Following a challenging coronavirus year, the World Zionist Organization is relaunching its efforts to send emissaries to the Jewish Diaspora in order to enrich communities about the values of Zionism. This year, it is sending its largest-ever delegation.
Ninety emissaries will represent the mosaic of Israeli society and teach Israeli history, Zionism and Hebrew.
All of them are teachers who bid farewell to their students in Israel in late June in order to head to North and Latin America, Europe, Australia and even Morocco, with whom Israel normalized relations in 2020. Due to the outbreak of the pandemic, the demand for WZO emissaries rose by a whopping 50 percent compared to last year, especially in North America. As the coronavirus left many parents unable to pay for their children’s tuition at private Jewish schools, the WZO hopes the emissaries will fill that gap by providing Jewish education. “The emissaries in these schools are in many ways ambassadors of the State of Israel, representatives of the Israeli public, culture, tradition and language,” said Chagit Hadar, Judaic Studies Principal at Ben Porat Yosef school in New Jersey.
Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai praised the move and said it “will strengthen the bond between Jewish communities in the Diaspora and Israel and provide much-needed education for the young Jewish generation.”
Gael Grunewald, head of the WZO’s Education Department, expressed excitement at the largest-ever delegation and said that “emissaries are becoming another in the big bridge that connects the Diaspora to Israel.”
This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.
