Ready for Some Honest Talk About Israel-Palestine?
Deviant Yeshiva – Wrestling with History, Identity, and Justice
How do we talk past the talking points when it comes to Israel/Palestine?
Look, we all know this topic is a minefield. Everyone’s got opinions, everyone’s got feelings, and honestly? Most of us are working with incomplete information and a lot of inherited baggage.
Why is Oy Vey doing this?
Because we believe that avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t make them go away – it just makes them more toxic. We’re tired of watching people argue past each other with half-truths and inherited trauma. If we’re going to engage with Israel-Palestine meaningfully, we need to do it with both intellectual rigor and emotional honesty.
Why The Deviant Yeshiva?
Traditional yeshiva study is all about wrestling with complex texts and uncomfortable questions – but it usually stays within certain boundaries. Our Deviant Yeshiva series takes that same approach of deep learning and rigorous questioning, but applies it to the messy, contemporary issues that traditional spaces often avoid. This course embodies that spirit: we’re going to study this topic like our ancestors studied Talmud – with multiple perspectives, heated debate, and the understanding that easy answers are usually wrong answers.
So here’s the deal: 8 Sundays, real conversations, actual history – not the simplified and sanitized version you get from most sources.
What We’re Actually Doing Here
This isn’t your typical university course where someone lectures at you for hours. We’re sitting around in person (because some conversations need actual human presence), reading stuff together, talking it through, and figuring out how we actually got to this point.
The Good Stuff:
- Multiple perspectives (because there’s never just one story)
- Real historical documents (not just Wikipedia summaries)
- Dedicated space to share how this stuff affects you emotionally
- Room for vulnerability – because this topic brings up deep feelings
- Small group, so you can actually participate and be seen
- No judgment if you change your mind about things
- We create agreements together each session to keep the space both safe and brave
What You’ll Walk Away With:
- Actually understanding what people are arguing about
- Ability to spot BS in news coverage (there’s a lot of it)
- Confidence to engage in these conversations without embarrassing yourself
- Some empathy for people whose experiences are nothing like yours
- Tools for having difficult conversations in other areas of your life
- Experience of what it feels like to be truly heard in a group setting
Who Should Come?
Anyone who’s tired of surface-level takes on this topic. Whether you’re:
- A student who wants to actually understand what’s happening
- Someone whose family/friends have strong opinions and you want to form your own
- Working in a field where this stuff comes up
- Just a curious human who’s sick of inflammatory social media posts
Let’s be clear about where we’re coming from: this course emerges from a Jewish perspective and centers primarily Jewish and Israeli sources. We’re not claiming to offer every possible angle – we’re approaching this topic from our particular standpoint, with all the insights and limitations that brings.
The 8-Session Breakdown
Session 1 : Let’s Start at the Beginning – 📅 15 June 2025
Setting up our space + the rise of Zionism (spoiler: it’s more complicated than you think)
Reading: 1)David Ohana: Introduction to “Modernism and Zionism” and “Birth-Throes of the Israeli Homeland : The Concept of Moledet”
Session 2: All the Different Zionisms Plus how far-right ideology took over (we’re reading some intense stuff here)
Reading: 1) Walter Laqueur “History of Zionism” conclusion
2)Shaul Maggid: “Meir Kahane” chap. 5 and 6”
Session 3: Britain Screws Things Up The Mandate period and that UN partition plan everyone references
Session 4: 1948: Two Names, Same Event Independence/Nakba – how the same events created completely different stories
Session 5: What’s Actually Happening Inside Israel Government, politics, internal debates you never hear about
Session 6: Peace Attempts (and Why They Failed) Plus the groups still trying to change things on the ground
Session 7: Myths, Facts, and Diaspora Drama Antisemitism vs anti-Zionism, global narratives, competing claims
Listening: https://youtu.be/Vyde00hVjUQ
Session 8: Counter-Stories and Integration Different ways to understand this whole thing + processing what we’ve learned
