Making Zionism your ‘home page’

What is the price paid for a movement’s success? Interest…or lack of it.

W. James Schiller is president of the American Zionist Movement

Zionism — specifically, the status of Zionism in America — has entered a troubling stage, in what we firmly believe is a still developing life, that should concern all Jews.

Interest in and support for Zionism appears to be flagging. Perhaps this can be traced to confusion about the word “Zionism” itself. The concept is embraced by many who reject the name. But the reality is that we see indications of a departure from ideological, financial, and emotional affiliation with the Zionist movement. We feel its erratic pulse in synagogue sermons, in the topics broached during Jewish organizational meetings, and over Rosh Hashana dinner discussions. One mark of this decline is the number of people voting in the World Zionist Congress elections.

The source for this separation can be attributed to a number of factors. In actuality and in metaphor, let’s single out the promise and the detriment of the Information Age, which we have now solidly embraced.

Hundreds of television channels and publications are at our disposal. Tens of millions of Web sites are posted on the Internet. So much information is available to us in so many different ways — written, visual, audible — that our potential to be overwhelmed and distracted is indeed high.

Yet, we all have a home page on our browser. When we connect to the Internet, this home page is the base from which our exploration springs.

Here’s the metaphor: Zionism deserves to be the home page of the Jewish people. The richness of the Zionist movement — its passion, its example, its heartbreak, its reward — is a microcosm of our human condition and deserves our consideration, our attention, our embrace.

Simply put: We contend that Zionism is as viable today as it was when Theodor Herzl began a movement that created a wave that eventually established the State of Israel, the Jewish miracle of the 20th century. And while fractious alternatives have distracted and diluted our focus as a people, that does not mean that we are against the ideals and actualities of Israel.

Both internally and as a member of the community of nations, Israel’s existence has always been contentious. Whatever the composition of your Zionism — none, fledgling, apathetic, against, supportive, or passionate — we urge you to consider how dramatic the existence of the Jewish state truly is, how far Zionism has come in a century’s time, how much potential we have to contribute all the more to its people and to humanity.

And so, a challenge: To the uninitiated, make Israel your home page. To those who have been distracted, restore Israel as your home page.

Then, log on and register to vote in the World Zionist Congress elections, now in progress until Feb. 15. Through your party and platform of choice, your vote becomes an essential voice that contributes to the Zionist movement. Your vote shapes the allocation of a billion dollars every four years, determines the priorities and directions of Zionism, and proves that the Zionist movement is just that — a movement of people that reflects forward momentum.

As Henrietta Szold so determinedly wrote, “I must indeed continue to emphasize as long as breath remains in my body that Judaism and Zionism never depend on one particular person, but on the people and the land as a whole, which constitute the idea itself.”

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