Zionism just ain't what it used to be

Picture this: Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who in recent years has caused headlines mainly by issuing inflammatory rulings and statements against Arabs and Reform Jews, invited to bestow his blessing, wearing his turban and brocade gown, on the staid and civilized proceedings of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.

It is not as incongruous as it may seem. If a plan authorized last week by the Council of Torah Sages - the committee of aging rabbis presided over by Yosef that calls the shots for Shas politicians - for the party to join the World Zionist Organization is carried out, such a scenario could certainly become a reality.

This isn't the first time the party has considered joining the body that runs the Jewish Agency and purports to link Israel with Jewish communities around the world. But in the past, it has been prevented from taking this step by fear of having to cooperate with Reform and Conservative leaders and of losing its standing in a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world always suspicious of the Zionist mainstream.

So why has it finally decided to go down that road now?

One anonymous source within the party gave this explanation: "Why should the Reform and Dati Leumi (religious Zionist) Jews get all the jobs and budgets?" If this is indeed the reason, someone in Shas hasn't done his homework. The days in which the Jewish Agency's coffers could be plundered by special-interest groups are long over. They have been replaced by a penny-pinching era in which formerly core agency roles are being ruthlessly cut and most of the old jobs that used to go to the well-connected either no longer exist or are filled by faceless professionals. All these measures came as part of a series of governance and financial reforms pushed through by the agency's American sponsors.

So what can Shas realistically hope to achieve by joining the venerable but ailing establishment? More serious figures in the party explain that this is part of a wider strategy to broaden its appeal, in the hope of attracting religious Zionist voters searching for a political home following the implosion of the National Religious Party.

They also believe that, a quarter of a century after the party's founding, formalizing its ties with the Diaspora is part and parcel of finally becoming an accepted part of the political establishment. Not content with the party's perennial position as power broker in every coalition and anxious to finally rid themselves of the image of corrupt, black-hatted blackmailers, a heritage bequeathed them by Aryeh Deri and other lesser crooks, they are hoping that WZO membership could be another step toward that elusive respectability they seek.

Whether or not this strategy proves itself, the other main question hovering over this unlikely match is, does the Jewish Agency have anything to gain from it?

Financials woes apart, the real crisis facing the Jewish Agency and jeopardizing its future is not a scarcity of funds, but a lack of purpose. With the age of mass immigration over, the agency's historical role as the facilitator of Jewish immigration to Israel is gradually being taken over by private organizations such as Nefesh B'Nefesh and AMI.

Carving out a niche for itself in the fields of Jewish education and identity is also proving difficult. Both in Israel and in communities abroad, the Jewish school systems are jealously guarded by local leadership and interests and the agency cannot aspire to be more than a service provider. And in its mission to try and connect young Diaspora Jews to Israel, the agency has already lost. Privately funded Birthright, for all its faults, is much sexier than the agency's own program, MASA, to both donors and participants.

The agency is just part of a creaky old Zionist apparatus, including the JNF, KKL, WZO and other acronyms, that needs to find a new mission, and soon. The alternative is a descent into total obscurity. (Perhaps Zionism itself needs a complete revamp, but that's a subject for another column.)

Still, there is a way it could revitalize itself while staying true to its founding principles. And joining forces with Shas could be a good first step.

There is no need to yet again cite demographic statistics to prove that the greatest challenge to Israeli society over the next decades will be the integration of the two fastest-growing communities in the country, Haredim and Israeli Arabs. They have the highest poverty rates and the lowest participation in the work force, with all the attendant health and social issues those factors bring. Neither group fits easily into the secular Jewish, mostly Ashkenazi image of the state's founding fathers, and neither signs onto any 1940s ideal of the new Jew redeeming the land through labor and folk dancing.

Haredim and Arabs are an integral part of contemporary Israel. But rather than being embraced and integrated in a spirit of multicultural and cross-community tolerance, these sectors seem to be mostly used as handy recruiting tools by scaremongering political parties. And, as with other challenges faced by our modern state (occupation, anybody?), all the state can come up with to meet their needs or calm social friction are the most short-term of measures.

The Jewish Agency et al., with their hundreds of years of collective administrative, logistic and strategic experience, could be well suited to actually tackling these difficulties, rather than skirting around them with the odd coexistence workshop. So if Shas is going to join up, why not reach out to other previously unthinkable partners?

Any Zionist future has to encompass all its stakeholders - that includes non-Zionists, too.