Many in the Israeli Labour Party are convinced that Isaac “Bougie” Herzog — the new chairman of the Jewish Agency — is merely taking a break from frontline politics.
The son of Israel’s sixth president, Chaim Herzog, he is himself a veteran of Labour politics across two decades — as legal advisor and cabinet secretary to former prime minister Ehud Barak, as a member of the Knesset since 2003 and as Labour leader for four years.
The younger Mr Herzog’s leadership peaked on the eve of the 2015 election, when polls had him leading Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and on the verge of replacing him as prime minister.
But it was followed by an inevitable decline as the election gave Mr Netanyahu another term in office and Labour began sliding in the polls. His party members unceremoniously dumped him last year, with only 17 per cent voting for him in the leadership primaries.
But it is hard to envisage the sprightly Bougie, who will turn 58 in three weeks, staying out of Israeli politics for long.
Many are predicting that he will follow in his father’s footsteps and make a run for president in two years, when Reuven Rivlin’s term ends.
In his first interview since becoming Jewish Agency chairman, he refuses to rule the option out, insisting: “I know that I’m now giving my body and soul for the Jewish Agency. I don’t know what the political scene will look like (in two years), or what will happen.
“Thank God I’m a young man. If I told you now outright ‘no’, and then everything changes, you’ll say I lied. My life has always led me to the right job and I’ve given everything in that job.”
Not that steering the world’s largest international Jewish organisation at this period of Jewish history is a particularly restful job.
His appointment is itself an anomaly, the first time a chairman has been selected from the rival party of Israel’s prime minister.
The endorsement of Mr Herzog by the agency’s board of governors, which is dominated by leaders of the American Jewish community, could not have been a clearer indication of the displeasure felt within the largest Jewish community of the diaspora towards Mr Netanyahu and his government.
While the by-laws of the agency stipulate that the chairman is always an Israeli, he — it has always been a he — is supposed to serve as a two-way ambassador between Israel and the diaspora.
That means the recent leader of the Israeli opposition now must represent all communities and streams and he knows he has his work cut out for him.
“Roughly speaking, there isn’t much similarity between the communities of Jerusalem and Babylon,” Mr Herzog says, using the term in rabbinical literature often used to refer to the Jewish diaspora.
“The one in Jerusalem lives a mainly irreligious life, but practices Orthodoxy. The one in Babylon is mainly Reform or Conservative in its practice and lives a life which is not necessarily connected to a Jewish environment.
That means, the community living in Israel is Jewish as a given. So they don’t have to necessarily be religious to feel Jewish and that’s a massive gap that is widening.
“Add to that the massive political tension that is hovering over the relationship because of the voices within the American Jewish community who oppose President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
His first order of business has been to try and achieve a ceasefire: “Since I’ve started this job, I am constantly appearing and talking to both sides. I went to every ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset and asked them to shut up about this.
“I spoke with all of them and I told them that what they say goes to the heart of every Jew anywhere and they don’t understand the impact and the damage of what they’re saying. I explained that diapora Jews feel that Israelis are condescending to them and ruling them out. And I told them ‘diaspora Jews are Jews just like you’.”
He believes that despite recent crises, such as over Western Wall prayer areas, it is still possible to build a bridge between such disparate streams of Judaism.
And he is not denying that dislike for the prime minister and his policies is driving a large part of the diaspora’s animus. He concedes it is “a minefield, I’ll tell you frankly. Look, until not long ago I was leader of the opposition and Netanyahu’s biggest critic.
And yet, I’m trying to explain to everyone that we have to respect Israeli democracy and the will of the voters. But support for Israel has to be way beyond affection for this or that politician and that’s what I’m trying to tell American Jews.
“It’s not about personalities. It’s something much larger. The historical panorama is much wider than any leader, even if you don’t accept his views.”
The Jewish Agency’s remit is global, but Mr Herzog’s greatest priority is mending relations with the biggest diaspora of them all — in the United States.
Hehas already paid his first visit as chairman to the US, where he spent time trying to play down remarks he made in an interview two months ago calling intermarriage “a real plague” — a statement that angered many American Jews.
But he is worried about issues concerning other communities, too.
Mr Herzog’s own roots are in the British Isles: two of his great-grandfathers were rabbis in Leeds, one leading the Beth Din there and subsequently in London, while his grandfather Isaac Halevi Herzog was chief rabbi of Ireland in the early 20th century before moving to Palestine and becoming the first chief rabbi of the newly independent Israel.
His father and uncles studied at Cambridge before making names for themselves as generals, diplomats and civil servants in Israel.
He was involved in the main issue affecting British Jews now — the surge of antisemitism in the Labour Party — from early on in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
“Two years ago, while I was still leader of the opposition and the Israeli Labour Party, I sent a written invitation to Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of Labour’s Israeli sister-party, to come to Jerusalem and visit the Yad Vashem museum,” he says.
“Sadly, the invitation wasn’t answered. Since then, we’ve been seeing very serious manifestations of antisemitism within Labour, mixed with a hatred of Israel. I know that this doesn’t represent many members of Labour who feel very close to Israel and are furious with the situation and Labour Friends of Israel gives them a voice.
“It’s good that there’s a clear and sharp protest from the Jewish community in Britain and that the political leadership in Israel has echoed them.
“After all, it’s not a fringe party. You ask yourself how come, in Great Britain, with a democratic system so respected around the world, you have such a deep phenomenon at the heart of the political establishment?”
But the radical anti-Zionism backed by Mr Corbyn is not just a British issue, and one of the main missions that the Jewish Agency took upon itself under Mr Herzog’s predecessor Natan Sharansky was confronting “delegitimisation” of Israel and the boycott movement.
The new chairman does not list it among his chief priorities, though he says he “ascribes a lot of importance to the fight against BDS and that “it’s a large well-oiled operation.”
He also does not support recent moves in Israel to outright block Jewish supporters of BDS from entering Israel: “I abhor the BDS movement and will fight them in every way, but I’m prepared for them to come here so we can argue with them.
“My world view is that in a democratic culture, everyone has the right to argue and I’m prepared to confront anyone and show them Israel’s incredible achievements, its true character and the fact that we are being libeled in many cases.”
Mr Herzog is aware that beyond ideological differences, one of the challenges facing the Jewish Agency is the many younger Jews who are not interested in being affiliated with established community organisations.
He says the Agency is developing programmes to reach out to them too, but that communal organisations still have a major role to play.
He recalls at the end of the interview that Winston Churchill, who early in his political career represented a heavily Jewish North-West Manchester constituency, “praised in his speeches what he called ‘corporate Jewish life’ and we have to be proud of that.
“We should be trying to safeguard that communal Jewish sense of uniqueness in the challenging global age we are living in and I see that as an immense mission.”
