arrays: Square footage is not even slightly an issue now.

And so, in the future, maybe, someone might open their door, step out onto their porch and see something like this:

Let's think about what that would mean in the practical sense. About half of the Jewish population lives in Israel and the other half in North America. There's a small number of others in other countries but they have mostly been murdered.

So at this point, if you're anti-zionist, you aren't just saying that Jews shouldn't have a homeland even though they already do. You would basically have to sit shiva for half the Jewish population and pretend that either they are dead or the place where they live isn't a country.

And I'm never going to do that. They are my family.

It’s something that crystallized for me when I heard someone say we're not called "Jewish" because we believe or practice Judaism. What we believe or practice is called "Judaism" because we're Jews.

Zionism is simply the recognition that the Jewish people are a people. We’re not a random group of people who adhere to the same religious beliefs, like Baptists or Catholics.

For most of history we were considered and called ourselves a nationality. Hebrews. Israelites. That’s how we were accounted by the authorities of the day.

It was only during the religious freedom movements of the 18th and 19th Centuries that we started equating ourselves to religious groups (Protestants, Catholics, etc.) and not nationality groups (Russians, French). If Protestants were being granted political and religious freedoms, we equated ourselves and argued that we should be part of that too.

But just like the Cherokee are a people who have rituals, beliefs, and traditions, the Israelites have rituals, beliefs, and traditions.

Zionism is simply the idea that we're a nation, a people, with the same right to a nation that the Irish have, the Greek have, or the Cherokee have.

How nonsensical would it be to hear an anti-Zionist say, "Sure, be Irish, but what's that got to do with Ireland!?"

And to the people who ask why does Israel have to be a Jewish state, that’s like asking why Ireland has to be an Irish state.

Ask yourselves why you didn’t tell the Irish to accept a binational country as part of the United Kingdom?

Question the policies of the Netanyahu government. I sure do! So do all the Israelis who protested Netanyahu in the streets for years. But that doesn’t make you “anti-Zionist” any more than protesting Trump makes you anti-American.

Being anti-Zionist means you deny to the Jewish people the same right to national identity that you defend for the Irish and the Cherokee.

I prefer the term “traditionally observant” for someone keeping Orthodox halachic interpretations. But Conservative or Reform observances are observances too, and if you emphasize ethical mitzvot, you’re “religious” too.

A very wise person in my life once said, “it’s easier to keep kosher than be a good person.” Don’t devalue the latter. That’s Jewish, too.

Judaism has always been an evolving practice developed by the people of the day.

Talmudic-era sages didn’t agree with each other and modified practices to suit circumstances and happiness (that’s where the concept of tikkun olam comes from). Many of the “traditional” elements of a prayer service weren’t added until late medieval Europe. What was considered acceptable practice was evolving before the Shulchan Aruch, why should that stop? I love the phrase that I read recently, we too can reset the table.

Talmud acknowledges that prayers can be said in the vernacular language of the people, indeed Torah doesn’t command a prayer service at all. Prayer was a rabbinic-innovation to suit the times. Musaf is a sacrificial commandment. *People* decided to repeat the prayer service in lieu of musaf, because it fulfilled that spirit to *them*.

Talmudic innovations or 15th century Polish practices can’t claim to be “real Judaism” any more than later developments.

Adon Olam was a medieval creation, it wasn’t handed down at Sinai. It’s no more authentic than Debbie Friedman.

Reform movement leader: ‘Government slamming door in the faces’ of Diaspora Jews amid rising antisemitism;

Because if you interpret this as Israel or "the Orthodox" are doing this, and turn your back there then you're doing exactly what minority zealots of the political and religious kind are trying to get you to do.

So much of the community is invested in Israel. We defend it in politics, we teach our kids Modern Hebrew, we visit the nation, listen to the music, so on and so forth. My God, we're talking about like we live there now and--well, I don't know where you live, but I live in the US. And this is normal for Diaspora Jews. Ok, sure, whatever.

But it feels like so little of that is returned. There doesn't seem to be much Israeli interest in antisemitism against the Diaspora, except "make aliya" as a solution. I don't want to make aliya! I want to live in the country I was born in! I keep thinking about the time my Jewish school took my class to Poland, and how we kept running into Israeli classes while we were there, and I don't need to tell you what we were doing because it's fucking obvious. Like, we were literally running into them at Auschwitz. And then I think about how Poland was only the start of the trip, how Israel was the REAL purpose of that trip, about Birthright and all the other organizations us Diaspora Jews have created to visit and connect with Israel, and I think...hey, where are the Israeli trips to New York and Paris and Amsterdam and Buenos Aires? Why do their classes only visit the places of Jewish death in the Diaspora, and never the places of Jewish life?

Antisemitism has been getting worse and worse for the past decade, but I don't see Israeli politicians calling it out, I see them snuggling up to the same politicians who are normalizing antisemitic discourse on the right. And yeah, said Israeli politicians are right-wing extremists, I am well aware of the scum Netanyahu scraped off his shoe to make the current government, I know they aren't representative of all or even most of the Israeli population. But at the end of the day, enough people voted for The Worst Parties Ever that Netanyahu was able to cobble a coalition out of it. Enough Jews in the Jewish state have no problem with their prime minister playing footsie with the likes of Orban while the Diaspora is screaming its head off. And, like, that's just a reality I have to learn to accept, the same way I had to learn to accept that a not insignificant part of my county would raucously cheer on a rapist conman right up until gas prices started going up.

Idk, maybe it's ridiculous to expect Israelis to keep up with everything...except, I have been surrounded by Israeli discourse my entire fucking life, from Oslo to Gaza I have watched everyone around me tear their hair out as they discuss Israeli politics in minute detail, because we care, we care so goddamn much. Is it too much to ask for Israelis to tear their hair out over the ongoing state of antisemitism in the rest of the world? To discuss the current trends and rising waves? To press their politicians for actions, the same way we press ours? Okay, I don't actually wish this level of stress on anyone, but you get what I mean.

A year and a half ago the richest man in the world sieg heil'd twice, with great energy and deliberation, at the inauguration of my country's president. It was fucking terrifying. I remember reading articles about how Germans grafitti'd a Tesla factory after that, and Italians burning an effigy of Musk, which is how you should react when someone sieg heils at an inauguration of a major world power. And I remember going through the English language Israeli papers and all I found were articles describing what happened and a few tepid denoucements from assorted politicians. No protests, no calls for boycotts, nothing. Oh, except for the prime minister of the Jewish state ran to defend his Nazi buddy, which also didn't seem to provoke much of a reaction. I tried to tell myself that the Hebrew language papers probably had more, that the war in Gaza was devouring everyone attention, but nothing plugged the pain of being stabbed in the heart. And this has nagged at me so much since. Netanyahu dickriding Nazis is par for the course tbh, I was more shocked by the ADL. But why was the Israeli population so silent? Why was the general response so muted?

From what you're saying, you have no direct ties to modern Israel, no family, no friends living there. There is absolutely nothing wrong with treating modern Israel exactly the same as any other country that has a sizable Jewish population.

We ARE Israel.

The Jewish people are a People. That’s what “am Yisrael” means. That’s what “bnei Yisrael” means. We are a tribe. We are Israelites. The descendants of the Israelites.

THAT’S what Zionism means — it’s the understanding that we are a people, just like the Cherokee, just like the Irish, just like the Japanese.