f
sent activities in Jewish education, on
which it spends between $15-20 million a
year, and to decide what new directions in
this area the Agency should develop in the
future.
Fox, originally from the U.S., is a pro-
fessor of education at the Hebrew Univer-
sity, a widely-travelled consultant, and has
been connected with some major educa-
tional innovations of the Conservative
Movement in America. He is also one of
the influential members of the board of the
Joint Program.
He envisions the committee evolving in-
to a clearing house for Diaspora Jewish
education, where new ideas and projects
would be matched with funds and person-
nel from other agencies by means of the ex-
tensive networks of contacts that intersect
on the committee. He admits that this
sounds a bit vague, but says he cannot put
the emerging structure into any conven-
tional organizational pigeonhole.
"The committee will act as a catalyst,
planner, innovator, monitor and magnet to
attract money and good minds," says Fox,
who has a reputation as a high-powered
proinoter and organizer in the field of
Jewish education. His original proposal for
a comprehensive Agency program for
Diaspora Jewish education was considered
by many to be too grandiose. Much of what
will emerge from this committee may de-
pend to a considerable extent on the per-
sonal initiatives, contacts, and preferences
of its senior consultant.
The chairman of the committee, Morton
Mandel, is the first Diaspora chairman of
any Agency committee to take such a lead-
ing role in shaping and directing a new
function for the Agency. Mandel has pre-
viously been involved in Jewish education
through his chairmanship of the JWB's na-
tional effort to "maximize" the potential
of Jewish community centers as environ-
ments for Jewish education. His co-chair-
man on the Agency committee is Avraham
Katz, head of the WZO Youth and Heha-
lutz Department.
Mandel describes the first project of the
Agency committee as one with a potential
to make a major contribution to "strength-
ening the Jewish identity and sense of Jew-
ish peoplehood among young people, and
to strengthening the bonds between Israel
and the Diaspora." This is the Israel Ex-
perience Project, an evaluation study and
survey that aims to provide a basis for in-
creasing the number of young people from
the Diaspora taking part in educational
programs in Israel, as well as increasing
the educational impact of these programs.
The $150,000 study being conducted by an
independent Jerusalem firm, Nativ Policy
and Planning Consultants, was commis-
sioned last year and will be completed in
June.
The importance of this project lies not
only in its educational goals but in the fact
What is the Caesarea Process?
n February 1981, the
Board of Governors of the
Jewish Agency met for
three days of intensive dis-
cussions in Caesarea to
review the 10-year part-
nership between the WZO
and the main Diaspora fund-raising
bodies in the operation of the reconsti-
tuted Agency. These discussions produced
a sharper sense of direction for the
leaders of the Agency that was translated
during the next few years into six com-
missions charged with formulating revi-
sions in priorities and policies, and which
were co-chaired by leaders of the WZO
and the UJA and Keren Hayesod.
Major themes of the conference were
how to reconcile the centrality of Israel
and its need for greater Jewish immigra- •
tion with the need to help preserve the
vitality of the communities of Jews who
would continue to live outside Israel; the
1968 Jerusalem Program of the WZO as
a unifying platform for all those who call
themselves Zionists; and what the Jewish
Agency should be doing during the next
10 years.
The Caesarea Process launched at' the
conference took shape in the recommen-
dations of the six commissions, most of
which have been adopted by the Assem-
bly of the Agency, which is its broadest
governing body:
1) Goals and Objectives. Aliya and
rural settlement were defined as integral
functions of the Agency, while it was rec-
ognized that more work should be done
in Jewish education. Programs designed
"to enhance the quality of life" in Israel,
such as Project Renewal, should be oper-
ated for a limited time period. Youth
Aliya should deal primarily with immi-
grant youth, and its role with Israeli
that it constitutes the first comprehensive
attempt to evaluate many of the hundreds
of Israel programs that the WZO runs or
supports, in addition to some of those run
by other bodies.
Mandel notes that the historical exper-
iences of° the Holocaust and the establish-
ment of the state of Israel that were so
crucial for molding the Jewish identity of
his generation cannot be expected to have
a similar impact on young Jews. "For this
generation, all the doors are open. We can't
expect them to have a positive Jewish iden-
tity and commitment to the Jewish people
because of Auschwitz or Israel's struggle
youth should be reexamined.
2) Governance. The concerns addressed
in the recommendations presented to the
Assembly in 1984 focused on enhancing
the representativeness of the members of
the Board of Governors; strengthening
the role of the Assembly; and reconciling
the two different conceptions of the roles
of the Board and the Executive and their
respective chairmen held by the Israeli
and Diaspora partners.
3) Finance and Fiscal Policy. It was
resolved to eliminate the Agency debt —
most of it from the burdens of immigrant
absorption in the early years of the state
— to operate on a balanced budget and
to improve the Agency budgeting process.
4) Aliya. The main recommendation
was that Diaspora communities, primari-
ly in the U.S., should take upon them-
selves a greater role in the promotion of
aliya and in the assistance to immigrants
from their communities.
5) Jewish Education. This commission
established that the principle of partner-
ship between the WZO and the Diaspora
communities extends to the area of Jew-
ish education, especially in its Israel and
Zionist components, and that this should
be implemented in new structures, pro-
cedures and modes of communication:
6) Management. This commission has
produced a series of reports and recom-
mendations on ways to improve the Agen-
cy's structure and operations, and its rela-
tions with the WZO.
Several years after the Caesarea Pro-
cess was begun, the WZO started a
similar evalUation of its goals, member-
ship and structure called the Herzliya
Process, but it has met with much less
success in reaching agreement on reforms
and new directions.
for independence. These kids have to
choose to be Jewish from a positive point
of view, and unless we have something in-
spiring to offer them, many of them won't
make that choice." •
This is where Israel comes into the pic-
ture, he continues. "The connection with
the Jewish people and with 3,000 years of
Jewish history, as experienced in Israel, is
the most powerful single tool that we have
to motivate young people to discover why
they should be actively Jewish and to deep-
en their commitment to Jewish life. Every
kid should get an Israel experience as part
of his. Jewish education, and we would
Part Three
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