Episode 64: The Soviet roots of today's antizionism, with Izabella Tabarovsky
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2025
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism, a contributor to many books and a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute. Her latest book is “Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide.”
It’s available here: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Refusenik-Jewish-Students-Survival/dp/B0G2GKWKCJ/ref=zg_m_bs_g_8975368011_m_sccl_1/142-8265824-8567764?psc=1
Today we are going to dive into the story of Soviet Jewry and the ideological war carried out by Soviet authorities against Jewish religious life and identity that ended up driving so many Soviet Jews to Zionism.
And we delve into the vast, well-funded, decades-long Soviet propaganda efforts against the West in the third world and how that campaign’s vocabulary about Israel still drives a great deal of academic and activist discourse on Israel today. The links run deeper than mere vocabulary. Much of what we’re seeing today — the discourse on Israel that goes beyond criticism of the Gaza war to rejecting the very idea that Jews are a nation — had its start in that Cold War context.
This episode is sponsored by Ceki Aluf Medina, a longtime listener and member of the Turkish Jewish community who is currently living in the United States. He asked to dedicate the episode to the soldiers of the IDF, the reservists and the regular army, who have sacrificed so much for the safety of the Jewish state. In Ceki’s words: “We in the diaspora recognize our obligation to support you, to vouch for you and take great pride in celebrating your accomplishments.”
He also asked to dedicate this episode to the work of Shuva Achim, “brothers return,” a volunteer based grassroots organization that has been there for the IDF soldiers since the early days of the Gaza war, providing at their cafe and way station outside Moshav Shuva on the Gaza border countless hot meals, coffee and amenities to soldiers heading in and out of war.
If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.
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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Haviv Anything. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm really excited to have today a scholar who I have learned from a great deal in recent years about |
| 0:14.0 | Soviet Jewry, the history of Soviet Jewry, and the surprising relevance of the history of |
| 0:20.0 | Soviet Jewry to today, to what's happening |
| 0:22.0 | today, to a great many of the concerns and anxieties that worry us, that are familiar to us, |
| 0:27.7 | that we talk about them constantly, but sometimes the things we talk about most hide their deepest |
| 0:33.2 | truths from us. We think we have, we understand them because we're constantly discussing them. |
| 0:37.9 | And then we suddenly discover that our constant talking about them actually hides a kind of |
| 0:44.5 | confusion. So I asked Isabella Tabarovsky to join me today to help sort through some of the |
| 0:52.9 | confusion of this moment. |
| 0:59.5 | She is a scholar of Soviet anti-Zionism, contemporary anti-Semitism. |
| 1:01.2 | She's a contributor to many books. |
| 1:06.7 | She's a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute and a fellow at the Wilson Center in D.C. |
| 1:11.8 | Her latest book is B. Refusennik, a Jewish student's survival guide. |
| 1:18.1 | Before that, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by Sekhi aloof Medina. |
| 1:20.9 | I really hope I pronounced your name correctly. |
| 1:22.5 | Thank you so much. As somebody named Kaviv, who spent years in the United States, |
| 1:26.2 | I have a deep respect for how people pronounce names. but my Turkish is not what it used to be. |
| 1:32.2 | A long-time listener. |
| 1:33.9 | Thank you very much and a member of the Turkish-Jewish community, who is currently living in the United States. |
| 1:39.5 | Sheki had asked to dedicate the episode to the soldiers of the IDF, the reservists and the regular army, |
| 1:45.0 | who have sacrificed so much for the safety of the Jewish state. He asked me to say, |
... |
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