Why We’re Called Zionism Unfiltered

People ask us about the name. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s a challenge. Fair enough. It’s worth answering directly.

We didn’t pick the word “Zionism” because it’s comfortable. We picked it because it’s ours. We’re not willing to let it be defined by people who’ve never agreed with it in the first place.

The numbers tell the story.

A 2024-2025 survey of Canadian Jews found that 94% support Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. It was conducted by Leger for the New Israel Fund of Canada, JSpaceCanada and Canadian Friends of Peace Now.

Ask the same group if they consider themselves a “Zionist,” and only 51% say yes.

Sit with that gap. Ninety-four percent believe it. Fifty-one percent will claim it. Nearly half the community holds the belief and still hesitates or refuses to use the word that has described that belief for over a century.

It’s not a change of heart. It’s a change of vocabulary.

Researcher Robert Brym ran a January 2025 follow-up with the same respondents to dig into why. His conclusion, published in Canadian Jewish Studies: the retreat from the word “Zionist” is best explained by what linguists call semantic drift. The term’s meaning has been pulled and stretched by people arguing against it. Using it started to feel like signing up for positions many self-identified Zionists don’t actually hold.

This isn’t a Canadian anomaly either. A comparable U.S. survey by the Jewish Federations of North America found the identical pattern: 88% of American Jews affirm Israel’s right to exist but only 37% will call themselves Zionist. Two countries. Two independent surveys. The same story: belief holds steady while the label erodes.

Why the label is worth keeping.
It would be simpler to stop using the word. Talk about “supporting Israel” instead and sidestep the baggage entirely.

We think that’s exactly the wrong move.

Words carry arguments. If we let “Zionist” become radioactive and quietly retire it we’re not defusing the term. We’re conceding it. We’re handing the only working definition of the word to the people who spent the last several years redefining it as something else. What was once a plain defensible term (the belief that Jewish people have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland) becomes by default whatever its harshest critics decide it means.

That’s not a fight we’re willing to lose by forfeit.

What “unfiltered” means to us.

“Unfiltered” does double duty in our name, and both meanings matter.

The first is about the word itself. We’re not interested in softening “Zionism” to make it more palatable, and we’re not interested in accepting a distorted version of it just because that version is easier to argue against. We want the term back in its original plain-spoken form: no hedging, no euphemism, no apology.

The second is about how we talk to each other. We want this to be a space where people can think out loud about Israel and Zionism and everything tangled up in both without pre-editing themselves for fear of saying it wrong. A place to bring the rough draft of a thought rather than the polished defensible final version.

We landed on that idea before we’d even met Temple Anshe Sholom’s new rabbi. Shortly after he arrived, we heard him describe the kind of space he wanted for Torah study: a rough draft. A room for candid unfinished thinking rather than performance. It was a nice surprise to find our community already reaching for the same idea from a different direction.

Those two meanings reinforce each other. The data backs up the first: most Jewish people already believe what Zionism actually means. The work isn’t convincing anyone of something new. It’s giving people permission and the confidence to use the word they already agree with. But that kind of confidence doesn’t build in a vacuum. It needs a room where people can ask an unpolished question, admit uncertainty, or push back on each other without it becoming a referendum on their loyalty. That’s the room we’re trying to build.

That’s the whole premise behind this organization’s name. Not a slogan. A reclamation project and an open forum to work through what that reclamation actually looks like, together.