Israel was never meant to be a gold-plated donor project - opinion

That distinction matters.

For years, many institutions treated Israel not as the gravitational center of Jewish civilization but as a project to support, a destination to visit, a cause to defend, or a speech to deliver at an annual dinner. Jews were taught to advocate for Israel. They were taught to donate to Israel. They were taught to feel pride in Israel from a safe distance. They were far less often taught that Zionism was meant to fundamentally reshape Jewish existence.

This failure was not necessarily malicious. It was structural.

The modern Diaspora institutional world developed its own ecosystem of conferences, boards, donor circles, leadership missions, executive classes, and prestige structures. Many of those institutions were once necessary. After the Holocaust, when Jewish communities were shattered, and Israel was young, poor, and vulnerable, Diaspora organizations played an essential role in rescue, advocacy, fundraising, and political defense. They helped mobilize Jewish power in a world where Jews had almost none.

But history changed.

Israel became strong. Hebrew returned as a living national language. Jewish sovereignty became real. The largest Jewish community in the world emerged in the Jewish homeland. Yet much of the Diaspora’s institutional architecture continued to operate psychologically as though exile remained the permanent Jewish condition.

The more deeply connected Jews become to Israel in civilizational terms, the more likely many of them — or at least their children and grandchildren — are to build their futures there. The stronger Hebrew becomes, the stronger the direct Israeli cultural identity becomes. The more Jewish life revolves around sovereignty rather than minority management, the less central the old donor-and-conference model becomes.

That does not make every donor cynical. It does not render every organization useless. It does not erase the good many institutions have done. But it does expose the central tension: a fully Israel-centered Jewish future would challenge the relevance of institutions built to manage Diaspora permanence.

So let us ask the questions directly.

If Israel is truly central to Jewish survival, why did Hebrew remain peripheral in so much of Diaspora Jewish education?

Why were generations of Jews taught more about antisemitism than about Jewish civilization?

Why were Jewish children taught to “support Israel,” but not necessarily to see themselves as participants in a sovereign Jewish story?

Why did so many institutions build donor cultures instead of peoplehood cultures?

What exactly has the World Jewish Congress measurably built that strengthened Jewish identity among young Jews beyond conferences, statements, diplomatic engagement, and institutional representation?

And perhaps most importantly: did parts of the organized Jewish world avoid making Israel too central because a truly Israel-centered Jewish future would weaken the Diaspora institutional machine itself?

That question is uncomfortable. It is also unavoidable.

Because the truth is that much of organized Jewish life became extraordinarily good at sustaining institutions while becoming progressively weaker at sustaining civilizational confidence. The language remained managerial while the problem became existential.

Panels were organized. Studies were commissioned. Emergency campaigns were launched. Summits were convened beneath crystal chandeliers while the deeper foundations quietly eroded underneath them. Meanwhile, Hebrew literacy declined. Zionist fluency weakened. Jewish confidence deteriorated. Identity became abstract. Judaism was often reframed as ethics, memory, and trauma management rather than nationhood, peoplehood, language, covenant, and sovereignty.

Human beings do not sacrifice for abstractions. They sacrifice for civilizations that feel alive. A Judaism built primarily on Holocaust memory eventually exhausts itself. A Judaism built primarily on institutional continuity eventually hollows itself out. A Judaism disconnected from Hebrew, land, sovereignty, and collective purpose eventually loses its center.

This is why younger Jews are not merely “disengaging.” Many were simply never given something powerful enough to remain attached to in the first place. The tragedy is that Lauder’s warning unintentionally reveals the exact contradiction at the center of the modern Diaspora establishment. When leaders speak about “repairing the relationship” between Israel and the Diaspora, they often speak as though this were a diplomatic alliance between two separate entities negotiating mutual interests.

But that was never the Zionist vision. Zionism was not meant to create a donor-recipient relationship. It was meant to restore a people to history. This does not mean Diaspora Jewish life has no future or value. Jewish communities abroad can remain vibrant and meaningful. Nor does it mean every Jew must move to Israel tomorrow morning. But it does mean the organized Jewish world must finally confront a reality it spent decades avoiding. Israel is not merely one important component of Jewish life. Israel is the center of modern Jewish civilization.

Any Jewish future that refuses to organize itself around that reality will continue drifting into confusion, fragmentation, and decline, no matter how many conferences are convened to discuss the problem.

Ronald Lauder is right that the cracks are real. But the deeper tragedy is this: the institutional world he represents spent decades mistaking management for renewal, fundraising for continuity, and symbolic attachment for destiny. Israel was never meant to be a gold-plated donor project. It was meant to be the beating heart of a reborn people. And now, for the first time in a very long time, many Jews are beginning to ask whether the old architecture was ever truly capable of carrying the future.