A couple of years ago President Katsav, then still in good standing, proposed a world Jewish parliament to consult Israel on policy matters which affect Jews across the globe, and forge closer relations between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews. This unnecessary and ill-conceived flight of fancy (who was eligible to vote in elections for this parliament? Do Israelis really want to give diaspora Jews a say in their security matters? Are more top-level meetings really the best way to get Israelis and diaspora Jews closer?) eventually evolved into a kind of global Jewish think-tank. Famous Jewish intellectuals, politicians and scientists were meant to come up with innovative solutions to the problems confronting the Jewish people. The group even held an initial meeting.
With so many Jewish organisations already acting as forums for our (self-appointed) leaders to exchange ideas, it wasn't clear why another one was required. And President Katsav's recent disgrace seemed to have spelled the death knell for the project.
In fact, however, his legal predicament just may save the programme. Michael Steinhardt, co-founder of birthright, one of the most successful Jewish initiatives in the modern era, and Uzi Arad, former head of intelligence at the Mossad, are taking it over and will be the new driving forces behind it. As the Forward notes, the two men have reputations for thinking out of the box and for getting things done and their very names inspire confidence. It will be interesting to see whether they can actually make something out of this intially problematic scheme.
It's certainly ambitious:
The forum will be focusing on three separate subject areas: education, peoplehood and demographics. So far the most concrete planning has occurred in the area of education. The former director general of the Israeli finance ministry, Ben-Zion Zilberfarb, has been putting together a grand economic plan that would aim to make Jewish education free for all young Jews around the world. [Jewish activist Yosef]Abramowitz worked with Zilberfarb on this plan and says that in his own work, he has secured $100 million in commitments from commercial financial institutions to fund the plan if it should go forward.
$100 million may sound like a lot, but in fact, at 53 million pounds, it's just a tiny drop in an enormous ocean. Nevertheless, (if the claim is true,) it's a start; and as Steinhardt showed with birthright, there's no harm in thinking big.
This post was written by Miriam Shaviv
Comments