Committee Recommends Plans to Streamline Shlichim’s Work

A Jewish Agency committee has offered a series of recommendations to streamline the work of overseas emissaries–shlichim. The committee suggested that the various departments which send shlichim overseas should adopt identical criteria in selecting them and that one institute should do the selecting for all departments.

One institute should also prepare the shlichim for their missions, leaving each department the option of training the potential emissaries for its specific duty. At the same time the committee recommended that a single emissary should represent the interests of several departments whenever possible. The purpose is to avoid too many shlichim in one area and a shortage in another. In each area in which there are a number of shlichim, one person should be appointed leader to assure coordination among the others, the committee said. Each emissary should understand that he is sent by the World Zionist Organization as a body, and not by one department only.

Yosef Almogi, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, suggested that preference in the selection of candidates should be given to those who are sent to their countries of origin, whose story of absorption could encourage others to immigrate. Moshe Rivlin, director general of the Jewish Agency, distributed the committee’s recommendations among the various offices and department heads.