The war with Iran might have seemed an unlikely time to launch a programme bringing together emerging leaders from Israel and across the Muslim world.
But it was among several improbable successes presented at the closing conference of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s global Jewish leadership council in Budapest last month.
Herzog was among an audience of reporters, donors and close to a hundred members of the inaugural Voice of the People cohort at the three-day conference, watching a presentation of the Abraham Executive Academy.
The presentation included a video of a Muslim man whose face was blurred to protect his identity.
The man described his shock when his young daughter, asked to name her favourite country, chose Japan because she liked sushi, followed by “Palestine, because they're going to destroy all Israelis.”
The exchange shocked him enough into joining the academy. Founded by Voice of the People council members Noam Meirov, Alex Dwek and Mikhal Ben Joseph, its first gathering took place in Berlin in May, on the heels of the war with Iran, bringing together 30 participants from nearly a dozen countries, including business leaders from the UAE and Lebanon, academics from Israel and the US, and entrepreneurs from Morocco and Indonesia.
President Herzog (front centre) with attendees at Voice of the People summit (Mate Fulop)[Missing Credit]
Meirov said bringing Muslims to meet Israeli Jews while some of their countries were under Iranian attack following US-Israeli strikes had seemed “unimaginable.”
“While the region was experiencing enormous tension and distrust, we were asking people to do exactly the opposite: to meet, to listen, and to build together,” he said.
“There were many moments when we genuinely did not know whether it would work.”
Herzog, who offered his thoughts after each presentation, drew on Lech Lecha, the week’s Torah portion, invoking Abraham, the shared patriarch of Jews and Muslims.
“The children of Abraham must dwell in peace,” he told the academy’s founders, before adding in his characteristically informal style: “Go for it big time, and the dream will come true.”
The academy was among dozens of projects to emerge from Voice of the People, which brought together Jewish leaders from vastly different religious, political and professional backgrounds, with 50 selected from Israel, 50 from North America and 50 from elsewhere in the world.
The council was tasked with developing practical responses to five challenges facing Jews worldwide: antisemitism, Jewish identity and heritage, relations between Jews and non-Jews, Israel-Diaspora ties and polarisation.
Voice of the People council member Noam Meirov speaks (Mate Fulop)[Missing Credit]
Shirel Dagan Levy, Voice of the People’s CEO, who spent years as a tech executive and entrepreneur before entering the Jewish communal world, said Voice of the People was built on three pillars: fostering leadership, building a network based on trust and developing practical solutions, all rooted in generosity rather than personal ambition.
“We want leaders, but we want them to come with humility,” she told the JC.
One project that sought to address chasmic religious divisions among Latin America’s Jewish communities was the Joint Leadership Learning Initiative.
Developed by Brazilian entrepreneur Salomão Ioschpe and Chilean Jewish educator Jessica Landes, it has recruited 10 communal leaders from four countries, including the presidents of Argentina’s DAIA Jewish umbrella organisation and Rio de Janeiro’s Jewish federation, to examine historical historical Jewish disputes and apply their lessons to contemporary divisions.
Landes acknowledged difficulties recruiting Orthodox participants but said she hoped to include them in the next cohort.
Joseph Steinberg, a New York-based cybersecurity expert and council member also working within the polarisation working group, said that many of the disagreements dividing American Jewry have their roots in Israel.
Ranit Budaie-Hyman, CEO of Meitarim school network (Deborah Danan)[Missing Credit]
“When I look around New York, a significant portion of the issues dividing the community are about Israel,” he told the JC, pointing to arguments over the Gaza war, the handling of the hostage crisis and divisions between strictly Orthodox and more liberal Jews.
Resolving tensions within Israeli society would have a ripple effect on Jewish communities abroad, Steinberg said. For that reason he joined Mitzion Tetze Torah, an educational project aimed at bridging social divides among Israeli schoolchildren developed with fellow council members including Ranit Budaie-Hyman, CEO of Meitarim, Israel's network of integrated religious-secular schools.
“Children are the best agents of change,” Budaie-Hyman said. She took issue, however, with the council’s framing of the challenge as polarisation. “Language creates reality. I focus on the positive and would’ve called it ‘social cohesion.”
Dagan Levy said she was surprised by the extent of polarisation among Diaspora Jews.
“I thought it was just an Israeli thing,” she said with a laugh.
“There are different ways of being Jewish. That makes us unique. But it also means it’s complicated,” she said. The council, she added, allows participants facing similar problems to learn from one another.
“They sit together and say, can I adapt your solution and customise it to where I live? Can I learn from your failures?”
She added that she was “overwhelmed” by the number of projects to emerge from the first cohort. Twenty-one of those reached proof-of-concept stage and received seed funding from Voice of the People and its donors.
More than 2,500 people have applied for the second cohort, which is due to begin next year.
Speaking to reporters after the presentations, Herzog again turned to the Bible, noting that dissent and dissatisfaction have been part of Jewish life since its earliest accounts, but arguing that Jews must care even for those with whom they fundamentally disagree.
“Each one of us as Jews lives in his own echo chamber or neighbourhood or synagogue,” he said, urging Jews to “open our arms, listen to the multitude of voices” to combat the challenges facing the Jewish people.
Council members also heard from Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was murdered in Hamas captivity, who reflected on the importance of hope even in the darkest circumstances.
“There’s something about hope that connects us to an idea in the future, even if we’re broken right now,” she said during a session on the second day.
“Throughout Jewish history, we have had so many periods as a people where the answer has been no, and we had to continue with that cord connecting us to the future aspiration.”
“I think that’s where we are now,” she concluded.
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