How Anti-Zionism Became Anti-Judaism

Twenty-five years ago, the Hartford Courant marked the 50th birthday of the state of Israel with a special section consisting of mini-essays by a variety of religious, political and civic leaders, Jewish and non-Jewish. Most were congratulatory, but the president of Hartford Seminary, Barbara Brown Zikmund, took a different tack. “For Israel to survive into the next century Jews will need to let go of the idea that a Jewish state located in a physical place is crucial to Jewish identity,” she wrote.  You will not be surprised to learn that the Hartford Jewish community reacted with, as the Courant’s Gerald Renner put it, “shock, anger and dismay.” Admitting she had “gone too far,” Zikmund told Renner, “I hit a nerve that was incredible.”