“In Basel I have founded the Jewish State. Were I to state this loudly today, the response would be universal derision. Perhaps in five years, certainly in fifty years, all will admit it.”
Theodor Herzl wrote those words on Sept. 3, 1897, following the First Zionist Congress held in Basel, Switzerland. Since that historic congress, Zionists have met (and debated) dozens of times and will carry on the tradition later this month as Jewish delegates from around the world will gather in Israel at the 37th World Zionist Congress.
Although the issues that face the Congress are important, they rarely cause a stir throughout the Jewish world. But criticisms of irrelevance aren’t new. Ismar Schorsch, then chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, wrote these stinging words in 1997: “This week I will leave for Israel to attend the World Zionist Congress along with 37 other delegates from MERCAZ, the official Zionist party of the Conservative Movement in the United States. Despite the overblown rhetoric that will be heard in Jerusalem, no one should imagine that this Congress is a matter of any consequence.” Schorsch criticized a system in which only a small fraction of eligible American Jews actually voted. “Surely more than 2 per cent of American Jewry is devoted to the cause of Zionism!”
The Forward’s J.J. Goldberg paints a somewhat dreary picture. “Most years the election is a sleepy affair pitting gray-haired functionaries and teenagers against each other to divide up control of an Israeli institution that nobody cares about except its employees. That, at least, is the image. And it’s one reason you don’t hear much about it.”
But Goldberg argues that we should be far more aware of the work of the Congress. “It’s a multimillion-dollar operating agency that runs educational programs, encourages aliyah and oversees Israeli rural development, including those settlements. It also partly controls several much larger institutions that it founded years ago, including the Jewish Agency, the massive social service and educational body, and the Jewish National Fund, which owns and manages about one-seventh of Israel’s real estate. The outcome of the elections will go a long way toward determining who wins control of which budgets.”
A bit more about some of those organizations:
• Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael / Jewish National Fund – founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901, it is charged with redeeming lands in Israel and conservation as an eternal property of the Jewish people.
• Keren Hayesod / United Israel Appeal – founded in London in 1920, it is the central fundraising organization for Israel throughout the world (except the United States).
• Jewish Agency for Israel – Known in Israel as the Sochnut, it is the country’s largest social service agency. Established in 1929, its primary goals today are economic development and the absorption of immigrants.
Although the official Congress site is replete with requisite constitutions, proclamations and sundry legal documents, I’d like to point out a corner of it that I find particularly compelling – two essays that stir up debate over modern Zionism. News commentator and former Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid asks whether Herzl is “turning in his grave in view of what has become of his vision in reality.” Sarid says Herzl wisely warned against putting a higher value on territory than on the importance of people. In addition, Herzl warned against “the theocratic urges of our clerics to dominate.”
Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in Israel and former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, responds by saying Herzl was mistaken. Without the “profound influence of the religious leadership, Zionism would not have been conceived… Without Torat Israel, which our ‘priests’ have strived to teach, nothing would have survived. Herzl must have understood that.” These are two relevant and provocative essays that are certainly worth a read.
But what actually was accomplished at all the Zionist congresses? You can read a brief summary of each one from the early ones that took place in European cities including Zurich, Hamburg and The Hague through the Jerusalem-based congresses after the establishment of the State.
To get a different taste of congresses past, visit the online exhibit of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. For example, a striking poster in Hebrew from the 21st Congress in 1939 in Tel Aviv advises workers to vote for the socialist list. It shows a red flag emblazoned with the words, “Unhindered Jewish Aliya! Jewish-Arab Cooperation! Socialist Sovereignty!”
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