Yet another look at local WZC delegates

The election for delegates to the 39th World Zionist Congress, which opened in late March, will remain open until May 4.

As we’ve told you in our last two editions, any Jew who is at least 18 years old, lives in the United States, and self-defines as a Zionist according to the Jerusalem Program — a definition the WZC’s parent organization, the World Zionist Organization, adopted last year, and is what it calls “the successor statement to the ‘Basel Program’ of 1897 adopted at the First Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl” — and can pay $5 for access to the online ballot, at azm.org/elections, is eligible to vote.

American Jews will pick 152 WZC delegates, the rest of the Diaspora will send 173, and Israelis will choose 200. There are 21 slates, and hundreds of people running on them — each slate is allowed up to 456 candidates. (That’s because the World Zionist Congress, like the Israeli Knesset, operates on the parliamentary model, where a vote is cast for the slate, not a candidate. The number of seats a slate is allotted depends on how many votes that slate wins; seats are allocated depending on a candidate’s position on the list. The first name on any slate is more likely to get seated than, say, the 10th or 15th or 20th. And each slate is allowed 152 candidates, so that if any one slate should win every single seat — it wouldn’t, not now and not ever — there would be enough elected delegates to fill all those seats. Moreover, each delegate is allowed two alternates; 152 times 3 equals 456. (Clear, right?)

Many of the would-be delegates come from northern New Jersey and MetroWest.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — and to us last week, and the week before that — “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-Diaspora relations.”

Although many parties claim to be centrist, they each have their own definition of where the center is. Also, many parties’ platforms resemble each other, and once the votes are cast and counted, those parties are likely to work in coalition. At the far ends, though, the split between the left and right, however, is real.

What all this means is that this election really matters.

Because we live in a richly Jewish and therefore also delegate-rich area, our goal at his newspaper is to talk to two local representatives of each slate represented here. Two weeks ago, we talked to advocates from Orthodox Israel Coalition-Mizrachi, Mercaz, and Kol Yisrael. Last week, we reported about the Jewish Future, Dorshei Torah v’Tzion, and Hatikvah. This week, our interviews are with Vote Reform and Aish Ha’am.

We hope to talk to representatives of yet more lists next week. So, readers, we ask again — if you represent or know a local representative from another slate, please let us know; email editor@jewishmediagroup.com.

Now, let’s move on to the slates.

Aish Ha’am

Aish Ha’am — the name of the slate run by the group that now calls itself Aish, for fire, but until recently was known as Aish HaTorah, literally the fire of the Torah — says, on the WZC website, that it “is a movement dedicated to igniting Jewish passion, sharing Jewish wisdom, and creating Jewish unity.”

Rabbi Elliot Mathias of Livingston, Aish’s COO, is on the slate, and he agrees.

It’s essential for Aish to be represented at the WZC, he said, “because it is an important body; really, it’s the only representative body of international Jewry, so it’s the place where Jewish communities from all over can come together to discuss important issues facing the Jewish people.”

This is the first time that Aish has fielded a slate of candidates, he said, and “the vast majority of them don’t work for Aish. They’re people who are passionate about the values that Aish stands for.”

There also are practical reasons for the group to be part of the WZC, he said. “The WZC has tremendous resources” — it allocates five billion dollars over the five years from one congress to the next — “and it is important to us that make sure those funds are going toward important causes.”

Although the WZO has mandated that at least 25 percent of each slate’s candidates must be between 18 and 25 years old, and they can’t be clumped at the unlikely-to-win far end of the slate but must be at least every fourth candidate — and it also has decreed that at least 40 percent of each slate be women — “we really have leaned into giving a platform to younger people,” Rabbi Mathias said. “There are over 20 college students on our slate, and many of them are fighting antisemitism on the campuses.”

Aish has made a documentary film featuring three of these students. It’s called “Frontline Warriors.” “It not only tells those students’ stories, but it shows how heroic they are,” Rabbi Mathias said. “They’re all Aish Ha’Am candidates.”

Those three students — Shabbos Kestenbaum, Eden Yadegar, and Eli Tsives — fought against antisemitism at Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA, and Mr. Kestenbaum is suing his school, Harvard, for inadequate protection against hatred. All three of them are at the top of Aish’s slate.

The other reason to be part of the World Zionist Congress, Rabbi Mathias said, is “we believe strongly in our goal, which is to inspire and engage every Jew to see the beauty of Judaism. The other major part of our platform” — the part that’s not engaged with the fight against antisemitism and the support of the frontline fighters — “is to get the resources to helping existing initiatives and create new ones that really aim to engage every Jew, no matter their Jewish background, no matter if they have a Jewish education or not, to be able to become engaged, educated, proud Jews. Whether it’s online learning or in-person initiatives, those are the two major public platforms we’re running on. Helping students get resources to fight antisemitism on their campuses, and to get resources for Jewish education for every Jew.

“And that’s not just the Jews who already have gotten and are getting that, but for all Jews.”

The third reason, Rabbi Mathias said, is that “we have a few pillars; one of them is Jewish unity. A lot of the slates are running based on different religious denominations. That makes sense. But Aish Ha’am is a completely diverse slate. Anyone who shares our values — wanting to fight antisemitism and to bring Jewish education to every Jew who wants it — has a place on our slate.

“We have major Jewish social influencers on our slate — Lizzy Savetsky, Ari Ackerman, Zach Sage Fox. These are not all Orthodox Jews, but they believe in our mission.

“And for me, personally, asking people to vote, and seeing how many of them say that they love Aish, and that it’s affected their life — it’s been a great experience.”

Rabbi Steven Burg of Bergenfield is Aish’s CEO and the chair of Aish Ha’Am; he’s also first on the slate.

He’s been very involved with the World Zionist Organization for the 10 years that he’s headed Aish, Rabbi Burg said, so running for the congress made sense. He’s proud to head a slate full of young people. “We feel that we need more young leadership, so we recruited college students, particularly those having issues on campus. We started with Shabbos Kestenbaum — he studied with us for 2 1/2 years — and we asked him to find friends with similar issues. We went after influencers.

“I want to push a slate that has a lot of youth involved. There is a whole new story post October 7, and we should be part of it.”

That new story is being told almost entirely online, he said.

The social influencers know something that older people do not know, or at least not as natively and fluently as they do, Rabbi Burg said. That’s how to be online effectively.

“We are running on education, and we do it mostly through social media. We have about one million video views per day. We have been very successful online, especially post October 7. We are doing so much work to be pro-Israel online, and we want to have the energy and the funding to keep on doing that. So much of our work is online now, both fighting our enemies and working to engage the Jews who are not at all close to Israel but are floating around online.

“One of the frustrations I have is that the Israeli government, like so many other groups, is not advanced in social media. We wind up helping it. I’d really like to encourage all these different entities, from the Jewish Agency on down, to take social media seriously.

“It’s the language of the future, you know — and the future really kind of is now.”

Rabbi Burg summed up his slate’s message, which, he said, is simple, clear, and straightforward. “We support young people, whether it be on campus, through social media, or in any other way that brings our community together,” he said.

Vote Reform

Before we dive into conversations with two local Vote Reform delegates, Rabbi Shira Gluck and Rabbi Marc Katz, we want to acknowledge that both of them are from MetroWest. Unlike the other slates we’ve explored, which have many delegates from both areas, Vote Reform has none from North Jersey, according to Union for Reform Judaism spokespeople.

Shira Gluck is the associate rabbi and director of congregational learning at Temple Sinai in Summit. She’s on the Vote Reform slate, and she’s passionate about it.

“I have been very involved in the Reform movement for my whole life,” she said. “I am a Zionist, born in Israel to American parents who were living there. I am a third-generation American Zionist, and that’s as far back as my family goes in America.

“We moved back here when I was 2 1/2, but Hebrew was my first language, and even when we were back in the States” — Rabbi Gluck grew up in Montgomery Township, near Princeton — “Hebrew was a big part of my family’s life. My sister, who is older, had gone to school in Israel, we took frequent trips to Israel, and we had strong friendships there. So my feeling of connection to Israel isn’t just theoretical. It’s personal.”

And it’s also organizational, Rabbi Gluck said. “I worked in the world of organized Reform Zionism. I did a semester at Hebrew University as an undergraduate; I lived in Jerusalem for my first year in rabbinical school, in HUC; I interned with Artza,” the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, “in Israel when I was a rabbinical student, and I had a rabbinic fellowship at the Hartman Institute there. The formal space of the work has been part of my life for about a decade.”

Where in the range of WZC slates does Vote Reform — or call it Artza — fall?

“There are other parties on the ideological spectrum where we are,” Rabbi Gluck said. “Artza falls on the left — not all the way on the left — and there are other sites that in a way we caucus with. I would say that we are moderate left. We certainly are not taking a radical position. We do include language about advocating for peace with the Palestinians. We use language that is just as strong about advocating for the safe return of our hostages, and a safe and secure Israel.

“If we could have one tagline, and only one tagline, it would probably be ‘a safe, secure, pluralistic, and democratic Israel.’

“There are those who believe that the left wing can’t include anything about security. That is misguided, because there can be no entity if it is not secure. S we’re left of center, but not all the way left. We get flack from either side — from the further left, for emphasizing safety and security, and from the right, for emphasizing pluralism, democracy, and rights for minorities.”

The party puts out literature and distributes it to member synagogues in its push for votes, Rabbi Gluck said; each synagogue can pick the one that works best for it. “We are advocating for women’s rights, religious pluralism for Jews — that is, for Reform Jews, from immigrants from the former Soviet Union, for anyone who does not fit the charedi definition of who is a Jew.

“We are also talking about minority rights for non-Jews in the state of Israel. We set a great deal of store by the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, as I would hope any Zionist organization would.

“I am a lower-case religious Zionist,” Rabbi Gluck said. “My Zionism absolutely is informed by my religious education and beliefs, by our movement, and how we articulate and interpret and live the values of our tradition.”

Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield.

He’s running because “I believe in the vision of the Reform movement, and I believe that it is very important to encourage people to vote in the WZC election,” he said. “I want my congregants to vote, and for them to see me on the slate is as strong an endorsement as I possibly can make.

“My second reason is that I want to show the Reform movement that I believe very strongly in its vision of a two-state solution, where minorities and religious freedom are embraced, and Jews and Palestinians both have rights.

My third reason is that if having my name out there, along with my colleagues, helps give some small bit of legitimacy to the slate to Jews who might know me is something I am happy to give to the cause. Not that I am well known — but I have been out in the world long enough so that there are some people who know me.”

This is the second time he’s run, he added; he didn’t get a seat the first time, 10 years ago, and he’s far enough down on the list that he’s unlikely to get one this time either. He was on the slate the first time “because they needed people under 35,” he said. “That was then. Now, I’m just another middle-aged rabbi.” (He’s 40.)

He’s running on the Reform list because “the Reform movement is my home, and the particular niche that the Reform movement cares about is different. It cares about the future of religious pluralism in Israel. I find that to be an issue that sometimes gets lost in larger issues around Palestinians and Israelis and the future of peace in Israel and what two states will look like. But I like the fact that the Reform movement is able to keep some focus on religious pluralism, while at the same time having a moral voice on peace initiatives that I want to see. We are able to do both.

“Some of the things that the Reform movement cares about affect me personally in a profound way. I want the ability to go to Israel and pray, women and men, together, without a wall separating us.”

Yes, he said, there is Robinson’s arch, the small side plaza close to but not at the Western Wall that the rabbanaut offers liberal Jews, but that is not an acceptable alternative to the ability to stand at the wall. “And I want the ability to fly to Israel for a destination wedding, and to be able to do it in Israel, instead of having to do it here and then do it again in Israel because it doesn’t count there.” (That’s because Israel accepts only weddings performed by Orthodox rabbis as valid if they are performed in the country but does count as married people whose unions have been solidified outside Israel, no matter who officiates at them.)

“Even though other slates do care about religious pluralism, the Reform movement cares about it a lot, and articulates it well,” Rabbi Katz said.