Israel suspends plan to set up database of Jewish students in US

The Israeli government was forced to suspend an initiative to set up a database of Jewish students across university campuses in the United States after the controversial plan was exposed, Haaretz reported on Sunday.

The plan, initiated by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs headed by Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett, was aimed at strengthening the Jewish identity of young American Jews and bolstering their connection to Israel. The database of names was to be run by a company set up by the ministry called Mosaic United, Haaretz reported.

Hillel International, “the largest Jewish campus organization in the world,” said it did not know of the initiative until approached by Haaretz for comment.

In a statement, the organization said it “immediately investigated and made clear to Mosaic United our objections to this initiative.”

“We believe the initiative in this tender is not in the best interest of engaging American Jewish college students. Based on our objections, Mosaic United has agreed to take down the tender from its website and cancel this initiative. We appreciate Mosaic United’s swift response to our concerns,” read the statement.

In a post on its website, Mosaic United said the project was frozen because the “written tender published fails to reflect the essence of the intended project and caused undue confusion.”

Mosaic United added that it was putting the tender “on hold and any further discussion will be based on the directive of the Steering Committee.”

Haaretz has reported that Mosaic United planned to outsource the project to a company that specializes in data mining and setting up databases. The deadline for the tender was set for October 27.

“The idea is to set up a database of all Jewish students in the United States (some 350,000 students) and to map daily all the Jewish/Israel events taking place on campuses, along with a daily structural mapping of Jewish/Israeli online content from around the web,” Haaretz quoted the original tender as stating.

The database would have been divided into Jewish subgroups for “micro-targeting purposes”; they would have received materials deemed of interest to them based on various factors, the newspaper report said.

Rabbi Avraham Infeld, former head of Hillel International, who sits on Mosaic United’s advisory board, said he intended to resign over the initiative.

“I’m in total shock,” he told Haaretz. “For some time now, I’ve been contemplating resigning because although I’m a member of the advisory board, nobody there has ever asked for my advice. I was asked to delay my resignation, but now that I have become aware of this new initiative, which no one ever consulted me about and was never discussed in any of our meetings, I can no longer see any reason to delay it.”

In March this year, Mosaic United CEO Amy Holtz stepped down from her role without public explanation.