Has Reform Judaism Fueled Anti-Zionism?

This is the unedited, full version of the essay that originally appeared in Future of Jewish. Warning: Contains some graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and harassment of minors.

Screenshot from the 2001 cult classic comedy “Wet Hot American Summer”

“There is no such thing as traditional Judaism.” These were the words of a Reform rabbi I have known since childhood, in response to an article I wrote about feeling envious of Jews who grew up in Conservative and Orthodox Jewish households.

I’ve been thinking about her defensive reaction to that article for almost two years, and it makes less and less sense to me the more I learn about and immerse myself in Jewish tradition.

Between lamenting how observant Jews can’t listen to music or shop on Shabbat and suggesting that halacha (Jewish laws) are “rooted in both racism and patriarchy,” she was very clear in her belief that Reform Judaism is “no less observant” than Conservative or Orthodox. No less? Really?

This is an unpopular topic of discussion because most American Jews are now Reform or secular, and it’s not an easy topic; as evinced in the rabbi’s strong reaction to my article, no one wants to have their religious views impugned or diminished; and there is also the complex question of “Who is a Jew?” which has many answers, depending on who you ask. It’s uncomfortable discourse that many prefer to avoid or shut down.

And yet, I feel ever more certain as a millennial who was raised in a very standard Reform Jewish home that it is essential to look at this topic and discuss it as a community—not because people who are Reform are “bad” or “lesser” or that Conservative or Orthodox Jews are implicitly “better” or “right,” but because we are in a contemporary era of dangerous antisemitism, often channeled through anti-Zionism, and the champions of this dangerous rhetoric are far too often Reform Jews (who vastly outnumber the fringe Neturei Karta, who are also rotten and come from the polar end of the religious Jewish spectrum).

It is time to question not only why so many people raised in Reform Judaism become anti-Zionist, but why so many Reform Jewish spaces (from synagogues to camps and everything in between) tolerate antisemitic rhetoric.

Who is a Jew?

Before we get in the weeds, let’s answer this foundational question at a high level. Judaism is an ethnoreligion. While there are Jews of all colors and backgrounds, ethnic Jews have unique genetic makeup linking them to their Jewish ancestors (whether that is primarily Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Beta Israel, or something else) and their indigenous homeland of Israel. Judaism is also a religion (though it does not and never has encouraged proselytizing; in fact, it has historically been quite insular), and it is very friendly to converts and considers converts to be as much part of the tribe as any ethnically Jewish person (and therefore just as spiritually connected to eretz Yisrael, and just as much a part of am Yisrael.

Of course, there are ethnic Jews who are atheist, or indeed have even converted to other religions; there are also people who have converted to Judaism and then become atheist or converted to other religions. There are also varying opinions about Jewish identity based on who you ask – Jews who observe halacha more strictly only view inborn religious Jewish identity through a matrilineal lens, and usually do not recognize non-Orthodox conversions. There is a lot of complexity.

So, you’re assuming anti-Zionism is always antisemitic?

Another point to clarify before we delve further into the main topic – Zionism is quite simply the right to self-determination on ancestral land for Jewish people. There are no caveats for specific political or religious ideologies; that is literally all it is. If you singularly believe that Jewish people are not entitled to self-determination in our ancestral homeland, then you are a racist Jew-hater.

If your “criticism” of Israel’s government involves calls for the abolition of the entire state, and/or the displacement or killing of all its Jews, you are a racist Jew-hater, and a fool. That’s all!

Why does it matter?

As a thirty-something millennial, I grew up in the height of the era of “color-blindness” in America; a time when it was considered not only impolite, but backwards to point out racial differences, with the consensus that it would be easier, safer, and better for everyone if we all pretend to be the same.

Indeed, the preponderance of Ashkenazi Jews in America— who have been trending increasingly Reform, increasingly secular and intermarried, and largely been more light-skinned than other subsets of ethnic Jews—made for ripe circumstances of sweeping assimilation in the post-WW2 era.

Even mentioning the ethnic component of Jewish identity will ruffle many feathers—to this day, scores of Jews will suggest that invoking anything about Jewish genetics is akin to Nazism itself. For clarity, the ethnic component of Jewish identity is important (just as it is for any group) to understand ourselves medically, epigenetically, indigenously, and for the very reason that Nazis still measured the Jewish facial features of completely non-religious, ethnic Jews.

A convert to Judaism may be able to hide behind a non-Jewish appearance or at any point renounce their Jewishness (not that they should ever have to, and not that they can’t be victims of painful antisemitism), but an ethnically Jewish person can never shed their ethnic Jewishness, nor avoid the racist aspects of antisemitism.

It isn’t wrong to discuss, and mentioning it doesn’t mean that anyone is “better” or “worse” or more worthy of belonging in the Jewish tribe from a spiritual or religious perspective; understanding our differences is just that – a tool for understanding. We should not need total homogeneity in order to seek or find understanding.

But it matters, because an increasingly secular, assimilated culture makes for an ever-murkier understanding of Jewish values, culture, and identity.

Why call out Reform Judaism?

I grew up in a very traditional Reform Jewish home. I attended Sunday school at our synagogue, had a bat mitzvah, went to Jewish summer camps, participated in Jewish youth groups, celebrated the major holidays with short, food-forward gatherings with family friends, and so on.

The only thing that was slightly different about my upbringing is that I studied abroad in Israel when I was in high school – an experience that I still credit as one of the only things that staved off the temptations of anti-Zionism for as long as I did.

Like most of my family, I very much considered myself “culturally” Jewish; I loved bagels, I would repeat Yiddish words I heard from my grandparents, and I loved the Hannukah episode of Rugrats. I also recall feeling extremely spiritually connected to G-d and Judaism as I went through Sunday school.

As I grew into my adolescence, however, my relationship to Judaism changed. Fascination with Torah was replaced by a more embarrassingly stereotypical obsession with what I would wear to my bat mitzvah, who the “cool” kids were at temple and in youth groups, and fitting in or competing with my peers.

My parents had a nasty divorce that started only two weeks before my bat mitzvah, so it was a very rocky time. Despite talking to my rabbi and cantor, I found no solace. I managed to get through the event, but it was terrible. I felt abandoned by most people in my life.

The reality is, life is hard and messy. The ‘90s and 00’s and 10’s were not altogether great times for mainstream American society, and the whole problem with assimilation and secularism is that the veil between Jewish values and culture and mainstream societal values and culture is thin, which creates a confusing quasi-religious endorsement of behavior and norms that are not at all fundamentally Jewish.

Separating Jewish culture from non-Jewish culture

Again, there are many people who will feel angry or reactive and may not understand how or why Reform Jewish spaces could contribute to any problems whatsoever, including anti-Zionism. I would like to shed light on what it was like in many of these spaces to illustrate why it’s problematic to blur the line between American societal values and Jewish ones.

I’ll start with my synagogue. I really love my rabbi and cantor, and I had many moments of joy and learning and spiritual connection there throughout my childhood. But being in a congregation where the majority of people are completely secular and attend services only twice a year creates a sort of spiritual vacuum.

By the time I was a teenager, it felt clear to me in the context of Reform Jewish community that material success (my grades, where I would go to college, how much money I would make, the prestige of my family) was as or more religiously ordained than worshipping G-d or following Jewish law.

There was one boy at my synagogue who was a pathological liar, and a son of a music industry executive. Incidentally, he grew up to become a seedy club owner and convicted criminal. I’ll never forget the 6^th grade temple sleepover, when to my shock, during the “supervised” movie night where we were all crowded in a room, he tried to slip his hands into my pants.

I was 11 years old and batted him away, disgusted. I learned from one of my friends that he tried the same thing with her shortly thereafter and succeeded. I was flabbergasted that this happened at my synagogue, and it rattled me.

I recognize that some children will behave like hormonal degenerates regardless of the context or the scrupulousness of adult supervision (and some will even grow into adulthoods that mirror their juvenile predilections), but I don’t think this kind of lascivious behavior would have happened in a more religious environment – obviously in an Orthodox Jewish context, shomer negiah (prohibition on touching between men and women) precludes the sheer possibility of this happening in a supervised context.

Maybe that’s an isolated incident, and I certainly don’t think that Reform synagogues foster sexual perversion or coercion among kids, but I think incidents like this – or any creepy, aggressively misogynistic or apathetic behavior in an overtly religious environment are easily conflated psychologically with the nature and function of the environment itself.

The examples get more sordid and more abundant when we talk about Reform Jewish youth groups. I started attending one of these groups in 8^th grade until the end of high school, and it solidified most of what I had been socialized to value and prioritize through every other tenet of my Jewish life – that my worth as a human being was mainly tied to my success and prestige.

In Seattle, the girl’s chapters were separated (unofficially) into two groups, where one group had all the bigger girls, and the other one had the smaller, cattier girls. Mocking girls for being fat was part of the despicable teenage charm of being in the “hotter” group.

We would get together with other members of the youth group across the Pacific Northwest a few times per year, usually either at Jewish camps, synagogues, or hotels. Each gathering would include an array of team-building and leadership-building activities, and would culminate with a dance. Dance themes included delightful, age-appropriate official romps like “CEOs and Office Hoes.”

Scantily clad girls would be gyrating and grinding with boys literally on the wall or the floor; kids would leave the dances to go have sex in bathrooms; girls would be accosted by eager boys who approached them to dance with erections. It was gross. And much like the rest of youth culture in the ‘00s, it was violently misogynistic.

A girl from my temple only came to a youth group convention one time. It was at a Jewish camp, and we were in 9^th grade. There was a boy there who came from a very wealthy Seattle suburb and who wasn’t even Jewish, but through his best friend (an equally wealthy and misogynistic but Jewish boy) became a very prominent figure in the youth group.

This non-Jewish boy convinced that 14-year-old girl to have anal sex with him at the Jewish camp convention, and then spread the news like wildfire, resulting in everyone mocking her and commenting in shock about how “slutty” and what a “whore” she was. Naturally, she never came back.

For the first few years of participating in this youth group, I would pray when we had to travel longer distances to conventions on a bus that I wouldn’t have to sit near the creepy guy two years older than me who would routinely pull out his erect penis and insist that every girl around him look at it and ask them to touch it.

A 14-year-old boy who was worshipped by all the other boys for his “game” had lost his virginity to a 30-something woman who statutorily raped him, but it was constantly touted as an achievement worth a high-five. This same boy stirred up drama in the youth group, when he cheated on his long-term girlfriend with her best friend, who was also in the youth group.

The conventions and the youth group itself were like sporting events and teams, mixed with a culture that ironically feels most akin to Southern fraternities and sororities. The girls’ and boys’ groups would at varying points break out into cheers, and the boys would eventually converge with the girls, surrounding them as they chanted “Make me a sandwich!” or “[All the girls] on their knees!”

It was repugnant. And it shattered any illusion that Reform Jewish sisterhood held any sanctity whatsoever; not only did my boyfriend in the youth group cheat on me with multiple of my “sisters,” the rest neglected to tell me about it, and everyone continued to worship him as an unshakably “cool” figure, while I was relegated to being considered a whiny, high-strung bitch.

Everything about the youth group was almost singularly focused on bringing together Jewish people (and non-Jewish people) to instill the idea that functioning as a good Jewish person in society means dominating – a sink-or-swim mentality that bred a generation of misogynistic pigs, who feel great about themselves because they went to good schools or now work high-up at non-profits (even as many of them proudly advocate for the death and displacement of their own people). Reform camp was not much better.

Reform Jewish camps and Wet Hot American Summer

For many Reform Jews, besmirching summer camp is like heresy. And yet, while I hold countless fond memories of my Jewish camp experience, I also can’t help but feel angry and even resentful about what that experience fostered.

I was a bully at summer camp, which is a reality that I deeply regret. I have three older sisters, each of whom also attended summer camp, and who could be exceptionally cruel as children. My oldest sister, who is 8 years older than me, convinced me when she was a counselor and I first went to camp at the age of 10 that my parents hated me and were glad that I was gone and never wanted me to come home.

Her friends, a group of 18- to 21-year-old men, came into my bunk when I was 10 and “trained” me – that is, they shone a bright light into my face while yelling “TRAIN” to scare me in the middle of the night.

There were other unpleasant realities to having older sisters at camp. My second oldest sister was 16, and one of her admirers when I was 10 told me to pass along the message to her from him, “Wanna bone?”

But even without the strange dynamics of being at camp with my sisters, there was a lot of weird behavior that made the environment feel uncomfortably more like a music festival than a Jewish summer camp.

The reason why so many American Jews love the cult classic comedy Wet Hot American Summer is not merely because of its hilarious all-star cast; it’s because of the almost painful verisimilitude to what Reform Jewish camps were actually like – at least in the ‘90s and ‘00s (and based on that movie, apparently in the ‘80s as well, at a minimum).

I recall counselors leaving bunks full of 10-year-olds unsupervised to go hook up with their boyfriends (sometimes in plain view of the campers). Kids would routinely get kicked out for drug or alcohol possession, sometimes staff members would get fired for having sex with campers. It was weird.

From what I understand, there are a lot more restrictions in place now to protect campers from the nuisance of unhinged, hormonal 18-year-old counselors running amok. But for a generation of millennials, gen Xers and probably some gen Zers, the damage is done.

Judaism was a novel backdrop to the scene of camp, but usually little more than that. We technically had kosher meals and had Friday night and Saturday morning services for Shabbat, and every once in a while, we had Israeli education or dancing, or Hebrew words of the day.

And yet, even a rotating cast of Israeli staff every single year at camp didn’t stop countless people I went to camp with for almost a decade from calling for the murder and/or displacement of all Israeli Jews.

Shabbat was not about rest or Torah study, but instead about dressing up in heels and tiny dresses, having leg-shaving parties on the porches of cabins, and then having to hug literally every single person in the entire camp, every week before services.

Though it was surely not designed this way, it felt like Reform Jewish camp functioned as a runway for hyper-sexualization and bullying. But to be very clear, this is not unique to Jewish camp. It was part and parcel to life in the ‘90s and ‘00s, where movies like American Pie and Mean Girls satirically reflected the same culture that lapped up and abused a nubile Britney Spears.

It was objectively not a good time in mainstream culture, and movies like Saved! and But I’m a Cheerleader point to these same trends and behaviors cropping up equally in secular or non-Jewish religious contexts at the time, because there is nothing about Judaism or any denomination of a Jewish environment that explicitly fosters abusive or degenerate behavior—it’s simply what was fostered in society, and without a clear and disciplined distinction in the moral compass between the two, they blend into one and the same.

Jewish identity lost at Jewish camp

Although I’m a darker-skinned, curly-haired Ashkenazi Jew, I didn’t understand really anything about my ethnic Jewish identity until I went to Israel. Despite my years of Sunday school and bat mitzvah training and Hebrew High, I didn’t know about different Jewish ethnicities until countless curious Israelis prodded me to find out if I was a Yemenite Jew.

There was so, so much I didn’t know about our history and culture until I studied in Israel. And yet, after October 7^th, seeing how many non-Jewish people I went to summer camp with sympathizing with Hamas and celebrating or justifying October 7^th, I have started feeling enraged that I had to share what could have been an enriching, educational and spiritual experience in America with those people.

I recognize, honor and appreciate that Jews traditionally and spiritually pride ourselves on welcoming in strangers, and I’m not saying that no non-Jewish person should ever be allowed in Jewish camps or at holidays or anything else.

But I find it problematic that I did not know when I was growing up just how many non-Jewish kids there were at camp. It was more than it should be. If it’s not almost entirely Jewish, then it’s not a Jewish camp. And there’s nothing wrong with secular camps – those are awesome! Non-Jews and secular Jews seeking secular experiences should go enjoy those camps to their hearts content.

One non-Jewish white boy who attended summer camp (and eventually brought other non-Jewish friends to join him) was a particularly misogynistic creature, and aside from castigating and publicly mocking me for refusing to perform sexual acts on him when we were teenagers, he also made cruel, racist jokes about my “huge Jew shnoz.”

He would point to the other girls, including girls who were mixed and not fully Jewish, as evidence that there were actually attractive Jews who didn’t possess large, ugly noses. The other boys would sit back and laugh in agreement.

He’s now still good friends with several Jewish guys from camp, all of whom are proud, vehement anti-Zionists and “social justice” advocates, despite one in their friend group being a serial, convicted rapist (a predisposition that many of us were aware of even as 12- and 13-year-olds and would try to avoid to our best abilities—he’s now a DJ for b’nai mitzvot, among other things!), and they still do drugs and party together, well into their 30s. All in a day’s tikkun olam, I suppose.

It bothers me that Reform Jews have been so averse to any kind of exclusivity, and so irate about the prospect of anyone bringing up the ethnic component of Jewishness that they would deprive entire generations of Jewish youth of the opportunity to understand ourselves more fully and proudly.

I am aware that Orthodoxy is not a panacea for the ills of anti-Jewish racism; when I was in college, I attended a shabbaton in the Chabad community of Passaic, New Jersey, where a gorgeous blonde, curly-haired young Jewish woman told me about how she had not been able to find a husband yet because “men in the community [were] mostly looking for a wife who doesn’t have curly hair.”

But it’s more than that. I don’t care or necessarily need to be in the company of other people who understand what it’s like to be made fun of for appearing visibly Jewish. I care that I was socialized as a Jewish person, with a Jewish identity, in an environment where I had no idea who was or wasn’t Jewish, not just in their outward appearance, but in that they might literally worship Jesus and they were in many ways indistinguishable from someone who was technically actually Jewish. That bothers me.

What happens at Jewish camp is Jewish?

I am queer; I come from a very liberal family, grew up in the very liberal Pacific Northwest. And yet, it was painfully difficult for me to come out when I was in my 20s, because I understand how entrenched the stigma is, even in the most “tolerant” environment.

It’s been fascinating to me to watch the majority of the LGBTQ+ community side with Hamas in the ongoing war, despite what would be a guarantee of torture and murder if they set foot in Gaza. Regardless, many queer Jews that I know from my upbringing are now also anti-Zionists.

When I remember the rampant homophobia at camp (two mean girls in my bunk once read a girl’s secret journal in 8^th grade and outed her as a lesbian), it makes a lot of sense to me why queer Jewish people may project blame for events that happened at Reform camps or youth groups onto Judaism and Jewish people as a whole.

In fact, I suspect this is true of almost any traumatic or hateful thing that happened in secular religious environments. Children don’t know the difference between what is “society” and what is explicitly “Jewish” unless they are shown and educated. Without that, a lot of the distinction is blurred.

This is a reality of all the societal dynamics around racism, classism, sexism, and so on, that every Western community encounters, but not every community deals with or experiences through the same lens.

When grotesque wealth, for example, is paraded and favored in mean girl cultures of Reform camps or youth groups (which in the ‘00s meant whoever has the most Juicy Couture zip-ups, Seven Jeans and Uggs), it has the effect in unknowing minds of bestowing a seemingly religious superiority upon those who are more fortunate or dominant.

And I can painfully recall in the midst of my own struggle with depression and suicidal ideation just how real it feels to blame Judaism for what feels so easily in despairing moments like the root of all problems. Of course, this is lazy, and it’s an expression of the very internalized antisemitism that becomes imbued in your psyche when everything you hate about society is indivisible from everything painful about Jewish community and spaces—because they are literally one in the same.

Tikkun Olam

At the crux of the conversation around what (if anything) gets lost in the practice of Reform Judaism, is the original question of what Judaism is. Christianity technically appropriates our seminal text as a chunk of their religion, so what’s different about a Jewish person and a Christian (aside from worshipping Jesus)?

Often it feels easier to get consensus around what Judaism is not – it’s not worshipping Jesus, it’s not eating pork in the middle of Yom Kippur. It’s very clear what Judaism is for more religious Jews, but for Reform Jews, it feels like the religious raison d'être is simply a perversion of tikkun olam (roughly translated as “repairing the world”).

That is, anything can be considered “Jewish” if it feels good while you’re doing it, and you consider yourself a Jew. Beneath that, I believe, lies a plethora of fear and projection that make a social justice-oriented religious doctrine feel more resonant and rewarding than the traditions that require more effort, sacrifice and even distancing from mainstream secular culture in order to actualize.

This is not unlike the “Jew-bus,” or Jewish people who find refuge in Buddhism; Reform Judaism doesn’t offer them what they seek, because many Reform practices are completely divorced from the kabbalistic wisdom that is suffused through more religious denominations like Chabad.

When I asked a rabbi at a prominent synagogue in Portland why there were so many different spellings of G-d’s name and what the significance was, he laughed it off as extremist Jewish nonsense that didn’t mean anything. That was the last time I gave a Reform synagogue a second thought.

And many Reform synagogues are now deliberately avoiding the subject of Israel altogether, or openly fostering an environment that is inclusive to anti-Zionist Jews – again, in theory because they truly believe it upholds the highest doctrine of tikkun olam to them, and they see proponents of Hamas and enemies of Israel as well-intentioned do-gooders instead of terrorists and Nazis.

What also disturbs me is that major Jewish institutions, including Jewish publications like Hey Alma, or organizations like the Jewish Federation, which overwhelmingly skew more Reform, are increasingly inclusive of not only anti-Zionist Jews and anti-Zionist converts, but even Messianic “Jews” (aka Christians).

My partner went through a program with the Jewish Federation before October 7^th, and much of the conversation was often monopolized by an anti-Zionist convert who would spew blood libels about Israel. This was not shut down or punished by the program moderators. Inclusivity to the point of total erosion feels like the essence of many Reform Jewish places to me these days.

Anti-Zionist converts???

Something that bothers me about the kneejerk reaction of Reform Jews when complex topics pertaining to Judaism come up is that, while they are firmly insisting “a Jew is a Jew is a Jew,” there is an increasing preponderance of Reform Jewish converts who are anti-Zionist.

That is genuinely nonsense. Israel is our ancestral homeland, and the single most sacred and holy place for Jews on this planet. If someone converts to Judaism through Reform only to peddle a “token Jew” narrative that reaffirms an existential danger to half the Jewish population, sorry but they are not Jewish.

And I shouldn’t be perceived as a conspiracy theorist for pointing out that Reform synagogues, which I have in certain cities observed as encompassing a surprisingly large amount of converts (and which is a lucrative business, with conversions raking in sometimes thousands of dollars), are more likely to be willing to foster communities of anti-Zionist Jews—either through silence, ambivalence or even vocal anti-Israel rhetoric.

Bringing this up shouldn’t de facto make me a fundamentalist, or a backwards person. We are allowed to gatekeep Judaism. Again, it doesn’t mean that converts or mixed Jewish people can’t be or aren’t “real Jews.” It means that the impetus to assimilate to the point where anyone and everyone are encouraged to be Jewish, regardless of if they want to have a Christmas tree or destroy the Jewish state, should be examined.

Where do we go from here?

I don’t have an answer about where we go. Almost half of married Jewish people in America are now intermarried (a number that goes up to 61% after 2010), and that concerns me. Not because it is wrong or bad to marry for love outside of your religion (which is very much a sentiment of Reform Judaism), but because Reform Judaism in America is already so woefully out of touch with Jewish tradition.

I think that interfaith families are incredibly beautiful and hopeful for humanity at large, but for my many thousands of years-old tradition that has only 15 million members of the tribe alive today (due to constant persecution and genocide against us), it makes me feel afraid.

I appreciate the notion of compromise (I’m married, I get it!), but it truly is not Jewish to celebrate Christmas or Easter. No matter how you spin it, that is abjectly not Jewish. And maybe that’s fine – I know there are many interfaith families that raise their children with strong Jewish identities, and I think that’s valid and beautiful.

And yet, after learning so much from immersing myself in more Conservative and Orthodox traditions, I feel immense grief and fear. Or rather, I would feel that a little more strongly if there wasn’t still a strong representation of religious Jews in the diaspora – and for every single Jewish person in Israel, who somehow lives and breathes Judaism, even if they never go to shul or daven.

I am not the arbiter of what is or isn’t Jewish; we have the word of G-d to dictate that. And change is natural and inevitable; many will gleefully point out that as I mentioned, I’m queer, therefore I’m already out of alignment with halacha. Well, I’m not saying that I want to adhere to every single rule or law in the Talmud.

Part of Jewish tradition involves debating or arguing even with G-d directly. I know it can be a slippery slope to determine when “arguing” or “pushback” devolves into sacrilege, but I am inclined to believe that there is a balance – one that we must actively continue to seek, even if it makes us uncomfortable or challenges us.

Judaism is so profoundly beautiful and fulfilling, and I believe that if many Jews who have assimilated would be willing to find the courage to explore what has been lost or misunderstood, and to allow themselves to be proudly, boldly different, they would find a deep sense of belonging and understanding.

Until then, I hope that when many Reform Jews make their biannual trip to synagogue for Yom Kippur, that they really enjoy the gospel choirs and full bands singing Hugh Jackman musicals; may they continue to delight in the secular joys that will eventually make many of their children forget that Judaism was anything other than entertainment, or that it perhaps existed at all.