How Dare You Reinterpret Our Religion for Us?

On April 16, the week before Passover, Christian-Palestinian theologian Mitri Raheb spoke at Harvard Divinity School about his recent book “Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible.”

The book criticizes the use of Biblical texts in substantiating Israel’s right to statehood and calls for the decolonization of Palestine, which, according to Raheb, requires decolonizing theological concepts including “Israel, the land, election, and chosen people.”

The presentation at HDS is the latest in a series of pro-Palestinian programs that feature speakers like Raheb who seem to have a great deal to say about Jewish scripture, Jewish theology, and Jewish identity. Somehow, it has become acceptable for Raheb to dictate to Jewish people — the people who have read and interpreted the Torah for millenia — how to “decolonize” their own identities to suit his own political agenda. It is cultural appropriation par excellence.

The expectation that Jewish history and identity need to be adjusted to be acceptable to the current socio-political landscape disregards the endurance of Jewish traditions through 3,000 years of development, often in the face of extreme oppression, colonialist displacement, and ethnic cleansing. Never mind the fact that the Torah has already been frequently usurped and weaponized against the Jews by both Christians and Muslims, who reinterpret key Jewish texts in an attempt to harm Jews.

Let me be clear: You can’t tell Jewish people how to be Jewish. We don’t need non-Jewish academics to explain to us concepts central to our identity — such as the land of Israel, the people of Israel, or the return to Zion. We can figure them out ourselves. And, guess what? We have.

For more than a thousand years, Jewish theologians and Bible commentators have developed Zionist ideas, advocating for a literal return to a literal land, before our current understanding of Zionism or colonization ever developed.

Jewish philosophers in medieval Spain regarded the return to the land of Israel not just as a theoretical concept, but as a concrete religious duty. They treated it seriously enough to get on a ship, and voyage across the perilous mediterranean to the land of Israel.

Later, Maimonides, one of the greatest scholars of Jewish philosophy, talked about the Messianic age as a political upheaval, liberating the Jews from bondage to other nations in their own land.

And after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, Yosef Nasi tried to create a Jewish prefecture in the Land of Israel under Ottoman rule. He was even appointed governor of Tiberias with the express aim of encouraging Jewish resettlement in “Palestine,” though his attempt was ultimately unsuccessful.

So now, in 2024, we do not need a Christian blatherer to tell us about how we were wrong about Zionism all along.

The audacity of Raheb to strip us of our theological and historical agency — an idea that would be unthinkable for any other minority group — is staggering. The “theologian” in question also champions the Khazar theory, which posits that modern Ashkenazi Jews are descendents of Turkic converts to Judaism, denying them of links to the land of Israel, notwithstanding large amounts of evidence to the contrary.

Consider the precedent Harvard is setting. Would it be acceptable to invite a speaker who claims that the descendants of English settlers are the “real” Indigenous peoples of North America, effectively erasing the historical claims of the First Nations? Or a speaker who claims that globally recognized cultural monuments were actually built by Europeans? The Divinity School has done the equivalent by hosting a speaker who peddles ahistorical, politically motivated conspiracy theories that marginalize Jews, all under the guise of academic discourse.

I do not see how Harvard, an institution claiming to uphold “Veritas,” can justify platforming such viewpoints. I’m a religious Jew, with an excellent religious education. I don’t need to be patronized and mansplained the tenets of my own faith. The nuances and complexities of my religion are not open for reinterpretation by those who do not share in its lineage or practice.

Genia Lukin is a second-year Ph.D. student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.