Zionism, anti-Zionism, Semitism and antisemitism, and Jewish identity are the subjects of this important book by a young journalist, scholar (he’s working on his PhD at Yale), and writer. Leifer writes from personal experience — including growing up at a Jewish day school in New Jersey taught by Holocaust survivors and explaining how and why “Late in my teenage years, I broke with the Zionist dogmatism of my upbringing.” We then see him, as a journalist, covering protests in the occupied West Bank.
If you don’t know much about the history of the region, particularly in the last twenty years, and yet have found yourself in conversations about the State of Israel, Jewish identity in the United States, the rise of antisemitism, and the Israel-Hamas War, you may want to read Joshua Leifer for his balance and information. Leifer reveals how personally invested he is in the outcomes of these conversations and how desperately he wants public discourse to be knowledgeable and aware.
Every major Jewish activist, activist organization, politician, protest in Israel and abroad regarding Gaza and the occupied territories, and regional and international incident is put into the context of an ongoing attempt by Jewish people to define themselves. Leifer doesn’t write only about Israel’s role in Jewishness, but this is the most urgent aspect of his book.
Always, his perspective is seasoned with personal experience, in both the United States and Israel, and his youth is to his benefit: He has historical perspective but also hope for doing better. The value of Tablets Shattered is in how deftly and sincerely the author identifies with both the Jewish people and citizenship in the world.
Leifer explains at the end: “As a Jew and a progressive, I often feel closed in on both sides…between great shame and great fear. I am infuriated by the crimes of the state that acts in my name, and more worried that I have ever been by the rising acceptability of conspiratorial thinking and the demonization of Jews. It often feels like an impossible place.”
“But it is the place that we must hold. I understand my friends and former colleagues who wish to renounce Israel with finality and the Jewish state. Yet I believe that doing so would be both a moral and political mistake. The power of our protest grows from our connection. And while Israel and Zionism are not the sum or telos of Jewishness and Judaism, thinking and acting Jewishly also requires recognizing that Israel, more than any other place, is where Jews live. To change our people, we must be with them. That is our responsibility.”
