An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing - by Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Unapologetically anti-Zionist and firmly rooted in Jewish spiritual values--a liberatory model for Jewish healing

Body-based tools and faith-based practices for processing trauma, reclaiming our agency, and building a world where "never again" means "never again for anyone"

"...an accessible pathway for healing from historical trauma, releasing it from our bodies, and preventing it from being passed on to future generations. This may well be the missing piece for breaking the pattern of violence undergirding Israeli apartheid and occupation."
--Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

Dr. Wendy Elisheva Somerson, PhD, shows how Jewish history lives in Jewish bodies--and how antisemitism and oppression disrupt our access to safety, dignity, and belonging. This unmetabolized trauma can lock us into a survival state that brings historical grief into the present moment...and keep us from exploring critical questions that help us tend our legacies and live into a better world.

How does ancestral grief live on in our bodies and keep us from feeling safe--and how is that fear enacted on other peoples? How do we reconcile a history of persecution with the state power of Israel today?

Each chapter invites us back into the body, exploring healing as a spiritual and political reclamation. With skills-based wisdom for trauma, safety, spiritually grounded intentions, and resourcing ourselves for difficult conversations, this book also helps readers understand:

• Trauma and healing through our bodies
• Jewish longing, belonging, legacies of assimilation
• Healing shame--of not being Jewish enough, of being too much, and of being complicit
• Embodied experiences of Jewish resilience, ritual, and grief

Rooted in justice, care, and spiritual depth, this book asks us to live into a Judaism beyond Zionism. It invites us to heal toward liberation--to reclaim Jewish faith and release Jewish identity from the colonial project of Israel in power, skill, and community.

Review Quotes

"Israel-Palestine has been described by many as the 'open wound' of the modern world: never healed, never even bandaged. Somerson brings a healer's perspective to this ongoing injury, focusing on its deep, underlying sources. They explain clearly how the Israeli government manipulates Jewish collective trauma to forward its far-right agenda. Most crucially, they lay out an accessible pathway for healing from historical trauma, releasing it from our bodies and preventing it from being passed onto future generations."
--NAOMI KLEIN, author of Doppelganger

"Zionism is not solely supported by Jews, nor does it exist to make Jews safer, but it does manipulate Jews through misuse of Jewish trauma, and this book can help us understand and resist that, so we might build a safety for Jews and all people based on an anti-colonial, anti-Zionist solidarity politics."
--DEAN SPADE, author of Mutual Aid

"Much that Somerson shares occurs across communities--weaponizing historical trauma, resistance to body-based work . . ., and the broader political meaning of the collective fact of healing--but their words deepen our understanding by being held within the intimacy of Jewish experience
and histories. A wonderfully pragmatic as well as visionary book, this is an example of the integrity of collective healing held in a good and truthful way."
--SUSAN RAFFO, author of Liberated to the Bone

"This is the book Jews who are committed to justice need at this moment. Bringing together trauma and healing studies, history and ritual, and stories from decades of practice as a somatic therapist and organizer, Somerson writes complex concepts in ways that are nuanced, yet accessible. This is a landmark book in the field of Jewish trauma and healing studies."
--RABBI JESSICA ROSENBERG, coauthor of For Times Such as These

" In this heartbreakingly timely book, Somerson bravely offers clarity and insight into the unfathomable. Most importantly, this book offers guidance on how we might heal without pretending the work of healing will be easy. But it might be possible, and this book is an invaluable guide to that possibility."
--ABIGAIL ROSE CLARKE, author of Returning Home to Our Bodies

" Right on time, this book is a true gift for our resistance movements and our healing work, which as this book so beautifully reminds us, are one and the same. I'm so grateful for all the wisdom Wendy Elisheva Somerson shares about embodied rituals for trouble-making toward holy interdependence, a Judaism beyond Zionism, and a free and thriving Palestine."
--DORI MIDNIGHT, community-care practitioner, ritual leader, and writer

About the Author

Wendy Elisheva Somerson (wes) is a non-binary Jewish somatic healer, writer, visual artist, and activist who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They facilitate Ruach, body-based Jewish healing groups held in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework. As part of a movement of anti-Zionist Jews, they support Jewish healing from historical trauma and promote a liberatory future for Judaism and Jewishness beyond Zionism that includes a free Palestine.