The Answer to the Israel-Diaspora Malady Lies Not in Better Organizations But in More Committed Jews

Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy are not the first to describe the challenges to the relationship between Israel and the diaspora, but in their Mosaic essay they have done so in a particularly lucid and compelling way. For this reason alone, we owe them gratitude. Even more: where most diagnosticians are content just to analyze the illness correctly, Sharansky and Troy not only diagnose, they also prescribe.

Their prescription—the establishment of a Jewish People’s Council (JPC)—is relatively short on details. I therefore assume that their primary intention is to assert the unprecedented nature of today’s crisis, and to persuade us that the times require a different organizational approach. At this point in the discussion, the particulars of the new organization are secondary to them, a matter to be debated and modified over time. First, we must realize that what now exists is inadequate to our needs.

This is an especially noteworthy assertion, given that for the past nine years until his retirement earlier this month, Natan Sharansky headed the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI)—the institution created specifically to address Israel-diaspora relations. That agency has served the Jewish people reasonably well through much of the past century, engaging the energies of tens of thousands of activists and attracting billions of dollars in aid of its programs.