Slate Name:

כל ישראל—Kol Yisrael

 

For the Love of Israel—Making Zionism Compelling in the 21st Century

 

Slate Platform

 

The World Zionist Congress was once the source of tremendous innovation and impact on World Jewry. The Zionist Congress established the national institutions that built the modern Jewish state of Israel.

 

Today, as Israel has become a strong sovereign state, its relationship with the Jewish community in America is changing. We are witnessing one of the greatest challenges to face the Jewish people—a potential schism between the American Jewish community and Israel. This challenge is compounded by efforts from the outside to divide Jews from each other and cut off our connection to our ancestral home in Israel.

 

We can and must respond to these threats to our peoplehood in thoughtful, strategic, and innovative ways at this challenging point in our shared history. We must reinvigorate the Zionist dream. We in America must find new ways to fully engage with Israel and embrace our shared heritage and shared destiny.

 

Now is the time to build new bridges with one another. We will not solve our problems by breaking into narrow segments. As we chart a compelling future for Zionism, we must ensure our collective connection to one another and our shared responsibility to Israel. With declining resources and interest, we must focus on three core pillars:

 

1. Bridge the growing gap and establish personal and meaningful connections between our communities and the state and people of Israel.

   • Using summer camps as one of the platforms: Create new roots by directing resources to build a summer camp network across the United States and Israel, enabling meaningful youth exchanges between U.S. and Israeli youth via summer camps. This would include the incorporation of more dynamic programs featuring Israeli voices in the U.S., bringing in more inspiring American educators, and giving U.S. counselors new tools to help them bring Israel to camp. It would also include bringing American campers to Israel.   

   • Inspiring young teens through education: Utilize our collective knowledge and resources to ensure that every Jewish person at his or her bar/bat mitzvah receives a Kindle with a basic digital Jewish library and by age 26 has visited Israel at least once. 

   • Make personal, impactful relationships and create a sense of connection by establishing real 1:1 bonds. Every American Jew should feel a personal connection to someone in Israel, whether a friend or new relationship. We will help build people-to-people relationships one link at a time—college student to college student, high school student to high school student, and beyond. We will build deeper connections through summer internship and immersion programs for American Jews in Israel.

   • Social Media platform: There needs to be a new effort to educate and build bridges across all global Jewish communities—rebuilding and connecting Klal Yisrael as a connected people through social media and social action—celebrating unity but not uniformity.

2. Place the emphasis and focus on our youth​

   • Provide the support and training of our youth before they head to university, so that they feel confident and empowered to educate their peers about Israel.

   • Increase resources to existing successful programs, including Birthright, Zofim, and StandWithUs, to bring diverse groups of college-age Israelis to American college campuses and high schools to build bridges. 

3. Restore Zionist innovation—New and bold ideas to jumpstart a Zionist renaissanc

   • Create a Zionist accelerator to provide expertise, support, and funding for new Zionist ideas and projects.

   • Reduce inefficiencies—Consider merging the World Jewish Congress with the World Zionist Congress.  

   • Imagine bold, new ideas—Bring the Olympics to Jerusalem in 2048 to mark 100 years since Israel’s founding.

 

Slate Purpose—Unique Zionist Philosophy

 

We believe that Zionism needs to be reimagined and reenergized with new ideas and new voices. Today, especially in the American Zionist movement, many unique ethnic and demographic groups are underrepresented—groups from the Persian, Israeli, Bukharan, Latino, and Ethiopian communities and others who live in America are largely excluded from representation. Kol Yisrael literally gives a voice to these groups and engages a broader community of international expats to connect to Israel through the Zionist movement.

 

The essence of Kol Yisrael is to unite Jews from different ethnic communities from across the United States to create and strengthen the bonds between the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Kol Yisrael represents a diverse collective from the Jewish people and offers representation for all Jews. We want every Jew in America to feel like he or she has a personal connection to Israel and a way to feel engaged.

 

Beyond ethnic communities, there are numerous communities that are underrepresented in the leadership of the American Jewish community. Jews of color, interfaith families, and members of the LGBTQ community are some of those key communities we need to have around the table in creating the Jewish future and a strong Israel–diaspora relationship.

 

When individuals do not feel rightly represented, their connections will suffer, and they will no longer care. By representing all these ethnic and demographic groups in the Zionist movement, it will increase and improve the support and participation that the movement gets.

 

Benefit to Zionist Movement—How the Slate Will Advance the Zionist Movement

 

Finding new and innovative ways to reach out to people of all ages and engaging the unique, underrepresented groups in the Zionist movement not only strengthens support for and participation in the American Zionist Movement but also provides new ideas and resources offered by these groups—ideas and resources that could advance the entire movement. By expanding our circles and involving unaffiliated groups in the Zionist movement, we will expand the net number of people working to further the Zionist movement, dedicated to the cause of a strong and secure diaspora–Israel relationship.

 

Through the slate, we are more systematically engaging teens, young adults, as well as more of the masses and bringing in new people and new constituencies into the movement. We are partnering with organizations that have not been involved, and this will hopefully help reverse decades of voter decline and expand voter participation in the World Zionist Congress elections.

 

ישראל כל —Kol Yisrael

 

For the Love of Israel—Making Zionism Compelling in the 21st Century