This Rabbi Explains How Zionism Turned Jews Into Symbolic Human Shields | Yaakov Shapiro

About this episode

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro discusses the complex relationship between Judaism and Zionism, exploring its impact on Jewish identity and theology.

In this long-form conversation, I sit down with Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro—one of the most outspoken anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox rabbis—to explore one of the most misunderstood questions in modern politics: what is the relationship between Judaism and Zionism? Raised in suburban American Conservative Judaism with Israeli flags on the bimah, Hebrew school, bar mitzvahs, and an unspoken expectation to support Israel, I wanted to understand what exactly I inherited—and whether it had anything to do with Judaism as a religion at all.We begin with my own family story: my great-great-grandfather, a Satmar Jew in Hungary, was murdered in Auschwitz, while his daughter had left that world decades earlier for America. A few generations later, I inherited a version of Jewish identity shaped less by theology than by Holocaust memory and Zionist politics. Rabbi Shapiro argues that Zionism fundamentally transformed Judaism from a religion of covenant, law, and exile into a political nationalism—and in doing so, created deep moral and philosophical confusion for Jews like me who never believed in the theology but were still expected to defend the state of Israel.From the Holocaust and 1967 to female…

People in this episode

Host: Jay Shapiro

Guest: Yaakov Shapiro

Topics covered

• Judaism
• Zionism
• Holocaust
• Jewish identity
• anti-Zionism
• political nationalism
• religion and ethnicity

Keywords

• Zionism
• Judaism
• anti-Zionism
• Jewish identity
• Holocaust
• political nationalism
• religion
• ethnicity
• Auschwitz
• Satmar

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Auschwitz, Israel, Satmar, Judaism, Zionism, Holocaust, 1967

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