Israel’s President Isaac Herzog Wants YOUR Opinion

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is in the process of forming a worldwide Council to develop innovative solutions to some of the most pressing problems facing the Jewish world.

Eventually, the Council will include 150 Jews – 50 from Israel, 50 from the U.S. and Canada, and 50 from the rest of the world.  An algorithm will assure diversity of occupations, Jewish affiliations, ethnicity, gender, age over 18, and so forth.

But first President Herzog wants your opinion.  Yes, he means you, individual members of the Jewish community, speaking not for any organization, or political party, or synagogue, but for yourself as an individual.

At the website of Voice of the People, an organization developed to bring the global council into being, you, as an individual, are asked to indicate in a survey which five of the following 10 Jewish communal challenges are most important to you.

1.  Rising (above) antisemitism
2.  How are we keeping our Jewish culture & heritage alive?
3.  Economic discrimination against Jews & Israelis
4.  Enhancing Jewish and non-Jewish relations
5.  The challenges with Jewish identity & practicing as a Jew today
6.  Polarization & Dialogue between different Jewish communities.
7. Israel & global Jewry relations
8. Growing up as a Jew in different educational systems: Is it working
9. The gap is Proactive Jewish leadership.
10.  How do we make a difference in the world.  (Tikkun Olam)

The survey also asks if there are additional questions or issues that the future Council should address.  Additionally, it asks how recent events have impacted you.

Already, thousands of people have responded to emails sent to them by Voice of the People, according to the new organization’s executive director, Shirel Dagan-Levy.  But more Jewish voices are sought, especially from those for whom Voice of the People had no email address.

The survey takes just a few minutes to fill out.  Beginning on Sunday, Sept. 15, Voice of the People will begin sending an invitation to survey respondents urging them to apply to become members of the first Council.  As part of the official launch of the program, 20 respondents will be selected to participate in a private conversation with President Herzog.

The 150-member council will be divided into 10 groups of 15 people with different subjects to consider.  A facilitator and an academic fellow will be assigned to each group, which will meet monthly online for two years and gather in March 2025 for an in-person meeting in Jerusalem.

Dagan-Levy, an attorney and software entrepreneur who has worked in Israel and in the United States, said it is important that the Council is being created under the official auspices of the President of Israel.

“I think that President Herzog sees himself also as president of the Jewish people,” she commented in an interview Monday with San Diego Jewish World.  “After being chairman of the Jewish Agency and having an amazing heritage from home, I think he sees this as his responsibility.”

Herzog, Israel’s 11^th President, is the son of the late Chaim Herzog, a major-general in the IDF who served as Israel’s 6^th president.  His paternal grandfather, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, served as chief rabbi of Ireland, and later as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.  Herzog’s uncle was Abba Eban, Israel’s third foreign minister.

As a result of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, “lots of people are speaking up and their voices are influencing the young generation, Dagan-Levy said.  “We want to cultivate young leadership to look ahead and to say, ‘Where are we going to be?’”

The Council is being formed “not just to talk or to research, but it will be chosen from the people who want to come up with creative solutions,” she said.  “I want to look 20 years from now, and say, ‘Oh this thing came from Council No. 7 and this one from Council No. 13.”

“What happened on Oct. 7 was horrible.  I’m trying to see it as an occasion to rebuild connections, the relationships, and to understand that we are one – am echad.

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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.