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The Couch Potato Plan
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3160 Haggerty Rd. • West Bloomfield • 48323
f you're not already equipped
with a VCR, CD-ROM, and
modem to access the WWW
(World Wide Web), you'd best
gear up for the alphabet world of
modern communications. For the
wave of the future in Israel-Di-
aspora relations — in the view of
Professor Haim Ben-Shahar, for-
mer president of Tel Aviv Uni-
versity, and Dr. Arye Carmon,
president of the Israel Democra-
cy Institute — is: Networking.
To address what they see as
the steadily widening gap be-
tween Israel and the Diaspora,
due to changing needs and a mu-
tual turning inward, the authors
have published "The Jerusalem
Plan 1997," the centennial year
of the First Zionist Congress. Un-
til now, Messrs Ben-Shahar and
Carmon posit, the relationship
between Israel and Diaspora
Jewry has been "one-sided, one-
dimensional, and instrumental."
Israel, they write, "dictated the
joint agenda, placed its materi-
al needs at the core, and demon-
strated an arrogance based upon
the assumption 'You owe us."'
Today, with the debate about
Jewish and Israeli identity in full
swing, there is a growing trend
in the Diaspora "to ease Israel out
of the center of [Jewish] life."
What's more, in light of Israel's
economic prosperity and the new
avenues of dialogue with its
neighbors, the old "blood, sweat
and tears motif can no
longer be key to solidarity." What
the two sides do share (though to
differing degrees and for differ-
ent historical reasons), is a crisis
in Jewish continuity.
The latest plan for addressing
vanishing Jewish identity in the
Diaspora is to increase partici-
pation in the "Israel Experience"
programs run by the Jewish
Agency. In 1993, for example, the
Jewish Agency and World Zion-
ist Organization's Joint Author-
ity for Jewish-Zionist Education
devoted more than 20 percent of
its budget to these programs,
bringing some 15,000 teen-agers
to Israel in the hope of somehow
inoculating them against assim-
ilation. Even though the number
of participants fell to less than
half that number in 1994 (which
the Jewish Agency's Acting
Chairman Yehiel Leket ascribes
to the Hebron massacre), begin-
ning in 1996 the Jewish Agency
aims to bring 50,000 youngsters
to Israel annually. But if these
visits are so vulnerable to the im-
pact of events in a volatile politi-
cal atmosphere, the reliability of
their appeal is problematic.
The Jerusalem Plan 1997 en-
visions Jews participating in an
ongoing, broad-based cultural
network — "interpersonal and
electronic" — without ever leav-
ing their communities, or indeed,
their own homes. In a world con-
siderably shrunk by advances in
communications — from cable
television and satellite hook-ups
to video cassettes, multi-media
programs and electronic mail —
communications networks can
promote cultural discourse from
the level of "family to [Jewish]
federation, from kindergarten to
university."
r'
The plan envisions
Jews participating
in a broad-based
cultural network.
The key feature outlined in the
plan is a "global network of Jew-
ish education" geared to foster-
ing Jewish identity. Drawing on
combinations of software, educa-
tional media and simulations,
this network could enable stu-
dents across the world to "study
together identical curricular units
in real time." Other proposed in-
novations are a cable-TV network
carrying programs on historical
and artistic subjects; an "open
Jewish university" based on
videos and electronic networks;
an "international university" de-
signed specially for Jewish stu-
dents visiting Israel; institutes
for advanced research; and joint
institutes frequented (in person
or by video conferencing) by sci-
entists, professionals and people
in the arts.
The plan also proposes trans-
ferring much of the Judaica cur-
rently stored in archives,
basements, and warehouses to
Jerusalem, where a 'Louvre' of
the Jewish people" can be "visit-
ed" by Jews from the comfort of
their own living rooms. (The
same programs can be offered by
other Jewish museums, as well.)
Who will pay for all this elec-
tronic wizardry is a question the
authors pursue with equal relish.
They set out from the assump-
tion that most of the Jewish
Agency's original functions (fund-
ed primarily by American Jew-
ish federations, including the
Associated) already have been
taken over by the Israeli govern-
ment. Others have remained in
r'