Israel and Jewish Education in the Diaspora

Abstract

T X HE IMPLICATIONS OF the rise of Israel for the educational and cultural fortunes of Diaspora Jewry may not be as obvious and as pressing as present-day social and political issues confronting Israel and World Jewry, but from the long range view it is certain that the question of cultural and spiritual ties bewteen Israel and the Diaspora, particularly that of American Jewry, will surpass in importance some of the problems that command our attention today. Unlike the issues arising from the new political realities, the question of the cultural relations between the Jewish State and the Diaspora has been up for discussion for some time. Indeed, one may speak of three classic versions of this relationship as formulated by Theodore Herzl, Ahad Haam and Jacob Klatzkin. Herzl, as is well known, had neither knowledge of, or interest in a specific Jewish culture; he therefore, thought of Palestine in terms of a multi-lingual commonwealth patterned after or other western European community. In his Judenstat Herzl wrote: Switzerland affords proof of the possibility of a