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Friday June 14, 2002

World Zionist Congress meets to debate Israel's identity

RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK -- When Jews from around the world gather in Jerusalem next week for the 34th World Zionist Congress, their presence will be seen as an expression of unity and solidarity with the embattled Jewish state.

Yet one of the major challenges will be to bridge the gaps of the various parties and forge consensus over how to define Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Groups as diverse as Likud, the Conservative movement and the Orthodox have submitted resolutions on the subject, clearly with different goals in mind.

"Although clearly Israel is under attack and we need to pull together," the congress can't afford to "completely ignore the agenda of the Zionist movement," including environmentalism, the gap between the rich and the poor and the religious-secular divide, said Robert Golub, executive director of Mercaz USA, the Zionist arm of the Conservative movement.

Known to many as the parliament of the Jewish people, which determines policies and programs of world Jewry, the 750-seat World Zionist Congress convenes every four to five years in Jerusalem.

This year's gathering is being held June 17-20 at a time of much angst over the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

But while the external threats to Israel and the anti-Semitism facing Jews around the world will shape much of the agenda, the labyrinth of policy-making and political plotting that traditionally characterizes the congress is still expected to happen this year.

At the congress, ideological groups team up to determine policies of the World Zionist Organization, which holds half the decision-making power of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

That means influence over the agency's $350 million budget, which focuses on immigration and absorption and worldwide religious, political and educational programs.

Ammiel Hirsch, executive director of ARZA/World Union, the Zionist branch of the Reform movement, agreed with Golub.

There's an "urgent need for world Jewry to come together in solidarity," and their presence in Israel will go a long way toward that end.

But Hirsch said he feared wartime talk would trump the discussion of social issues like pluralism, the acceptance by Israel of non-Orthodox religious streams and civil rights.

Hirsch said he strongly supports the notion that "Israel was born a Jewish state and should remain a Jewish state in its very founding definition."

That's "contrary to the assertion of those post-Zionist Jews and some in the Arab community who claim that to define Israel as a Jewish state diminishes its full democratic character and contrary to those religious Jews, some of whom claim Israel should be a halachic state governed by Jewish law and not democratic law," he said.

But Harvey Blitz, president of the Orthodox Union and a delegate on the slate of the Religious Zionists of America, anticipates his faction will take issue with any resolution that endorses equal rights for all denominations and religions.

Blitz said he thinks it is wrong to hold such a divisive debate during such turbulent times in Israel.

On the substance of the issue itself, he said, "To us, saying Israel is supposed to be a Jewish state has not just ethnic meaning, but religious meaning.

"Israel needs to be a Jewish state and there needs to be a consideration of religious needs and requirements."

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