Q. What does Doikayt mean?
Doikayt is a yiddish word that roughly translates to “hereness”. It was popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the Bund, a Jewish socialist labor movement, in reaction to early Zionism. Instead of fixating on Jews’ historic homeland as the Promised Land, the first advocates of doikayt urged Jews to embrace diasporism, treating whatever land they currently lived on as the Promised Land and striving to be in right relationship with the other people and species that were there.
While we’re now in a very different place and historical context as the members of the Bund, our orientation at Denver Doikayt is the same.
Q. What does it mean for Denver Doikayt to be “non-zionist”?
First off, it doesn’t mean that we’re turning our backs or ignoring what’s going on in Israel/Palestine. We fully recognize our responsibility as American Jews to engage with the ongoing destruction and violence perpetrated by Hamas, the Israeli government, Iran, the United States, and many other actors. We believe that the values we hold dear - connection to land, honoring Indigeneity, healing ancestral trauma - are deeply relevant to the current situation in Israel/Palestine.
What non-Zionism does mean, then, is a firm belief that Zionism is not the path to the long-term safety of the Jewish people - especially considering what mainstream Zionism has become in the last thirty years. In the context of Denver Doikayt specifically, non-Zionism means dedicating our efforts to express a Jewish culture that is in deep connection with the people and land of the High Plains on which we reside.
Q. OK, but what about October 7th and its aftermath? Is Denver Doikayt on the side of Israelis or Palestinians?
Members of Denver Doikayt have a spectrum of opinions about Israel/Palestine, and we’re grateful to have a space where we can have difficult and honest disagreements while remaining in beloved community with one another. Here are some things that we do all agree on:
Both Palestinans and Israeli Jews deeply belong to the land between the river and the sea. Both should be able to raise their families, connect with the land, and celebrate their beautiful cultures without fear.
There is a generations-long history of nonviolent Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, resistance which has been systematically suppressed and led many Palestinians to embrace violence out of desperation.
Violence against civilians - including the displacement of families from their land - is neither an ethical nor an effective approach to liberation.
Regardless of the Israeli government’s intent, its actions since October 7th are having a genocidal impact by destroying a vibrant culture of millions of innocent families. Far from securing safety for Israeli Jews, these actions have ruined Israel’s national credibility, sparked an alarming rise in global antisemitism, and radicalized an entire generation of Palestinians against Israel.
Q. Are there any quotes from the recent book For Times Such As These by Rabbis Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg that sum up Denver Doikayt’s beliefs about all this?
Glad you asked…
For diasporism to be most useful, it needs to not only say what we are rejecting but help to shape the contours of the politics we're embracing… Jewish histories and cultures in all the places Jews have called home, including the land between the river and the sea. This kind of diasporism melts state boundaries and shifts us toward more earth-based practice. This, too, is our commitment: continued exploration of how to live in more right relationship with all the places we call home.
This radical diasporism is made possible by a critique of settler colonialism and the state. Radical diasporism understands that empires and borders, and not the movement of people, are the problem. Jewish radical diasporism must affirm that as we, in the words of Kaye/Kantrov-ira, "make home where we are.” Making home, which we celebrate, is not making a nation-state. Making home looks like fighting back against the state’s hoarding of resources and policing of lives, supporting Indigenous land back and sovereignty, offering and asking for solidarity with other oppressed peoples, and finding new ways of relating to the places where and the peoples with whom we live… Radical diasporism insists we get to know the land on which we live, honor the original inhabitants, and understand ourselves as interdependent parts of the ecosystems in which we dwell. Radical diasporism understands that, in the words of Black Elk as taught to us through the poetry of Ursula K. Leguin, every land is the holy land. We know all land is sacred, and we strive to act accordingly.