Author Izabella Tabarovsky—a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism, writer, journalist, and the author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide—joins host Steven Shalowitz from her home in Jerusalem to explore the Soviet origins of modern anti-Zionism and why those ideas echo so loudly on campuses today. Born in 1970 and raised in the USSR, Tabarovsky recounts what it meant to live with state-sponsored “anti-Zionism” that functioned as a sophisticated system of discrimination against Jews, from schoolyard humiliation to university and career barriers.
Drawing on history and lived experience, she connects the daring defiance of Soviet Jewish refuseniks—Jews denied exit visas and punished for asserting Jewish peoplehood—to the pressures Jewish students face in the United States. Tabarovsky explains how post-1967 Soviet propaganda framed Zionism as racism, colonialism, and fascism, and how that rhetoric migrated into Western political discourse.
The conversation highlights six practical lessons for today: reclaim Zionism, educate yourself, build alliances, do the unexpected, reject victimhood, and “lead with Jewish.” From underground Hebrew study circles to the iconic courage of Natan Sharansky, Tabarovsky offers a clear-eyed message: Jewish identity is not a liability—it is a source of strength, dignity, and resolve.
Izabella Tabarovsky is a scholar of Soviet antizionism and contemporary antisemitism, writer, journalist, and the author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide (Wicked Son). She is a senior fellow with the Z3 Institute in Palo Alto; a fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC; and a fellow with the Comper Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa and the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. A contributing writer at Tablet, she has also published widely, and her work has been translated into multiple languages.