Order Wes' book
An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing
Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes) 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 keeps us from exploring critical questions of power.
Each chapter invites us back into the body, exploring healing as a spiritual and political reclamation. 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.
Media and Book events
Media
Interviews with Wes about An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing:
- Sounds of Sand (Science and Non-Duality) podcast
- Making Mensches podcast
- KPFA radio, Interview with me on Women’s Magazine
- KPFA radio, live recording of book conversation with Cecilie Surasky and Penny Rosenwasster
- WBAI radio, Beyond the Pale
- Jewish Heretics Podcast, United Jewish People’s Order in Toronto
2026 Book Events
January 24th, 6pm, Conversation with Wes and David Naimon at Bishop and Wilde in Portland, OR
February 21st, Tucson, AZ
Praise
“ 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. 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
“ 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: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
“ 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
“ 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: Histories. Bodies. Futures.
“ This vital exploration of individual and collective trauma and healing in Jews and Jewish communities expertly weaves the personal and political; the body and the collective; past, present, and future; ritual, healing, and organizing. 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, author of For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year
“ 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
PHOTO IN THIS SECTION BY HOLLY STEVENS
