The decision by the just concluded Jewish Agency Assembly to adopt the Jerusalem Program indicates the “Zionizing” of that organization, Leon Dulzin, chairman of the its Executive, said today at a press conference here.
Dulzin, who is also chairman of the World Zionist Organization Executive, called the decision “a critical turning point in the history of the Jewish Agency.” With it, he said, the Agency moves from “the pragmatic to the ideological.”
Dulzin also praised the more than 500 delegates for the passage of the Agency’s first balanced budget, of $452 million, and called the Assembly the “most important one” since the reconstitution of the Agency in 1972.
The adoption of the Jerusalem Program resulted from the Caesarea Process, begun two years ago to determine new priorities for the Agency, Dulzin said.
The program calls for: “the reaffirmation of the unity of the Jewish people and… the centrality of Israel in Jewish life; the ingathering of Jews in their historic homeland, through aliya; (and) the preservation of the identity of the Jewish people through Jewish and Hebrew education,” according to a statement released by the Assembly.
Dulzin explained that the program was first proposed at the 1951 World Zionist Congress, the first held after the establishment of the State of Israel. It was amended in 1968, to affirm that aliya was incumbent upon all Jewish communities, not only those in “distressed countries,” Dulzin said.
A SHIFT IN FOCUS
Now that the Jewish Agency, which historically consisted of “half Zionists, half non-Zionists,” has endorsed the Program, the Agency will shift its focus towards” Jewish and Zionist education and aliya,” according to Dulzin.
The Agency will be “stepping in in this new era of assimilation” and other threats to the Jewish people and try to expand programs such as the ones currently bringing foreign Jewish students to universities in Israel, Dulzin said.
But the overall implementation of the Jerusalem Program will depend on the cooperation of the world Jewish community, he added. “We would like to see aliya as a responsibility of each community, not just of Jerusalem,” he said.
He noted this year’s increase in aliya from the free world and “the thousands of yordim (Israelis who have left their homeland) returning” to Israel.
Dulzin deplored the recent freeze of emigration from the Soviet Union, but added that he had “personally warned” world Jewish leaders that the Soviet Union would react this way if they continued to permit “drop-outs” — Jews who leave the Soviet Union but do not emigrate to Israel.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
