Q&A with Rabbi Ira Youdovin

There is much being said about the up-coming World Zionist Congress, and why Reform Jews from across the globe should be interested.  To address these, we’ve invited a true expert to guide us through the material.

Rabbi Ira Youdovin forty years ago headed the team that created ARZA—Association of Reform Zionists of America, served as its first executive director and, together with its president, Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, led Reform Zionism’s first delegation to the World Zionist Congress.

When we contacted Rabbi Youdovin he mused that the questions being asked were largely the same he was called upon to answer in the mid-1970’s.

As you read Rabbi Youdovin’s comments, please remember to post here additional questions as well as your own take on the issues that he is raising.

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The World Zionist Congress: Why should Reform Jews be interested? 

The next World Zionist Congress will be held in October, 2015.  More than 500 delegates from Israel and the Diaspora will gather in Jerusalem to discuss key issues confronting Israel, Zionism and world Jewry, and to determine allocations made by the World Zionist Organization, the WZC’s parent body.  These decisions are determined by vote of the delegates, who reflect a wide diversity of ideological and religious perspectives.

If you care about the Reform Movement in Israel, if you support egalitarian prayer, if you believe in freedom of religion, the right of Reform rabbis to conduct marriage, divorce, burial and conversion, if you believe that women should have equal status, here is your chance to make a difference. Your vote in determining who represents your region is your voice in determining what happens at the Congress.

 

What are the origins of the World Zionist Congress? 

Theodor Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress (WZC) in Basel, Switzerland (1897).  An assimilated Viennese Jew covering the Dreyfus trial for a local newspaper, Herzl saw the anti-Semitism manifest in the trumped-up charges against a Jewish captain in the French army as a harbinger of a fate that awaited Jews everywhere in Europe.  His response was to embrace the need to create a national homeland where Jews would be safe and free. The WZC was the first institutional step toward achieving this goal.  Foremost among the resolutions adopted by the Congress was one that defined the movement: “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.”

Approximately two hundred delegates  from seventeen countries attended.  Sixty-nine were representatives from various Zionist societies.  The remainder were individual invitees. In attendance were ten non­-Jews who were expected to abstain from voting. Seventeen women attended.  While women participated in the discussions, they did not then have voting rights.  Those were granted the following year, at the Second Zionist Congress

Herzl called the WZC “the Parliament of the Jewish People.”

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Information about the World Zionist Congress Elections and ARZENU

Make your voice heard, make a difference
If you care about the Reform Movement in Israel, if you support egalitarian prayer, if you believe in freedom of religion, the right of Reform rabbis to conduct marriage, divorce, burial and conversion, if you believe that women should have equal status, here is your chance to make a difference. Join the ARZENU Reform Zionist group in your country and vote in the World Zionist Congress elections. This is the best way for you to directly influence and impact the future of the Reform Movement in Israel and of the Jewish people around the globe.

What is the World Zionist Organization?
Established in 1897, the World Zionist Organization (WZO) is often called the “Parliament of the Jewish people.” It was convened by Theodor Herzl in Basel and since its inception its goal was to unite the Jewish people and bring about the establishment of the Jewish state. The World Zionist Organization is a global organization supported by Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund), the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod (United Jewish Appeal) and the Government of Israel.

There are three types of membership in the World Zionist Organization:

1. International Zionist political parties which compete in elections for their representation, such as the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform (ARZENU), Reconstructionists, World Likud, Meretz, Shas, etc.
2. International Jewish organizations which have fixed representation and do not compete in elections (the World Union for Progressive Judaism, World Mizrachi, Hadassah, WIZO, B’nai Brith, Maccabi, and others)
3. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, Israeli political parties have been represented in the WZO based on their relative strength in the Israeli Knesset elections (Likud, Labor, Shas, Meretz, Israel Beiteinu, etc.).

Every five years the WZO convenes a Congress whose representation is determined by democratic elections amongst the international Zionist political parties. Between congresses the Zionist General Council (the Vaad Hapoel) convenes annually for discussions on pressing matters on the agenda of the Jewish people. Participation in one election is effective for five full years!

Representation in the World Zionist Congress elections
The next World Zionist Organization elections will be held worldwide in 2015. Israeli citizens are represented in the elections through political parties in Israel; world Jews are represented through international Zionist political parties to which they belong.

Out of 30 countries represented in the WZO, the Reform Movement has constituent ARZENU organizations in 14 countries. ARZENU is the umbrella organization for all Reform Zionist organizations worldwide.

Member organizations of ARZENU are: ARZA U.S., ARZA Canada, ARZA Australia, ARZA Netherlands, ARZENU South Africa, ARZENU Germany, ARZENU Spain, ARZENU Hungary, ARZENU Switzerland, ARZENU France, Pro Zion in Britain and Austria, Jason ARZENU Argentina, and Chazit Mitkademet in Brazil.

Why are the elections important?
As with the Israel Knesset elections, whoever wins the most votes receives the most important positions and control of budgets, and so it is with the World Zionist Congress elections.

How is this manifested?
Today the Reform Movement in Israel receives allocations of $4.5 to $5 million per annum from the Jewish Agency, Keren Kaymeth LeIsrael (JNF) and Keren Hayesod.

And how does this work? For example the WZO is a 50% owner of the Jewish Agency and therefore appoints 50% of the representatives to the Board of the Jewish Agency. Thus it can strongly impact who will be the chairman of the Agency or the agenda and priorities of the Agency. The same is applicable to the other organizations. In other words, the WZO plays an important role in making decisions on who is appointed to key positions in these organizations. Simply put: whoever has the largest number of representatives in Congress will set goals and have access to the centers of power and money.

For example: On behalf of the Reform Movement in Israel ARZENU uses its power to impact the Jewish Agency budget allocation for religious streams: ARZENU tries to prevent or limit the size of budget cuts to the streams and has largely been successful.

Who are our partners?
Following the last elections to the World Zionist Congress, ARZENU established a Joint Faction with the World Labor Zionist Movement and Meretz Olami (the political arms abroad of these Israeli Knesset parties). This Joint Faction allows us to influence the Knesset and Israeli society. For example, when we fought against the Rotem conversion law we cooperated with the above parties to influence the legislative process.

Another recent example: At the Zionist General Council meetings held in early November 2013, the Joint Faction, spearheaded by ARZENU, was able to pass three resolutions calling on the Israeli government to implement the establishment of egalitarian prayer at the Wall, to pass a marriage and civil divorce law and to prosecute Israelis who incite racism.

The bottom line – what can I do?
Every member country in the WZO has an allocation of delegates based on the Jewish population of that country. For example, the U.S. has 145 delegates at the World Zionist Congress (out of 500 delegates in total). Every 5 years an election is held within each country to determine the composition of the delegates. If you participate in this process, and vote for your ARZENU constituent organization, you make an immediate difference to the future of the Reform Movement.

At a date to be announced – probably towards the beginning of 2015 – all international Zionist political parties will go to the polls. According to the results obtained in these elections each Zionist political party will receive its allocation of delegates to the Congress.

In the last elections, ARZA US gained 56 representatives (out of 145). The entire ARZENU political party received 83 delegates worldwide out of 500. By joining forces with its faction partners, ARZENU became the leader of the largest faction in the WZO with a combined total of 159 representatives. The goal this time is to increase our representation and in order to achieve this we need everyone who participated in the past to do so again and to encourage even more people to register and vote this time.

Who can vote?
Anyone who is Jewish, is over the age of 18 and who signs the “Jerusalem Program.” In addition representatives to the Congress must make a modest annual contribution to UJA/Keren Hayesod and to the JNF-KKL.

The “Jerusalem Program” is the shared vision of all organizations and institutions of WZO and includes amongst its principles:

• Unity of the Jewish people and the connection to Israel
• A democratic and egalitarian state according to the vision of the prophets
• Aliyah and settlement in Israel
• The centrality of Israel to the Jewish world
• Dissemination of Jewish culture and education
• Hebrew language
• Fighting anti-Semitism

If Israel and the above issues are important to you, please register as a member of ARZENU in your country and vote in the elections. For further details on how to do this please contact Dalya Levy, Executive Director, ARZENU, +972-54-644-2427, dalya@arzenu.org.il

The Heart of the Biennial

I was at my first URJ Biennial, this one held in San Diego from December 11th to 15th, 2013.

Let me present my own personal observations which I would define as “a most remarkable sense of togetherness.” The feeling of wandering around a convention center with some 5,000 other Reform/Progressive, mostly from the United States but with significant contingents from other parts of the world was, to put it mildly, absolutely exhilarating.

During the five days there was hardly a moment when someone didn’t come up to me to introduce her or himself to chat about a common topic. While the human interaction component was certainly welcome, the content of our discussions was particularly significant

The visit to Israel is recalled with warmth and remembered as being highly significant. In many cases, people who I had met in the United States felt the same. If I had only met a handful of friends and colleagues engaging me in issues related to Israel, I would explain it as a localized phenomenon. However, much to my surprise, our interaction came out of the genuine and profound desire to indicate that regardless of where we live “we are family.”

Ari Shavit, one of Israel’s most thoughtful journalists, in an article entitled To my brothers and sisters wrote “People 60 and up cannot live without Israel. Those who are between 40 and 60 generally still have some kind of affinity with Israel. But young Americans in their teens and 20s are in a different world.”

Most of the people I encountered in San Diego were probably 40 and above. However, this is not the time to give up on the younger generation for each generation expresses its desire to be different from the one before it. The marvel of the human spirit is that it questions and re-questions contemporary assumptions. The teens and 20s do undoubtedly have certain problems with Israel, but so do I. Ari Shavit emphasizes that “a common past and a common destiny and a future that must be defined together” is our challenge. I couldn’t agree more!

During the exhilarating five days , my sense that this complex and confusing idea of “Jewish Peoplehood,” the common understandings of Jews throughout the world and the determination to work together, remains central for many of us. Some thousands of years ago a small and vulnerable people set out on a perilous journey to the Promised Land. Moses could only see it from afar whereas we, the beneficiaries of so many who went before us, can visit Israel or decide to live there. How lucky we are!

Paul Liptz is the Director of Education at the Anita Saltz International Education Center of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He was on the Tel Aviv University faculty for 35 years and also lectured at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He made aliyah one day before the Six Day War.