The Jewish Agency for Israel is expanding its goals to include connecting communities in the Diaspora and increasing education in order to stem the tide of anti-Semitism.
The Jewish Agency for Israel has approved a new strategic plan for its annual board meetings October 27-29 in Jerusalem. This includes connecting communities in the Diaspora and increasing education in order to stem the rising tide of anti-Semitism.
For the past 90 years, the Jewish Agency has almost exclusively focused on promoting and facilitating aliyah (immigration) of Jews to Israel. Its past chairman, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, shifted the organization’s focus to bridging relations between Israel and world Jewry and engaging young Jews abroad with Israel. Current chairman Issac Herzog is continuing that trend.
“Today we are refining our strategic mission for the coming decade, based on the challenges Jews are facing today,” Herzog said in a statement announcing the new strategy. “In collaboration with additional partners in the Jewish communities and in Israel, we will work to provide concrete solutions to the greatest challenges facing the Jewish people at this time: mending the rifts among our people, building a two-way bridge between Israel and world Jewry, encouraging aliyah and providing security for Jews around the world.”
The 10-year plan includes outreach into the greater non-Jewish community to educate against anti-Semitism as well as increase advocacy for Diaspora Jewry in Israel’s government. In addition, along with increasing efforts that encourage aliyah, it will do its part to protect Jews worldwide by fighting “vigorously against the manifestations of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.”
The organization already has about 2,000 global emissaries who strive to fight the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) on college campuses, among other goals. It is set to increase its presence worldwide in order to help fortify Jews and educate non-Jews.
The agency has also received approval from Israel’s Ministry of Education to improve education on Diaspora Jewry in Israeli schools.
“Only by building a bilateral bridge, on which Jews from global communities and Israeli society march together, while deepening their acquaintance, appreciation and love, can we create a vision of mutual success, joint alliance and a united future among the Jewish people,” Jewish Agency CEO Amira Ahronoviz, who is leading the organization’s new initiative, said in a statement.
