The only surprise about the recent A.B. Yehoshua brouhaha was that the Israeli novelist’s rantings at the American Jewish Committee’s recent centennial celebration surprised anyone. For years, Yehoshua – who said Jewish life is experienced more completely in Israel than anywhere else – has dismissed Diaspora Jewry as sterile, neurotic, and unfulfilled, while claiming that simply living in Israel makes Jews authentic. In inviting Yehoshua, the organizers chose a big name over good taste, and they got what they deserved.

I would respect Yehoshua’s Diaspora rejectionism more if he also rejected the royalties and honours he receives from his benighted brethren. He may flatter himself that his American gravy train consists mainly of Christians fascinated by his creativity. Yehoshua’s worldwide meal ticket validates Achad Ha’am’s late-19th-century cultural Zionism, envisioning Jewish life centred on Israel with its revived Hebrew culture. Yehoshua’s novels make him one of the glittering spokes linking Israel, the centre of Jewish life, with the periphery dispersed along the worldwide wheel of the Jewish Diaspora. As with most celebrities, it’s better to read Yehoshua’s novels than hear him speak about contemporary issues.

More disturbing is Yehoshua’s lazy approach to Judaism, which has helped raise a generation of Israeli pagans. Living among a Jewish majority, on Jewish time in the magical, historically Jewish space called Israel is great. And many Israelis who call themselves chiloni (secular) don’t realize how deeply Jewish they are with their fluency in Hebrew and the Bible. Likewise for the overwhelming numbers of Israeli Jews who believe in God, eat Shabbat dinners with their families, sit shivah when tragedy strikes, and ate cheesecake and blintzes in celebrating Shavuot last week, while most Diaspora Jews have never even heard of the holiday. Still, as one of my teachers, Prof. Deborah Weissman, notes, many Israelis have content without consciousness, while many North American Jews have consciousness without content – and Judaism requires both.

On June 19, the 35th World Zionist Congress will convene in Jerusalem. How to sing a new, positive relevant song of Zion for Jews both in Israel and abroad should be the real concern, rather than divvying up spoils for Israeli political hacks. We Zionists should be broadening our base, not making our club more exclusive. Saying “I am a Zionist” in the Diaspora is an act of triple-chutzpah. We risk the opprobrium of anti-Zionists who libel Zionism as racism; of Diaspora Jews who, because of rude Israelis like Yehoshua, label Zionism doctrinaire, fanatic or passé; and of Israelis such as Yehoshua, who sneer that Zionists cannot live outside of Israel, while younger Israelis consider Zionism anachronistic nonsense.

With Jews worldwide focusing on Israel these days, this is an opportunity for Zionist renewal. The Zionist movement began in the Diaspora to solve the 19th-century Jewish problem and help Jews reconcile the modern secular world with Jewish tradition. Moreover, just as living in the Diaspora does not preclude you from being a Zionist, living in Israel is not enough to make you a Zionist. The Jewish state includes Israeli Arabs, Orthodox extremists and post-Zionist intellectuals who all reject the ideology.

We need to define Zionism – and Israel – as solutions to our modern Jewish problems. We need to see Israel as an inspiration to Jews everywhere, pushing Jews in Israel and abroad toward a more meaningful, more relevant engagement with tradition as a guide for navigating modern life. We need to approach Zionism – meaning Jewish nationalism – as a conceptual framework, building on Jews’ still strong feeling of history, ethnicity and common destiny toward a deeper Jewish identity.

Zionism can give our sense of tribalism transcendence by offering an alternative values system to contemporary materialism and selfishness. Zionism explains Jews’ sense of family, this connection that stimulates altruism and links Jews together in joy and sorrow. A thoughtful, critical Zionism can help us see the neurotic aspects of Diaspora life and fix them, not just wallow in them. A thoughtful, critical Zionism can also help us see the flaws in Israeli life and try to fix them, not just mindlessly defend them.

In our world of multiple identities and multi-dimensional paradoxes, we can still yearn for the ingathering of the exiles without negating those who have not yet returned. In that way Zionism, like Judaism, helps challenge us, stretch us, complete us, acknowledging that despite our human imperfections, we strive to improve ourselves and our communities.