American Zionists Face Key Meeting Hoping for Renewal of Movement

America’s Zionist organizations are girding themselves for what may be a critical chance to re-emerge as major players in American Jewish life.

Once, they represented the vanguard of support for a Jewish state, fighting against the many non-Zionist Jewish groups who were cool or even hostile prior to the creation of the State of Israel.

But with support for the State of Israel having become an almost universal assumption in the Jewish community since the 1967 Middle East war, Zionism as a separate movement has been increasingly eclipsed.

Even veteran Zionists are saying that the future of the movement rests on the measures expected to be approved in Miami at what is being billed as the first American Zionist Congress, to be held Jan. 31-Feb. 2.

Among the changes to be put for a vote will be the reorganization of the American Zionist Federation, the umbrella body for the American Zionist groups such as Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America and the Association of Reform Zionists of America.

The new body hopes to provide a central address for Zionist activities that have until now been distributed among the American umbrella group, American representatives of the World Zionist Organization, and the Israelis sent by the WZO to carry out activities in the United States.

The revised organization will be called the American Zionist Movement Inc., with the explicit wish that with the new name will come movement.

The new organizational structure will also encourage the participation of newcomers to the movement, since positions in the Movement, unlike those in the Federation, will not depend on long-time involvement with one of the constituent Zionist organizations.

MOVEMENT TURNS TO REICH

And in a recognition of the need for fresh blood, the American movement, which once boasted Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Stephen Wise as leaders, is now turning to someone from outside its ranks to be its next president.

Seymour Reich, the former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is expected to be elected to that post in Miami.

Zionists from across the political spectrum express the hope that Reich will both inject vitality into the movement and lend it the prominence he achieved while heading American Jewry’s leading umbrella group.

“It’s a new ballgame now with Seymour Reich,” said Rabbi Louis Bernstein, veteran leader of the Orthodox Religious Zionists of America, which is a member of the Zionist Federation.

In an interview in the Zionist offices in New York, Reich stated his intention “to claim our rightful place as a strong and vivified entity, capable of acting decisively. “The Zionist movement is a sleeping giant,” he said.

Currently, the Zionist Federation has five staff members in New York, and offices in Chicago and Los Angeles. Reich intends to add a New York-based staffer to deal with political activity.

“We intend to be heard on issues relating to anti-Semitism, relating to U.S. and Israel, and to bring a different viewpoint than other organizations, which is the Israeli experience,” said Reich.

He hopes as well to re-open regional offices closed in recent years due to financial problems.

“We want to better market the need for American Jews to spend time in Israel and send their children there, to promote Jewish-Zionist education, and to relate the commonality of Israel and the U.S. in terms of democratic values and culture,” he said.

The problem for the movement, however, is that these goals are no longer the monopoly of the Zionist organizations. Instead, they have become increasingly the consensus view among Jewish organizations across the board.

“They’ve won the war,” said an organization official who raises money for Israel under the federation, rather than Zionist, banner. “They should declare victory and go home.”

‘ISRAEL IS THE ONLY FOCUS’

The United Jewish Appeal, for example, has committed $250,000 annually toward a program, sponsored by the Montreal-based CRB Foundation, aimed at making a trip to Israel a rite of passage for American Jewish youth.

Karen Rubinstein, executive director of the Zionist Federation and soon of the Zionist Movement, responds with this distinction: “For Zionist groups, Israel is almost the only focus. For other institutions, it’s almost faddish. The Zionist movement always is, and always will be, dedicated to Israel, whether it’s popular or not.”

And unlike the Conference of Presidents, for example, the Zionist umbrella is designed not so much to represent American Jewry in political capitals, but rather to coordinate efforts to nurture the grass roots. It is an emphasis expected to be renewed under Reich.

“Federations have to understand that we’re part of the amcha (the masses),” said Reich. “The community is not only those who raise the money, but the organizations that have a grass-roots constituency in Jewish life.”

But one clear vote of no confidence in the American Zionist organizations has come from Israel itself. When it comes to fund raising, for example, Israel’s Labor Party has bypassed the Labor Zionist Alliance, its affiliate within the Zionist Federation.

Instead, the Labor Party turned to Friends of Labor Israel, an independent organization that lies outside the Zionist framework.

At the same time, the Zionist movement has lost its distinctive ideological edge. Unlike the more strident demands of classical Zionist thinkers that the Diaspora was doomed to extinction, and that emigration to Israel was required of all Jews, the current definition of Zionism, as approved by the World Zionist Organization, is more modest.

Its platform, the Jerusalem Program, affirms “the centrality of Israel in Jewish life” and “the ingathering of the Jewish people.”

The problem is that “if everybody’s a Zionist, then in a way nobody’s a Zionist,” conceded Arieh Lebowitz, a leader of Americans for Progressive Israel, which is a member of the Zionist Federation.

Still, Lebowitz and other members of the young guard of the Zionist movement are cautiously optimistic that Reich may be able to reinvigorate the movement and turn it around.