World Zionist Congress polls open in US, with ‘soul of the State of Israel’ at stake
American Jews will select 173 candidates from 21 lists, ranging from right-wing Orthodox to anti-Netanyahu Israeli expats, to serve in 39th session of body founded by Herzl in 1897
JTA — Voting opened Monday in an election that gives American Jews a rare chance to directly shape Israel’s future.
The US election for seats in the 39th World Zionist Congress will help determine the balance of power in the legislative authority of a Zionist organization founded by Theodor Herzl 128 years ago.
Influence over $5 billion in funding for Jewish causes is at stake, as is authority over quasi-governmental institutions such as the Jewish Agency, which plays a central role in immigration to Israel, and the Jewish National Fund, which owns 13 percent of Israeli land.
Any Jewish adult living in the United States can vote between Monday and May 4 as long as they accept a set of Zionist principles and pay a $5 registration fee.
At the heart of this year’s election is a fierce ideological battle between liberal and right-wing Orthodox factions, each seeking to shape the future of Zionist institutions and their financial priorities at a pivotal time in Israel’s history. The results will impact key issues such as religious pluralism, funding for Jewish education, settlement expansion, and Israel’s relations with Diaspora Jewry.
Rabbi Josh Weinberg, who heads the campaign for the Reform movement’s liberal slate of candidates, said, “This election is about nothing less than the soul of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.”
“There are multiple competing visions over what it means to have a Jewish state and essentially to be Jewish,” he said. “We can help decide some of those things through a democratic process.”
Weinberg’s Vote Reform slate is one of 21 lists vying to capture the 152 seats allocated to American Jewry in the incoming congress — a significant increase over the 15 slates that participated in the last election, five years ago.
Whoever wins will serve alongside 173 representatives selected by Jewish communities across the rest of the Diaspora. Another 200 representatives from Israel are chosen by Israeli political factions based on each party’s share of seats in the Knesset.
Representing the largest denomination of American Jewry, the Reform slate won a plurality of American votes last time, but it was the surge of Orthodox lists that defined the 2020 election.
The success of Mizrachi, a longstanding slate backed by the institutions of Modern Orthodoxy, and Eretz Hakodesh, a brand-new ultra-Orthodox list, helped tip the balance at the congress, giving a slight majority for the first time to the right-wing bloc.
Campaigning again this time, Eretz Hakodesh hopes to build on its record.
“We invite all who share our values and beliefs to join us and witness the remarkable impact we have made in recent years,” the slate said in a statement, after declining an interview request.
Many of the nine new slates in this election are running on platforms similar to that of Eretz Hakodesh, whether by espousing Orthodox religious values or pro-settlement politics — or both. One of the factors distinguishing these slates is their demographic focus. Am Yisrael Chai, for example, seeks to represent college students and young professionals. The Israeli American Council slate, which is affiliated with the eponymous advocacy group, caters to Israeli expats, and Beyachad is for Russian-speaking Jews.
The left has its own slate of Israeli ex-pats, AID Coalition, which is made up of people who support the Israeli protest movement that has been challenging the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with massive weekly street demonstrations in recent years. ANU: A New Union, meanwhile, is a new left-wing slate focused on the youth vote.
Jews in the United States lean left as a whole, but that is no guarantee of representation in the Zionist Congress, because only a small fraction of them vote. Of nearly 6 million American Jewish adults, just 125,000 voted in the 2020 election — and that was a massive increase over the 56,000 votes cast in 2015. The highest-ever participation rate came in 1987, when about 211,000 voters cast their ballots.
Yizhar Hess, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization, casts the issue of low turnout as a “shanda,” or shame, that threatens the pluralism that Zionism was founded on. He is hoping that he can raise awareness about the election over the next few months by speaking to congregations and other types of gatherings.
“If the congress is called ‘the parliament of the Jewish people,’ it should reflect the makeup of world Jewry,” he said. “That’s why I am investing many hours every day in order to convince the Jews of the Diaspora to make their voices heard.”
