Crucial elections are underway for control over Israel’s main historic Zionist bodies: the Keren Kayemeth LeYisrael–Jewish National Fund, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Keren Hayesod–United Israel Appeal, and the World Zionist Organization. Voting is international, with Canadians placing their ballots starting June 5.
These legacy non-governmental institutions, which serve Jews in Israel and around the world, take direction from the World Zionist Congress, based in Jerusalem, and described by founder Theodore Herzl over a century ago as the unofficial “Parliament of the Jewish people”. This election will choose more than 500 official Congress members for a five-year term, beginning this fall.
Organizers say there is much at stake. This election is being described as a battle for the soul of Israel, as it pits centrist and progressive Jewish slates against an increasingly powerful coalition of Orthodox groups who are campaigning for Torah values, including supporting more settlement building in the West Bank.
The Zionist Congress not only decides on policies, but also who gets appointed to run these major Israeli agencies, and, as a result, where and how their multibillion-dollar budgets are spent. (A small fraction of the money comes back to Canada to fund Zionist programming here.)
While Israel and the United States are allocated most of the seats, the rest of the Jewish Diaspora—including Canada—makes up the difference. Canadian Jews get 19 seats. Voting is open until June 15 through an online ballot.
So who is running in Canada’s WJC elections this month? On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, host Ellin Bessner speaks with vote organizer Stan Greenspan, the president of the Canadian Zionist Federation, who is also a candidate. Plus, you’ll meet Jacob Kates Rose with the progressive Hatikvah Canada slate, and also Dr. Yizhar Hess, a high-ranking Jerusalem-based diplomat who came to Canada recently to drum up support for his slate, known as MERCAZ-Canada, which represents conservative Masorti Jewish values.
Transcript
Dr. Yizhar Hess: If we will be able, and I think that we will be able to have a fair campaign in Canada in a way that would dignify democracy in the best way, it would mean that it’s possible, because it didn’t work that good in the U.S…
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what it sounded like recently in the small chapel at Toronto’s Beth Tzedec synagogue, where about two dozen people came to learn more about the upcoming elections for the World Zionist Congress. Voting begins for Canadians on Thursday, June 5, and ends June 15. The balloting is all being done online. They’re describing this election as the only global ballot that lets Diaspora Jews decide how major funds and programmes for Israel and world Jewry are running.
And so while you might not be familiar with the World Zionist Congress, you’ll know the backstory. More than a century ago, Theodore Herzl founded the World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, where delegates met and agreed that Zionism should become a formal movement to find a homeland for the Jewish people. They created various agencies to carry out this plan: the Keren Kayemet or the Jewish National Fund, the Keren Hayesod or the United Israel Appeal, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the World Zionist Organization.
Then, after Israel was founded in 1948, those institutions didn’t close. They continued their work, as they do to this day, in areas like immigration to Israel, developing the land, fighting antisemitism, strengthening Jewish identity in the Diaspora, and seeing to the needs of Israel’s poor.
But what’s at stake in these elections is who will be in charge of the policies of these core four Zionist groups with their multibillion-dollar budgets. Will it be the traditional power block of more liberal-minded Zionists who want diversity and peace with the Palestinians, more egalitarian prayer, including at the Western Wall? Or will the growing ultra-Orthodox blocks gain control? They support things like settlements on the West Bank, money for yeshivas, and avoiding conscription.
And this is where the World Zionist Congress comes in with its 500 plus delegates, who are elected to make the policy and then, based on the results of the elections, can name leaders to fill key director jobs and office staff. So while the Congress is made up mostly of Israeli and American Jews, who get allocated the majority of the seats, the rest of the Diaspora divvies up what’s left. This time, Canadian Jews get to vote to fill 19 seats. Now they vote for the party, not the slate, just like Israel’s Knesset elections. For a quarter-century, Canadian Zionists used to choose their delegates with a kind of informal agreement. But now, for the first time, it’ll be a wide-open democratic vote. All adult Canadian Jews are eligible as long as they’re citizens or permanent residents, agree with the Zionist Congress principles, and pay a small registration fee.
Jacob Kates Rose: This is a very easy way to make your voice heard. All the time, people say, well, what can I do? What can I do to change the situation? What can I do to actually change what’s happening in Israel? This is something you can actually do.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, June 4, 2025. Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Canadian Zionist groups have traditionally received small allocations of money from the Big Four in Israel. It helps pay for Diaspora Israeli programming like film nights or Hebrew language training for emissaries who get sent here to work at Canadian summer camps and synagogues, like the ShinShinim teenagers who come here for a year before entering the army in Israel. The money funds big things like aliyah education programmes, land use, social services, and even the popular campus gap year programmes. And more controversially, expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
In this year’s elections, the Canadian parties and slates in the running range from left-wing progressive Jews, Young Judaea, Conservative Masorti to more right-wing Russian Canadian Jews, Likud, Herut, Mizrahi, Modern Orthodox, Religious Zionists, and for the first time, a new bloc called the Eretz Hakodesh and Shas coalition. They’re Haredi Jews who have now become one of the larger blocs in the Congress. It’s a big change. For generations, they didn’t participate because they believe the Jewish state is illegitimate until the Messiah comes.
I spoke to Canadian candidates from several parties or slates to explain what’s at stake. First up, meet Jacob Kates-Rose. He’s a Toronto public policy student affiliated with JSpace and Peace Now. He’s running for the Hatikvah slate, which is a left-wing slate linked to Israeli leader Yair Golan, an opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. (Golan recently came under fire when he accused Israel of killing babies as a hobby.
What is the most important thing that we should know about the importance of this election for the Jewish people in the Diaspora?
Jacob Kates Rose: So the resolutions that are passed at the World Zionist Organisation Congress affect the whole Jewish world. There’s a focus on Israel for sure, but a lot of it does affect us here in the Diaspora. In fact, in 2020, the party that I work for, Hatikvah, got Humanist Judaism recognized as an official stream of Judaism with something that had never happened before. And we’ve also partnered to develop women’s leadership programmes in the Diaspora, LGBTQ Jewish programming in the Diaspora. Because the Jewish Agency for Israel spends so much money throughout the Jewish world outside of Israel, when we get control through the WZO Congress of the priorities of the Jewish Agency, we can shape the Jewish Agency to better reflect the wants, needs, and priorities of Canadian Jews.
Ellin Bessner: So tell me a little bit about what is at stake for you. Why are you running?
Jacob Kates Rose: The reason that I’m running and the reason that I’m running the Hatikvah slate is because I believe in a better future in Israel for Israelis, for Palestinians, and a better future for Canadian Jews. And I’m especially passionate about this as a young person who has been on a university campus for the last year at McGill, of all places. I’m inspired by the activists in Israel who are fighting for a hostage deal, who are fighting against Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s racist government for a better future.
Ellin Bessner: Right, except that we don’t vote for the Israeli government. This is different. This is not the Israeli government that you’re voting for, that Canadian delegates will vote for. So how, what is the connection?
Jacob Kates Rose: So there is a bit of a connection in how the WZO affects Israeli domestic politics. That’s because it controls so much influence over the Jewish National Fund. The JNF spends a lot of money in Israel and in the West Bank. Some people call that the occupied West Bank, some people call it the occupied Palestinian territories. A lot of the JNF’s money is being funnelled by right-wing forces into the West Bank and away from Israeli citizens who live within the Green Line. This election is a way for Canadian Jews to support an Israel within its borders, an Israel in which all Israelis, regardless of their type of Jewish practice, receive the same benefits from the government. We don’t get to vote for the Israeli government. That’s right, we don’t get to vote on Knesset. But this government, this election does matter for Israeli domestic politics because of the JNF.
Ellin Bessner: What about the Jewish Agency and all those other things you said it’s one point whatever billion. So.
Jacob Kates Rose: So that money is the budgets of those four national institutions: the JNF, the WZO, the Jewish Agency, and the United Israel Appeal. The relationship there in terms of the budget is that all of the boards of governors and some of the professional staff for these organizations are appointed and approved by the WZO Congress.
Ellin Bessner: So how many seats can you win? Like how. How does it work?
Jacob Kates Rose: It’s a proportional representation vote. So there’s 19 seats available in Canada. So, you know, 100% divided by 19 is about five. So for every 5% of the Canadian vote that you win, you get one seat.
Ellin Bessner: Question. I’ve never heard of this. I haven’t been paying attention, but this hasn’t happened before in generations, right?
Jacob Kates Rose: So every five years there’s a WZO Congress, and Canada has not had an election to fill our delegates to the Congress since 2000. In the last 20 years, we’ve done what’s called an Electoral College, which I would call a backroom deal that kept everybody happy and saved everybody the trouble of an election. But Meretz, my party, which is joining with Ameinu to form the Hatikvah Slate, we saw that we wanted democracy. We wanted Canadian Jews to have a voice. We didn’t want it to be how many members you had in your synagogue movement. We wanted people to be able to read platforms, see a campaign, and choose what the delegation from the Canadian Jewish community should be to this organization. We convinced the community, invoked some constitutional amendments, and got an election to happen.
Ellin Bessner: So will they still be running?
Jacob Kates Rose: Yeah, all of the parties that were running in the old system are going to be running in the new system. There are some joint slates and some name changes. I can tell you that Meretz, which supports the Israeli political party Meretz in Israel, and Ameinu, which supported the Labour Party, of course, in Israel, Meretz and Avodah (Labour) have joined to form the Democrats under Yair Golan. So in Canada, we did the same thing. Meretz and Ameinu are running the Hatikvah slate.
Ellin Bessner: Anything else you want our listeners to understand about why we should care about this and pay attention to it?
Jacob Kates Rose: You should care about this election to the WZO if you care about the future of Israel’s democracy. We’ve all seen the news over the past year. We’ve all heard Netanyahu’s Minister of Internal Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, gloat and brag about blowing up hostage deals and continuing the war in Gaza to the detriment of the future of the hostages. We know from our loved ones in Israel that they are hopeful for a better future, a different future, a future where their loved ones are brought home from captivity in Gaza, and a future in which the country is not being dragged inexorably to a settler movement future. We can support them. There has been a mass mobilization of people on the extreme right who are sympathetic to the settler movement, who are sympathetic to expelling the Palestinians of Gaza, like Trump wants, and building settlements back in Gaza. Those people will not hesitate to vote. And if you want a future for Israel, where it is a democracy, where it is secure, where it is a Jewish state for your children and grandchildren to know and love, it is important, important that you vote against the interests that are supporting Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who want to build settlements in Gaza.
Ellin Bessner: And it’s also the right-wing religious push to make Israel more religious, right?
Jacob Kates Rose: Yeah, absolutely. So in 2020, Meretz, my party, had the authority at the WZO Congress to officially recognize secular and humanist Jews as Jews under the WZO and, importantly, by the Jewish Agency for Israel. And every year and at every Congress, right-wing and ultra-Orthodox forces want to revoke that recognition. And let me tell you, they’re not just coming for the secular and the humanist synagogues; they want to take that away from Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues. After that, it will be Conservative synagogues. We don’t want to go down that road. I believe in religious pluralism. I’m happy to have friends who are Orthodox, happy to have friends who are Hasidic, happy to have friends who are total atheists, but we need to make sure that all of those people are welcome in the tent of Judaism.
Ellin Bessner: Good luck.
But we’ve already seen a lot of drama internationally in these elections, especially in the United States, where their voting period has ended and was marred by allegations of bribery and a smear campaign against the Haredi slate in Israel and the US and over 20,000 ballots declared invalid. Israeli diplomat Dr. Yizar Hess came to Toronto recently to promote the election and also to campaign for the conservative Masorti Mercaz movement. In the last election, he got named vice chairman of the powerful World Zionist Organization as a result. And you should know that Hess was recently found to have been at the centre of that smear campaign. He was suspected of printing posters telling ultra-Orthodox Jews that they’d be idol worshipers if they voted in the Zionist elections. I spoke to Hess at Beth Tzedec in early May before that news broke.
Why should Canadians, who are not really plugged into the Zionist world at all, take this seriously this time?
Yizhar Hess: In 2020, there was a new party that ran in the elections in the US, a Haredi party named Eretz HaKodesh, and it changed the makeup of the Congress. For the first time since the establishment of the Zionist movement, the pluralistic side of Zionist thinking became a minority, in a democratic way. Now, their ramifications became serious because of the change in policies and allocations to some extent. Today, there are Haredi parties running in more than one place in the world, including Canada. You know what we learned from our life experience? That if you don’t vote, you actually voted because you allow others to have way more powers because you weren’t participating. The fact that there is that unique platform that allows Jews from all over the world to vote for something that belongs to them, I think, is a privilege that we should not let go of. Now, the assets are so significant that it’s not only a symbolic thing to be part of the State of Israel, to be part of Zionism, it’s also about making your voice heard when it comes to allocations. It’s a lot of money that can influence both Israeli society and the Jewish world. I’ll give you an example. We were able in the last term to convince a majority to support it that money will be invested not only in Israel but also in Jewish continuity programs outside of Israel. It’s a drama. It’s a drama because we know that politics is always local. So if there is debate between Jewish pluralism outside of Israel or Jewish continuity programs outside of Israel, or a bridge in some town in Israel, always the bridge wins. Because it’s local. We were able to change a tradition that money was invested only in Israel, with a very strong claim. When Herzl founded JNF, it was to purchase land in Israel because it was the most tangible goal back then. Today we know that, of course, one of the most important things for the Jewish people is Jewish continuity. So it makes so much sense to take from the assets of the Jewish people and to invest in places where there is a need to make Jewish education more affordable, camping experiences more affordable, and other things. And I’m hopeful that towards the coming Congress, we’ll be able to increase it.
Ellin Bessner: We have the news today out of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Canada is the champion of antisemitism in the world. Because the MFA did a whole report. I don’t know if you saw it, you know, 600% increase in antisemitism. Hence what you just said about Israel needs to take care of its Jewish friends and family outside for a change. How do you put those two together?
Yizhar Hess: It means that we need to invest in combating antisemitism outside of Israel. One of the ways of doing it is using the Jewish people’s money in order to do it, not only the government of Israel’s money. I think that also should be investing in this noble goal in Canada.
Ellin Bessner: Being Zionist now in some quarters is a bad word, a very bad word, and it’s dangerous for our students, for our campuses. You know, what’s going on here. How do you navigate this change in the way young people here in Canada especially are moving away from Zionism as a label? They still love the state of Israel, but they don’t want to call themselves Zionist. And in order to vote, you have to say that you follow the Jerusalem Programme, which says, you know, Zionism. So it’s complicated.
Yizhar Hess: It’s a great question. It is a challenge that we need to deal with. I think that we need to differentiate between loving Israel, loving the people of Israel, and supporting the government of Israel. It’s not necessarily the same. I criticize the government of Israel on a daily basis and I think many of us Israelis are doing the same. Does it mean that I’m less Israeli or less Zionist? I’m a devoted Zionist and I think that one of the things the left has left us with is the ability to understand that via politics, you can change reality and the understanding that bringing people from different walks of life and from different outlooks under the big tent of what Zionism is, is what makes this idea so vivid. I do want to say that in spite of the fact that you think that the government of Israel might be doing wrong things, your commitment, in my eyes, not to walk out of Israel, is a commitment that you owe the Jewish people in previous generations. Can you walk out of the responsibility to be part of Am Israel? Jewish peoplehood is the commitment that we have to other Jews.
Ellin Bessner: Is that word going to be watered down at all through these elections if certain slates get in or they’re not allowed to run, if they don’t tick the box?
Yizhar Hess: So you need to be a Zionist in order to vote now. What does it mean? It means that the principles that are laid out in the Jerusalem Programme, you identify with them. Now, you need to read it carefully. It puts together in words the vision of a Jewish democratic state in a way that everyone can find their values in. It allows you, I think, to remember what are the core values of Zionism. You need to be reminded that the fact that some people use the word Zionism in a way that it curses the Jewish people doesn’t mean that you need to accept it vice versa. This is something that we need to fight now. Fighting it is not necessarily by telling people, well, it’s not the right thing. It’s to talk about nuance. Zionism stands for values of democracy and human rights in a way that I’m proud to be Zionist. Zionism was among the first political movements in the world that allowed women the right to vote. So there are so many reasons to be proud of the idea. And yes, it’s not perfect. Is Canada perfect? Does it mean that I would walk away from Canada or I would walk away from the US if I’m an American citizen? No, it means that democratically I should find my ways that my values would be appreciated and will be in action. This is what these elections are about. Criticizing from the outside would lead you nowhere.
Ellin Bessner: It’s been fascinating. Thank you for spending the time at The CJN Daily’s remote studio inside Beth Tzedec.
Yizhar Hess: Thank you so much for having me today. Todah rabah.
Ellin Bessner: Bevakasha. Stan Greenspan is also running for the Mercaz Canada slate, representing Conservative Judaism. He’s also president of the Canadian Zionist Federation which is overseeing the elections. Greenspan wasn’t aware of similar dirty tricks being used in this country.
Are we going to have something like that here? What’s at stake?
Stan Greenspan: So we don’t know. Okay, it depends. Look. In the end of the day, a delegate elected to the Zionist Congress gets the organization. They bring from between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars US to that organization over five years. And that’s significant money. So you’re talking almost a million dollars, right? That will come to the different groups. It doesn’t come to Canada, it comes to the organizations in Israel. So Mercaz-Olami in Israel, Mizrahi, Mizrahi-Olami in Israel, Artza.
Ellin Bessner: And how much usually comes down, to trickle down, to Canada?
Stan Greenspan: It’s not huge. Probably about $40 or $50,000 a year, maybe more. But there’s other things going on. We have a staff person from WZO in Canada who runs programming. We run a film series. We’ve done all kinds of things that are going on.
Israel is owned by JNF. The land in Israel is owned by KKL- Keren Kayemet Israel. Those are the $2 trees that you bought all those years ago when you were in school. You put the 10 cent leaf on them, you got a tree. They didn’t buy trees with everything, they bought land. So if you’re in Israel, you’re buying a house. You buy the house, but the land you’re on, you get a lease every year. You pay JNF/KKL money. Okay, that money has to be distributed. They don’t keep the money. They’re not an organization that keeps the money inside. They distribute about a billion dollars a year that gets distributed through WZO. That’s where the money comes from and that’s where the money goes out. So the idea is to use the money to promote Zionism and Jewish ideals.
Ellin Bessner: How will it make things better for Canadian Jews here after the last 18 months?
Stan Greenspan: It’s a way of saying “I’m a Zionist”, okay? It’s a way of participating in Jewish life around the world. We have the ability to go to a congress and the ability to be in the Israeli institutions. And Israel’s run differently from Canada in a lot of ways. In Israel, the government doesn’t handle–WZO handles some of the things. So, just an example. You live in Israel, you send your kids to school. They go from 7:30 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon. Now if your kid wants to learn drama or your kid wants to do something else, they go to an after-school event. Many of the organizations run after-school classes with money they get from WZO. So those are kinds of things.
Ellin Bessner: It’s not state-run, it’s WZO funded.
Stan Greenspan: Right.
Ellin Bessner: But how will it help Canada?
Stan Greenspan: We do get to decide what happens in Canada in terms of how the WZO interacts in Canada and how we are able to make sure that all the things in Israel happen on an even basis. You know, the government doesn’t support all of the religious streams. WZO does. Okay? In some way they can’t support them the same way, but they make sure that they’re given an equal say and an equal opportunity and a voice.
Ellin Bessner: Some groups are saying, “Oh, if we let the Haredis have more power then you know, there’s going to be less room for the more mainstream Canadian Jewish synagogues or religious views”. Can you explain what the controversy is?
Stan Greenspan: It’s an election campaign. Not everything that Mr. Polievre and Mr. Carney said was going to come into law once the election happened. Same kind of thing. There are lots of things and lots of people in the campaign. They’re going to all be talking about different things,
Ellin Bessner: Different boogeymen?
Stan Greenspan: Yeah, I mean I’ve seen some letters that have come out complaining about my group and me.
Ellin Bessner: All right, what do they say?
Stan Greenspan: Not exactly nice. Okay? But that’s part of the election process. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it finishes up and.
Ellin Bessner: Who’s the letters coming from? Like different slates?
Stan Greenspan: Different slates. There’s no politics like Zionist politics. I gotta tell you! I’m hoping you’re gonna come to the Congress. It’s something to see.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, thank you, Stan.
And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of The CJN Daily, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
You have to register first before you can vote. The list of slates in the running can be found on the Canadian Zionist Federation’s website. You have to get a link to the actual voting software. All of this should be up on the website by Wednesday night.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. Our executive producer is Michael Fraiman and the music is by Dov Beck Levine. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- How Canadian Jews can vote in the WZO’s elections from June 5-15, 2025.
- What is the World Zionist Congress anyway? Read Ron Csillag’s 2020 feature in The CJN.
- Why the American Jewish community was split over voting in the WZO elections, in The CJN.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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