May 08, 2008
As Israel marks its 60th anniversary, Israelis this year are happy but sober. The fact that we made it to 60 is in itself a wonder, and when we recall the reality that faced us in 1948 and the country we are today, it is nothing short of a miracle.
Yet, in many ways Israel at the milestone of 60 years is again on a threshold of that long challenge which is the state of Israel.
In the last years, it seems as if our enemies are becoming daily more bent on our destruction.
We are also at another threshold: Israel is part of the global economic village. The computer has replaced the farm; the software program has replaced the Jaffa orange. But the challenge is still there. We need more computers, just as in the 1950s we needed more farming equipment. And in the inevitable transformation of the last decade, many were left behind.
We are at a threshold, too, in our relations with world Jewry. On both sides of the ocean our children are more detached, individualistic, more antiestablishment. At the same time they posses a raw idealism, even if it is wrapped in the cloak of nonconformity.
Today the Jewish Agency no longer establishes hundreds of kibbutzim as it did in the 1950s. Instead we have the groundbreaking Net@ program in conjunction with Cisco computer systems, to certify high school students in periphery towns with a computer technician certificate by the time they graduate high school.
We are helping small and medium businesses secure the loans they need to grow and make economic life in the north of Israel more sustained and viable.
The Jewish Agency’s youth aliya villages, which began in the 1930s by providing safe haven for Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany, today provide a home for youths at risk, both immigrant youngsters and Israeli-born. The nurturing environment for the 300,000 children that have spent time at one of the villages in the last 70 years is very much a constant over time.
We are on the cusp of both great risk and great opportunity.
One of the fundamentals that sustained us in the last 60 years and must sustain us in the 60 years to come is our partnership as a Jewish people.
When we in Israel hurt, every Jew across the world hurts. When rockets fell in the North during the war, Jews the world over offered assistance. That assistance included upgrading shelters with air conditioning and television sets, and bringing youth camps out of the range of fire.
And when rockets fall in the Sderot area — as they do day in and day out — the Jews of North America are there by providing for households hit by rockets and by taking Sderot’s youngsters to camps outside of the area of attack for a Passover holiday.
In the coming year Israel may continue to hurt, but we are certain of the unflinching bond of Jews everywhere — to stand in solidarity and to assist as much as possible.
And that bond goes beyond crisis. It is a reciprocal bond. It reaches among 50 partnerships between communities in Israel and communities in North America and Europe which have been running for over a decade.
And the bond is strengthened by those who spend a formative year of study or work in Israel.
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a stalwart of Jewish unity, four years ago launched MASA, our flagship education program. He believed, as we do, that the future leaders of world Jewry must spend a formative year in Israel. And for every dollar we contribute to MASA, the State of Israel puts in a dollar — because the government recognized that it is an Israeli national interest to have young Jews from abroad spending significant time in Israel.
To this end as well, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently set up a group of leading Israelis, Jewish Agency representatives, and leaders of world Jewry to discuss ways to strengthen the bond between Jews in Israel and abroad, focusing on the next generation.
This is at the heart of the work we have been doing for more than 80 years, as the representative body of the Jews before the state of Israel was established, and, after 1948, as the bridge between world Jewry and the Zionist enterprise here in Israel. It is a partnership we will be celebrating when the Jewish Agency receives the Israel Prize on Independence Day.
In this time of challenge and opportunity we must work to further solidify and strengthen our great strategic asset: our bond as the Jewish people. Looking at what we accomplished in the last 60 years, imagine, with a redoubled effort, what we can do in the next 60 years.
Zeev Bielski is chair of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
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