zionism

Theodore Herzl created Zionism to protect Jews from discrimination and he believed that if every Jew moved to Israel, we would no longer have that problem. Maybe I'm biased because I'm living in the diaspora happily and I'm comfortably assimilated into American culture and way of live, but I disagree on his theory because I think its safer for the Jews to be in a diaspora then to all be confined to one place. I think antisemitism and discrimination in general derives from people's unfamiliarity and confusion of a certain group of people. For instance,  most misconceptions of Jewish people sprout from people who only know of Jews from stereotypes. Once when I was in Wisconsin during a field trip from Herzl Camp, we met a group of people and starting chatting to them and told them we were from a Jewish summer camp. A couple of them said, "Wooww we've never seen jews before you guys look so ..normal" and they asked to feel our heads to see if we had little bumps that resembled horns. They weren't trying to be rude at all but they genuinely had no idea. The reputation of the Jew is in danger unless we spread  out and expose ourselves to the world and also to be good advocates for Israel. I feel like I'm accomplishing a lot as a Jew living in America because not only have I argued and defended Israel countless amount of times, but people that know me know I'm a Jew and hopefully think good thoughts about me which could translate into good thoughts about Jewish people as a whole. Also, Israel relies on America so much for financial aid and support and the Jewish push on the American government also helps Israel. If all the Jews lived in Israel, peoples imaginations would go wild and we would be helpless and doomed to destruction.

amazing joni mitchell