Published: 25 April 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
For many Jewish leaders, both in Israel and the Diaspora, the Israeli government’s cancellation of the Western Wall compromise in June 2017 was a wake-up call. It exposed deep and long-term trends in the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora and led to a renewed discussion of Israel’s role in the 21st Century. The Kotel crisis exposed the inherent structural tension that exists between the State of Israel and Jewish communities in the Diaspora.
The Kotel compromise was an agreement reached between the government of Israel and representatives of Diaspora Jewish communities. Its collapse exposed the fundamental tension between Jewish communities in the Diaspora, characterised by a decentralised network of synagogues and communities, led by volunteers and based on religious pluralism and Israeli Judaism, largely defined by state institutions and broadly divided between Dati (Orthodox) and Hiloni (Secular) socio-political categories.
Although this tension was dealt with in the past by strong mediators and a will to come up with practical solutions, today there is a need for new structures and mediators who can build stronger relations between Israel and the Diaspora for the 21st Century.
These mediators who nurtured an effective relationship between Israel and the Diaspora included organisations like the Jewish Agency, the United Israel Appeal, Jewish Federations, the JNF, and others. They represented the consensus and interests of Diaspora Jews toward the Israeli government. Diaspora Jews shifted their decentralised communal interests in order to create unified organisations that would interface with the Israeli state.
These structural tensions were also bridged by the salience of shared core values, and the need to maintain the physical survival of the Jewish people following the trauma of the Holocaust. This connection also leaned heavily on the leadership of individuals and shared heroes such as Chaim Weizmann, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, and others, who built personal relationships that helped communicate between the two communities.
Today, these mediators are in decline. These traditional organisations are often no longer representative of their communities. Their influence has eroded, and their ability to bridge structural tensions between the communities is steadily decreasing. Increasingly, Jews in the Diaspora have created new organisations that challenge the existing structure, and through the accelerated decentralisation and democratisation of our times, can bypass their communal organisations in the areas of building Jewish identity and interaction with Israel.
Those changes challenge the central working assumption of the relations between Israel and the Diaspora: the assumption that the relationship is managed by a small number of strong mediators.
Hence, in today’s global and ‘flat’ flat world, the Israel-Diaspora relationship requires a new, more resilient, and decentralised structural model that will support the continuation of the relationship. On one level, we must update the organisations and institutions that traditionally mediated between the communities, to the realities of the 21st century.
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="19098"]
We must also identify and empower new mediators, such as Olim (immigrants to Israel), Israelis in the Diaspora, shlihim, and others, who can build on the power of personal encounters and relationships that serve as a broad foundation for the connection. We, at the Reut Institute, call this new structure Kin-Civil Society, which means that the Jewish civic sphere should be viewed as one joint civil society, which is kin to the State of Israel.
The Jewish Kin-Civil Society is the conceptual platform for Israel and the Diaspora to work together, extending beyond the borders of one community or the other. Israel must shift its self-conception to understand that Israeli civil society extends beyond the residents of the State of Israel. It also includes Diaspora communities who, although they do not live in Israel, feel connected to Israel as their Kin-State.
This shared civic sphere would include creating bridges between organisations that are focused on shared challenges, such as Jewish identity, religious pluralism, Tikkun Olam, and Jewish education in the 21st Century. It would also include formal partnerships between Israeli and Diaspora organisations working to advance issues such as the status of women in Modern Orthodoxy, shared curricula, teacher training and enrichment between the Israeli education system and Jewish day schools, expanding the impact of Birthright (Taglit) in the Diaspora.
It is also recommended that we design a model for an Israeli Taglit that will give Israelis an opportunity to encounter and learn from Diaspora Jewry. Israeli society must begin to see itself as part of a larger, transnational Jewish People.
Israel was founded to be the “nation state of the Jewish People”. This was Herzl’s central vision and the vision of Zionist leaders who followed him. For many decades it seemed that this definition had clear and practical implications: Israel must be open for Aliya, redeem the land and settle it, and aspire to create a model society. Israel served as the vessel for the Jewish people to realise its national historic mission, and in return, the Jewish people existed to serve the State of Israel and provide it with financial and political support
Today, the dynamics and factors that defined this relationship have undergone significant transformation. Israel is no longer the poor nephew, dependent on the economic support of its rich uncle in the Diaspora. Challenges of Jewish life in the Diaspora are evolving and becoming more complex. A new paradigm is emerging: because the State of Israel was created to be the nation state of the Jewish people, it is obligated to serve the continued existence, security, and prosperity of the entire Jewish people, which includes the existence of a vibrant Diaspora.
Within this new paradigm, Israel bears partial responsibility for improving the relations with the Diaspora. Israel must take actual steps, to change elements of Israeli society and government policy, to promote a Jewish-Kin Civil Society (such as incentivising cooperation between Jewish and Israeli non-profits or produce joint social "call for action" in both communities simultaneously), so that Israel truly lives up to its mission to be the nation state of the entire Jewish People.
