Last week at Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, the International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies was inaugurated, an institution that aims to develop ties between Jews in Israel and Jews in the . There is a great deal of symbolism in the operation of an institution that is a school at the Diaspora Museum. The museum opened in May, 1978, as a museum of Jewish history and the establishment of the state. Until recently the place was identified with a decidedly Zionist worldview that sees diaspora Jewry as a museum exhibit that belongs to the past. In the meantime, the Jews of the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia have immigrated to Israel. At least 20 percent of diaspora Jews are now living out of choice in countries where the standard of living is identical to that in Israel, or higher.

The director of the School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies, Shlomi Ravid, agrees that the view of Israel as a guarantee of the security of the Jewish people is no longer as relevant as it once was. According to him, "The problem is that no new view has been born in Israel to replace the old view of Israel-diaspora relations. If you ask a young Israeli today what the meaning of concept of the state of the Jewish people is, in rare cases you will get the answer that 'we are here to serve as a refuge for Jews in distress.' In most cases you won't get any answer at all."

To Ravid's credit it must be said that he knows the other side of the divide very well. For six years he directed the center for Israeli culture at the Jewish Federation in San Francisco. In retrospect, says Ravid, the commitment that Jews feel towards other members of their people has also weakened in the United States.

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"I discovered that non-Orthodox Jewry in the United States has succeeded in transforming Judaism into an enjoyable experience. Judaism is fun. But this approach, which has made the individual's spirituality central, has very much weakened the collective and Jewish solidarity."

As the director of the first school in the world for the study of the Jewish people, Ravid will try to manage on an annual budget of $1 million, half of the cultural budget for the Israel Center in San Francisco. He might be able to take comfort in the fact that recently other bodies in the Jewish world have emerged that aspire to change the face of the Jewish people on quite a limited budget. The Global Jewish Forum that was initiated by President Moshe Katsav and the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute are outstanding examples.

It is interesting to note that precisely at a time when the concept "the Jewish people" is no longer taken for granted, dealing with Jewish peoplehood has become a more central area in than in the past among Jewish communities and organizations. "'Jewish peoplehood' is now the buzzword in the Jewish world," says Ravid, "the way 'outreach' and 'Jewish continuity' were buzzwords at a a time when everyone was upset by intermarriage."

Ravid is interested in making the school a central stage for dialogue between Israel and world Jewry: Organizations like KolDor, birthright and the successful student exchange program between Tel Aviv and the Los Angeles Federation. The Israeli Ministry of Education, however, is not showing any interest as of now in the school and its activity.

To date the Education Ministry has succeeded in repressing any attempt to devote study hours to the topic of Jewish identity and belonging to the Jewish people. Beyond a number of study hours in the framework of history lessons for the matriculation exam, students in Israel do not learn anything about other Jews living in the world today. Two additional study programs have been frozen or remain in the pilot stage. To this day there has been no implementation of the 1994 Shenhar report that recommended a new educational outlook with respect to diaspora Jewry. For years now the Posen Foundation has been making efforts to introduce the study of Jewish civilization into the education system but its success has been quite limited. The School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies can succeed only with help from the non-governmental system. Insofar as it depends on the Education Ministry, it seems that Jewish identity is the last thing that needs to be taught in the Jewish state.