Opening the gates of Australian Zionism to the new guard

Jewish organisations that support Zionism but don’t meet formal requirements for membership of the communal roof body will have a way to join the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), if a motion to be put to the organisation’s conference on Sunday passes.

The motion will create a new category of ZFA partners, who commit to the Jerusalem Program, the official platform of the World Zionist Organization, but don’t need to meet membership or national requirements.

ZFA President Jeremy Leibler said the move recognised that the contemporary Jewish community has spawned different kinds of groups from those that established existing communal organisations. This has been particularly evident since October 7, when new groups were able to respond in a more agile and relevant manner.

He cited Project A, which created WhatsApp groups to deal with the October 7 fallout, and the Jewish Climate Network, which has reached out to the social sector to improve understanding of the Jewish experience.

“There's a recognition that the way in which our communal organisations are structured was built for another time. Over the last 20 or 30 years, the community has become more diverse and many people have not felt the need to connect via being a member of an organisation. So we haven't captured, in a meaningful, constitutional sense, all these amazing grassroots initiatives over the last many decades.

“After October 7, what we saw was all of that on steroids. We saw groups like Project A and organisations like the Jewish Climate Network doing amazing work in all sorts of walks of Jewish life and in the general community.”