Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on yesterday’s March of the Living in Poland to mark Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and review a new survey by the Jewish Education Project on dropping Hebrew school enrollment in the United States. We also feature op-eds from Jeffrey Schoenfeld, Shawna Goodman Sone and Jonah Rothstein. We’ll start with the opening of the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem.
An “extraordinary” World Zionist Congress opened on Wednesday in Jerusalem, with some 2,000 people from around the world in attendance to mingle, learn, debate and vote on resolutions, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
The three-day event is not necessarily “extraordinary” in the positive, “amazing” sense of the word, but is instead literally out of the ordinary, being held as an add-on to the WZO’s 38th Zionist Congress in 2020, which was held in an online format because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2020 congress, the attendees elected a new chairman, Yaakov Hagoel, and other portfolio officers, but refrained from holding discussions and voting on new resolutions. This “extraordinary” congress also offered the opportunity to mark Israel’s 75th Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut.
Despite the ongoing protests in Israel over the government’s proposed judicial overhaul, the WZO has largely succeeded in keeping its congress above the fray, likely due to a conscious decision by Hagoel to not invite political leaders of any party to speak at the event, unlike in previous congresses when the prime minister and other ministers were invited to give addresses throughout the gathering.
But that is not to say that the congress will shy away from addressing the burning issues of the day. On Wednesday evening, committees will meet to debate a wide range of resolutions, many dealing with topics currently being debated in the Knesset and in Israel in general. And on Thursday, votes will be held on the resolutions that make it out of committee.
“We’re hoping that this will be an opportunity to celebrate the 75th anniversary [of the founding of the State of Israel], but also to have people from all the different viewpoints coming together to better understand each other’s positions and concerns about the different issues,” Hebert Block, the head of the American Zionist Movement, the umbrella organization of U.S. Zionist organizations, told eJP.
Alongside the congress, the World Zionist Organization also organized a one-day event, the Herzl Forum for Social and Economic Entrepreneurship. Over 300 people will participate in the Herzl Forum, which will include discussions of a variety of initiatives addressing environmental issues and sonsible investment and philanthropy.
Read the full story here.
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