Pro-Israel rally in Times Square, New York City, US, Oct. 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

Oriental rugs, Bauhaus furniture, and Mediterranean sweets adorned a stage featuring one college student and a former member of Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset. The suavely-set docuseries preview was the latest attempt by a group of Zionist organizations, most prominently the Tikvah Fund, to create greater public knowledge about the history of Zionism.

On Dec. 12, the University of California, Los Angeles’ Hillel Center held a preview of the new documentary expanding on the history of Zionism. Featuring former Israeli politician Einat Wilf and her 23-year-old former Georgetown University student, Zoe Tara Zeigherman, the five-part documentary series will be featured on over 30 college campuses across the country before a wider release next month.

The documentary — titled Zionism and Anti-Zionism: The History of Two Opposing Ideas — breaks down the history of the Jewish state’s establishment and its aftermath into five parts: emancipation and political Zionism; socialism and labor Zionism; religious Zionism and anti-Zionism; Islamic and Arab anti-Zionism amidst the creation of Israel; and Soviet, anti-imperialism, and left-wing anti-Zionism.

The series is unique in the thoroughness of its attempt to blend historical narratives with contemporary political analysis. “The series ends in our contemporary moment and a discussion of left-wing anti-Zionism,” Zeigherman told The Algemeiner. However, “it discusses this movement through its roots in Soviet anti-Zionism.”

Zeigherman, a London-born graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, added that the film seeks to highlight the similarities between contemporary anti-Zionism and the “anti-Zionist propaganda machine that was so heavily invested in the Soviet Union, especially after the Six-Day War [of 1967].”

In the episodes, which range in length from 30-40 minutes, Wilf examines the history of Zionism in a way that the directors sought to make digestible for the average college student.

After serving in the Knesset as a representative of the Labor and the Independence parties from 2010 to 2013, Wilf has since pivoted to activism and academia, authoring several books and, most recently, teaching courses at Georgetown.

The impetus for the documentary, Zeigherman told The Algemeiner, was the miseducation of her peers. During the tumultuous summer of 2020, Zeigherman recalled that her peers viewed Jews as “actually white and oppressors in a kind of oppressed-oppressor narrative used as a comprehensive worldview.” The result, she observed, was “the erasure of Jewish history and an erasure of Jewish people.”

Her alienation amongst progressive voices ultimately led Zeigherman to seek out the voices of progressive Zionist pundits online. Among them was Wilf, who by sheer coincidence was set to teach at Georgetown the following semester. The former Israeli politician’s course was “transformative” for Zeigherman “as a student, for me, as a Jew,” she explained. “I was finally able to root my understanding of myself in knowledge, in history.”

This month’s screening took place as a preview ahead of a wider audience release set to occur in Jan. 2024.

According to the documentary’s product manager, Yael Zeldin, its broader release will be intended “to become an integral part of the curriculum for Israel education.”

Zeldin told The Algemeiner that agreements are in place with Hillel chapters “to be viewed across the country,” but that she hopes it will also be featured in “synagogues, Jewish Community Centers, and anywhere else where its screening can be of educational value.”

The series is produced by Levana Studios, and a trailer for the documentary can be found on its website.

The public release will include a series of YouTube videos that break up the interviews into soundbites, with the intention of such a format resonating with a younger generation that often watches short videos on social media.