Only a ‘Jewish Peace Corps’ Can Save Zionism From Its Millennial Crisis
This new national enterprise could transform how the world sees Israel and Judaism, and allay the identity crisis that has befallen many young Jews.

Ari Shavit

Over the last year, I happened to spend a lot of time on one of the Jewish people’s most strife-ridden fronts: American college campuses. I visited 40 universities and gave lectures to tens of thousands of millennials. I listened to thousands of students express their fears and doubts regarding Israel and the Jewish establishment. I saw firsthand the animosity of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and I heard the pain of liberals who find it difficult to side with Israel, much less admire it. I watched thousands grow further and further from Zionism, and sometimes even from Judaism.
At Stanford, Berkeley, Northwestern, Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Columbia and dozens more U.S. academic institutions, I held heartbreaking conversations with a new Jewish generation, intelligent and impressive, experiencing an identity crisis that the Israeli government refuses to understand and internalize. With my own eyes I saw, and with my own ears I heard, how we are losing our future.
This sustained experience shook me to my very core. While trying my best to be the catcher in the rye, who seeks to return to the fold these young Jews whom the Jewish state and the American Jewish community seemed to have scorned, I came to recognize that the most pressing existential threat we face is the clash between Zionism and the zeitgeist of the 21st century. The fact is that while most young people in North America and Europe have adopted universal values, both Israel and the organized Jewish world are perceived as tribal. The fact is that in an era in which the three gravest sins are Power, Privilege and Particularism, we are distortedly perceived, as Powerful, Privileged and Particularistic.
With all due respect to the dozens of committed Jewish organizations doing good works across North America, if we fail to deal with this basic problem head-on, there is no chance we will succeed in changing the state of mind and the frame of reference of a million young Jews and tens of millions of young non-Jews whose attitude toward the State of Israel is markedly different than that of their parents and grandparents.
On the snow-swept roads that led me from one bewildered and pained campus to the next, I came to understand that the response to this profound and imminent crisis is to launch a new national project for the Jewish people, celebrating the fact that we are a universal tribe – or a people with a universal mission. This project, I sensed, should be ambitious, creative and energetic, doing tikkun olam work, under the Jewish flag, on a grand scale. And it should build new bridges between the Jewish state and the Diaspora as it brings together young Israelis and young Jews from all over the world.
Epiphany
One of the campuses I visited last winter was that of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Here, the warm and admirable Jewish collegiate community had suffered a particularly traumatic experience in dealing with a staunch BDS movement. At the end of an emotional, stirring and uplifting day, we gathered together at the imposing Michigan Union building for an in-depth discussion. My host told me with great pride that here, on these very steps, then-Senator John F. Kennedy, gave his Peace Corps speech in October 1960.
And suddenly it was so clear. So simple. Self-evident. What we need now is a Jewish Peace Corps. A joint venture between Israel and the Diaspora that will combine the Jewish state’s capabilities (its medical talents, its air force, diplomatic service, entrepreneurial spirit) with the resources of world Jewry – and with the desire of many young people in many communities to engage in universal do-gooding within a Jewish framework, while strengthening their Jewish identity.
Imagine, just imagine: At the age of 18, 20 or 22, every young Jew will be invited to serve. He or she will be able to choose between six different tracks: working in Yeruham, for instance, with disadvantaged Jews, or in Rahat, with impoverished Israeli Arabs, or in Rehovot, developing “tikkun olam“ technologies; or in Ukraine, with Jews in distress; or in Cambodia, with the local poor; or in Ferguson, Missouri, with underprivileged African Americans.
Imagine, just imagine: After they arrive at the Peace Corps camp at the destination of their choosing, these young men and women will dedicate seven to eight hours a day to social-civic work and two to three hours a day to pluralistic Jewish studies, before they gather for an evening party. What an impact this experience will have on their lives. What a change will occur in the perception of Israel and of organized Judaism – and in the consciousness of the Jews and non-Jews of the 21st century.
Rather than the Jewish state being identified with occupation, oppression, settlements, fanaticism and reactionary-ism, it will be identified with human rights, social justice, environmental activism and the effort to make the world a better place. Rather than Zionism being synonymous with racism and apartheid, it will be known for inter-racial, inter-religious and international work. The connection that will be made between our particular identity and our universal commitment will give a resounding answer to the external assault on our legitimacy, and quash internal question marks about our character, our purpose and the meaning of our collective life.
The man who first thought up the idea of a Jewish Peace Corps is Yossi Beilin. In the mid-1990s, the founder of Birthright – together with Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt – proposed setting up a national-humanitarian body that would embody Israel’s enlightened values. In the 20 years that have passed since then, a dozen or so organizations – Israeli and Jewish – did arise, and are tirelessly engaged in doing sacred work in the developing world. And in many natural and man-made catastrophes, Israel has acted quickly and extraordinarily in offering much-welcomed assistance. But Beilin’s original vision never took hold. To this day, a national organization that would lead a strategic change in the way Israel acts in the world and in the way Israel is perceived by the world, has not been founded.
Not a cure-all
A Jewish Peace Corps is not a panacea. If Israel continues to rule over another people, to build settlements and to espouse religious nationalism, no liberal young man from California will be impressed by its efforts to better lives in Cambodia or Sri Lanka. If Israel betrays its democratic values, no liberal young woman from Boston will want to be its partner in working for justice in the Negev, the Galilee or Africa. But in parallel to the internal struggle for the soul and future path of the Jewish democratic state, a new national enterprise for the Jewish people is needed, one that will bring us back to ourselves and to a righteous destiny.
No public relations campaign, no matter how brilliant, can defeat the BDS movement. Young America’s growing aversion to Israel and the attacks on the Jewish state will not magically dissipate. The deep identity crisis that has befallen many young Jews will not be resolved with rhetoric. Only if we create a framework that will allow young Jews of the Diaspora and young Israelis to experience together the work of tikkun olam and tikkun Israel will we be able to tackle the enormous damage we brought upon ourselves in the last decades and ready the Jewish nation for the challenges of the third millennium.
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