Jewish Peoplehood: Not Just for Diaspora Jews
The conference was dominated by professionals in their 30’s and 40’s who seem to be taking the lead from the previous generation.
The opening statements by Professor Gidon Shimoni and Rabbah Talia Avnun-Benvenisti focused on defining what “Jewish Peoplehood” is and why it is important to Israelis as well as Jews in the Diaspora. Sessions focused on how Jewish Peoplehood is expressed through the arts, the role of public policy to impact this topic, and how it can and should find its way more strongly into the public education system in Israel, amongst others.
As Dr Shlomi Ravid, the Director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education said, “In the past 10 years it is clear that the Peoplehood agenda has arrived in Israel and the best indication for it is that it is moving into the hands of educators and practitioners. Now we have to focus on empowering the local change agents and creating mifgashim (encounters) between educators in order to energize the global process.”
Indeed, the conference proved that Jewish Peoplehood is no longer just for Diaspora Jews.
Netaly Ophir-Flint, of the Reut Institute, called for government institutions to provide the financial platform from which the myriad educational organizations will do their work to connect all Jewish Israelis with the larger Jewish collective.
The conference was dedicated to the memory of Varda Raphaeli, one of the founders of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.
Videos of the opening sessions (in Hebrew), are available here.