About the Exhibit
About the Exhibit
Embedded Files
In the last year and a half, Jewish students have faced an alarming rise in antisemitism, harassment, and isolation on college campuses. Much of this hostility stems from widespread ignorance and misinformation about Zionism. The term has been misrepresented, weaponized, and politicized, often divorced from its historical and cultural meaning.
“(RE)Defining Zionism" seeks to reclaim the conversation, offering a space for dialogue, education, and empathy. This exhibition presents a diverse range of voices from Israel—religious and secular, left and right, Jewish and non-Jewish—to examine what Zionism means to each of them today. Through compelling portrait photography and interviews, the exhibit challenges stereotypes and invites critical engagement with a topic that is too often reduced to a binary, allowing students to engage with Zionism beyond the rhetoric of conflict.
"Zionism is redemption. It is the promise of the prophets. We have been privileged to live in a generation where we are part of the redemption.
This is our land and our forefathers' land. We were exiled. And now we're coming back.
- Avichai Amusi is a volunteer medic with Zaka, Israel's dominant disaster victim identification and rescue unit NGO. He also runs a volunteer based organization which provides hundreds of weekly meals to needy families and individuals.
"I'm definitely a Zionist. I think the future and the history of the Jewish people is here.
Just like the Arab world needs to accept that Israel is here to stay, Israel needs to own our destiny. We can’t live in conflict forever. We need to develop a long term solution that will allow us to live in peace."
-Rachel Broyde is director of development at the Anti-Defamation League, and a Founding Member of the UAE-Israel Business Council and the Gulf-Israel Women’s Forum.
"What Zionism has meant for me, personally, is self empowerment, dignity, courage, and the ability to reach out to others. Because when you're in a place of defensiveness and fear, which is how I grew up in a Holocaust survivor family, it's very hard to be generous. It's very hard to engage with the other.
I became an interfaith activist with Muslims and with Christians when I became an Israeli. And for me, that's the most positive expression of Zionism.
For centuries, Jews lived under Islam, under Christianity, and it's only when I came here that I realized the whole dynamic of the Jewish people's relationship to the rest of the world has fundamentally changed, and that gave me the courage and the incentive to reach out to other religions and other peoples."
- Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is co-director of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI). His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller.
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