After Iran deal rhubarb, Jewish federations look to bury hatchet

WASHINGTON – Following an acrimonious summer in which his organization chose to remain nonpartisan during the impassioned debate over the Iran nuclear deal, Jewish Federations of North America President and CEO Jerry Silverman believes that the community can – and should – learn to live with internal disagreement.

“We are a small people in numbers and we can have unity without being unanimous on issues,” said Silverman in advance of his organization’s annual meeting, which was to be held from Sunday to Tuesday in Washington, DC.

The theme of this year’s General Assembly – “Think Forward” – was selected before the Jewish community became embroiled in the summer debate over whether Congress should approve the nuclear deal hammered out between the P5+1 states and Iran. Nevertheless, the theme fits with what the Jewish Federations of North America hopes to achieve during the three days and beyond.

“We definitely see an implication for the GA,” Silverman said. “The divisiveness that was created by this issue was real and we believe that we’re going to embrace that dialogue as we did throughout the dialogue about the deal itself where we felt our responsibility as a national organization was to try and educate.”

Most of the largest American Jewish organizations took stances opposing the deal, but JFNA, which tends to emphasize a decentralized structure, left it up to its 151 individual communities to come up with their own positions.

“We felt it was responsible to come out with deep concerns about the deal but not come out against it because we knew that our federations and our communities were in different places. We had 26 communities that came out against and basically everybody else used language about gravely concerned, deeply concerned etcetera. Nobody came out for the deal,” he recalled.

Silverman saw his organization’s role as a creator of a space for dialogue within the Jewish community.

“We felt that our responsibility was to bring all points of view out there and to create real dialogue. The Federation is a place for all, and there should be all points of view and there should be civil dialogue around the biggest and toughest issues,” he argued. “The concept of ‘think forward’ isn’t about in any way neglecting the difficulty of this summer, but it is some ways embracing it. It’s saying that we will come through this, what did we learn from it, and now let’s apply it as we move forward as we’re continuing to build community together with Federations as an inclusive table for all.”

At the annual gathering, the aftermath of the Iran deal will take a backseat to ongoing issues of concern to the North American Jewish community.

Global anti-Semitism, the future of Jewish education and Jewish philanthropy, and best practices in community building will be among the topics that attract the focus of local Jewish leadership – who hail from large and small communities across the North American continent.

But larger political contexts will seldom be far from the surface, as the over 3,000 participants hear speeches from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, opposition leader Isaac Herzog, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and former Canadian foreign minister John Baird.

Netanyahu will address the audience in the midst of his first trip to Washington since the Iran deal was reached, and less than a day after his first meeting with President Barack Obama in a little over a year.