My Writing
History Thesis
"Every Crossing is the Crossing of the Desert" is my history thesis, part of the completion of my BA in History. I've been sitting on it for a while, having shared it with effectively nobody. It discusses Bernard Lazare (1865-1903), a French Jewish literary critic, and a man distinguished by the early seriousness and rigor with which he attempted to discuss antisemitism as a historical phenomenon.
Jewish anti-Zionism is a woefully under-discussed phenomenon, for reasons that are likely highly obvious. The founding of Israel collapsed a wide range of attempts at resolving questions about Jewish identity and national belonging/affiliation into simple 'for' and 'against' camps, and many of these old reckonings with Jewish existence and assimilation have been left behind. This thesis was an attempt at diving deeper into one such buried branch.
Learning more about Jewish anti-Zionism, its ties to anarchism and various socialist movements was very comforting to me, especially in those moments of initial discovery. Obviously I think anti-Zionism is the only correct position on basic moral grounds, but a sense of historicity is validating and invigorating alike.