Who cares? We do and hopefully – for the future of both the American Jewish community and the secure future of Israel as a Jewish democratic state – you do as well.
And that’s because the World Zionist Congress is the only worldwide parliament of the Jewish people where representation is determined neither by wealth nor spheres of influence. Even as more and more pressure is placed on decision makers by those who hold the purse strings, the World Zionist Congress remains truly representative of world Jewry’s relationship with Israel.
The first Zionist Congress held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, was by some considered no more than a fringe group at the edge of the organized Jewish World and yet others perceived it as the Jewish government in exile. The Congress was where the Zionist vision was formalized into a radical solution to the crisis confronting Jewish life: territorial concentration of the Jewish People (the Ingathering of the Exiles) in their historical homeland and the creation of the Jewish State. It hammered together the Zionist platform, created the Zionist Organization (later renamed the World Zionist Organization) and the Congress elected Theodor Herzl as its President. It declared Hatikvah as the Zionist anthem and unfurled the first Zionist flag. With the First Zionist Congress Herzl’s dream began to turn into reality. Three days after the Congress closed, Herzl wrote in his diary,
“Were I to sum up the Congress in a word – which I shall guard against pronouncing
publicly – it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud
today I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps and certainly
within fifty, everyone will perceive it.”
50 years plus 8 months, on May 14th, 1948, the State of Israel was declared.
A long line of foundational decisions were made by Zionist Congresses that followed. The Jewish Colonial Bank (later Bank Leumi) was a creation of the 2nd Congress, the Jewish National Fund at the 5th. Later the Zionist Commission was created which eventually morphed into the Jewish Agency, the self-governing body of the Jews in Palestine under the British Mandate, and after independence, an organization supported and governed by Jews world-wide performing quasi-governmental services including immigration, absorption and settlement.
There is a direct line between that hall in Basel in 1897 and Jerusalem’s International Convention Center in 2015. There were 200 delegates from 16 countries at the First Zionist Congress. On October 20, 2015 500 elected delegates will assemble when the gavel opens the 37th Congress: 145 from the United States, 190 from Israel and the rest from around the world. They will take part in the continuing conversation whose debates and resolutions are no less crucial today than they were 118 years ago.
The Congress, which created the World Zionist Organization (WZO) is the WZO’s highest decision making body, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars. The WZO has sole authority over a 30 million dollar yearly budget, and it has joint authority over the Jewish Agency’s $475 million dollar budget.
How that money gets spent and how much of it will impact the American Jewish community is decided on by resolutions presented and voted on at the Congress.
How much of those budget dollars will be spent by the Department for Activities in Israel and countering Anti-Semitism? How much money will go to support Jewish religious pluralism, which isn’t supported by the government? How much will be designated for Settlement Activities, whether in the Negev or the other side of the Green Line? What proportion of this budget will be allocated to the Department for Diaspora Activities? What about Israel programs like Birthright? Will there continue to be money to support shlichim (emissaries from Israel) to Jewish communities and movements around the world?
Who are the representatives to this congress and how did they get there?
Elections for the U.S. delegation to the 37th Congress ran from January through April 2015 and closed with a total of 56,737 votes cast. There were eleven organizational slates that ran in the election and the 145 delegates were divided according to the votes each slate received.
It looks like this:
Slate Number of Votes Number of Delegates
ARZA Representing Reform Judaism 21,766 56
Mercaz USA: Zionist Arm of the Conservative Movement 9,890 25
Vote Torah: Religious Zionists 9,594 24
American Forum for Israel 3,773 10
HATIKVAH – The Progressive Zionist Voice 3,148 8
ZOA – Defend Jews & Israeli Rights 2,738 7
Zionist Spring: Restoring Vision to World Zionism 2,697 7
World Sephardic Organization – Ohavei Tsion 1,650 4
Alliance for New Zionist Vision 735 2
Green Israel: Aytzim/Green Zionist Alliance/Jewcology 443 1
Herut North America – The Jabotinsky Movement 304 1
There is a representative voice for every flavor of Zionism here.
Some people say: The Jewish State has been established. Sixty seven years after independence, what is the point of Zionism?
We answer: True, the great task the First Congress set for itself has long been realized. True, the daunting challenges of post war settlement of European refugees and the ingathering of masses from the Moslem world were taken up long ago. Even the waves of immigration from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia are events of a past which grows distant.
But Israel’s creation was not ever intended as an end but as a beginning. Israel constantly presents itself new challenges as a work which is permanently unfinished. And while the creation of Israel altered the Diaspora, it did not end it. Today there is a new task, the nurturing of a two-way relationship between Israel and Jews in the Diaspora. It is in this context that the Zionist Congress yet has some relevance.
By definition and design, Zionism, born in the diaspora, reflected the concern of Jewish self-determination with the involvement of Jews around the world. Basel laid the political foundation for a modern Jewish state. Today Israel will continue to thrive as a Jewish state only in partnership with the world Jewish community. To those who would dilute and disavow world Jewry’s stake in Israel’s future, the World Zionist Congress calls out to Jews around the world that not only is it our right to voice our opinion about the direction and vision of the Jewish State, it is our responsibility.
