Leaders of the United Jewish Appeal’s Young Leadership Cabinet and prominent young Israeli men of affairs pledged themselves here yesterday to continue a process of close dialogue and cooperation begun Sunday at the first World Assembly of Young Jewish Leadership.
Carl Kaplan of Washington, D.C., incoming chairman of the Young Leadership Cabinet, told the 150 people gathered at this Dead Sea spa: “We are fully committed to continuing this process.” He said he could speak for the present chairman, Steven Greenberg, of New Jersey, for himself, and for subsequent Young Leadership Cabinet activists.
Kaplan and many other speakers from both the Israeli and the American groups participating in this gathering spoke of it in terms of a uniquely rewarding experience. A common utterance among the Americans was: “We have come to know more about Israelis in three days than we learned previously in umpteen visits.”
VEXING AND SENSITIVE ISSUES AIRED
Participants on both sides praised the frankness and sincerity of the discussions, held long into the nights in plenary sessions and workshops.
Such vexing and sensitive issues as personal commitment to aliya were aired alongside harsh criticism of the existing Jewish Agency – World Zionist Organization structure and widely expressed determination to forge closer Israeli-diaspora links in the fields of economic enterprise, Jewish education and culture, and — above all — human contact on a profound and serious level.
“It is time to make changes in the missions’ program,” Kaplan asserted. There would be less of seeing Israel through bus windows, he pledged, and much more direct contact and open discussion with Israeli peers of the same generational outlook and interests as the younger UJA members.
Much heat was generated during a plenary session yesterday between Israeli Knesset members of the various parties when Likud’s Ehud Olmert alleged politicization on the part of the organizers of the retreat — both in selection of participants and in plans to set up a politically weighted ongoing caucus. This was strongly denied by the Labor Party and National Religious Party participants. But there was a strong sense among the American participants and among non-party Israelis that if the ongoing caucus proposal is to give this retreat a practical machinery for perpetuating the ideas and concepts aired here, it must be politics-free and must include Israeli men of affairs who are not party politicians.
ASSEMBLY SEEN AS A WATERSHED
Israeli press comments in advance of the assembly were largely skeptical, and in some cases critical, with writers faulting the luxury surroundings (a five-star hotel) and large outlay paid for the gathering ($30,000).
But Israeli and American participants were confident that they had succeeded in weaning themselves and each other of their own prior skepticism — and that the broader communities here and in the U.S. would come to regard the meeting here as a watershed, beginning a new Israeli-diaspora relationship among the rising generation of publicly active persons.
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