What does it mean to be a Palestinian Jew today?

At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, MD, thousands of anti-Zionist Jews gathered to reaffirm their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—and to reject the antisemitic notion that the political ideology of Zionism represents all Jews. In this vital and wide-ranging discussion recorded during the JVP gathering in Baltimore, TRNN’s Marc Steiner sits down with self-identified Palestinian Jews Esther Farmer and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to discuss the complexities of Jewish identity and belonging today, the historical origins of Israel, and “the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life” that predate and reject the Zionist project.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is a Palestinian Jew of African origins, film essayist, curator, and professor of modern culture and comparative literature at Brown University. She is the author of numerous books, including: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. 

Esther Farmer is a Palestinian Jew and native Brooklynite passionate about using theater as a tool for community development. She is former Ombudsman and Manager for the New York City Housing Authority, former United Nations representative for the International Association for Community Development and was an original founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. She is also a Jewish Voice for Peace NYC chapter leader and the director and playwright of “Wrestling with Zionism.”

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

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