Parts of the Jewish left believe trauma explains attachment to Zionism. But what they call “trauma” is more likely a collective story than a
The homogenization of vastly different histories into a grand narrative of Jewish trauma points to a desire to tell a palatable story about how Zionism became hegemonic in American Jewish life. Like the original deployment of the lachrymose conception of Jewish history, it relieves Jews of political agency while making historic trauma the focal point of Jewish identity. This time, what gets lost in the mythologized Jewish past is an understanding of the political, economic, and social forces that shaped what scholar Shaul Magid calls the “Zionization of American Jewish life,” like the centralization of financial and communal resources by Jewish communal leadership toward support for the State of Israel. Zionism was not simply adopted by a terrified rank-and-file American Jewry, nor is it a trauma response today; it was, and is, a political project, with specific and evolving strategies aimed at particular, and—it should be emphasized—violent aims.
16 April 2026
