This year’s Z3 conference at the Oshman Family JCC was decidedly more upbeat than last November’s gathering, when 100 hostages were still being held in Gaza. And its celebratory mood can’t even be compared with the shock and grief that enveloped the November 2023 conference, held just weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks.
“OK, friends, can we just acknowledge it — they are home. And that we have to celebrate,” said OFJCC CEO Zack Bodner as he kicked off the opening plenary in Palo Alto on Nov. 9.
The Z3 conference brings together leading thinkers, creatives and policy-makers to discuss the evolving relationship between Israel and the diaspora. “Z3” stands for Zionism 3.0, a conceptual construct that posits equality between diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel, instead of the 20th-century focus on aliyah as the highest Jewish value.
Noting that the 1,500 attendees made this year’s the largest Z3 conference ever, and applauding the 300 teenagers who were there for the annual gathering’s first Teen Summit, Bodner set the tone for the rest of the day by emphasizing that Israelis and diaspora Jews came together over the past two years in a way not seen in decades.
“The American Jewish community raised more than we ever have before for one [Israel campaign], more than $1 billion to help free the hostages,” he told the audience. He then launched into his “five lessons learned” since Oct. 7: when we come together, we can do anything; we can’t do it alone; the haters will always be there, and they must not define us; our superpower is our pride and our joy; and we have to remember our “why.”
“The meaning of life is to experience joy, and help other people experience it, too,” he said. “That’s real tikkun olam.”
Hope and looking forward to the future were the key points of the day.
“Tragedy and sacrifice followed by renewal — that’s our history,” said Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, founding director of the Z3 Project, the umbrella organization that put on the annual conference as its main event. “It’s not about a smooth journey, but a refusal to give up. All of you here, and you watching on Zoom, believe tomorrow will be better than today.
“Z3 is a paradigm for internalizing sovereignty, for taking responsibility for our collective story,” he continued. “Davka,” he said, using a Hebrew word that means both “precisely” and “in spite of everything,” “Davka, we will persist, and we will thrive.”
Keynote speaker Sarah Hurwitz, former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential run, said that Jews “are different,” which is an uncomfortable position to be in. “And that’s OK,” she said.
Jews can bring something precious to the world because of their difference, she said. Instead of running away from sickness and death, Jewish tradition teaches us to visit the ill and comfort the mourner. Judaism teaches us to wrestle with varying opinions instead of promoting one truth, she said.
“Today we find ourselves singled out for being Jewish and Zionist,” she said. “As painful as that is, it’s an opportunity. The world needs our difference. Building a society where every individual is treated in the image of the Divine — that’s Judaism.”
Tolerance, she said, is also a vital Jewish trait, one that Jews can bring to the world. “I don’t have to impose my tradition on anyone else,” she told the crowd. “I can hold my difference and everyone else’s. We are not the only ones with moral vision. Others have it, too, and we need their differences.”
The plenary ended with Israeli journalist Tamar Ish Shalom interviewing Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, who represented the United States in Israel from 2011 to 2017.
Despite “living in a period when our own democracy is as divided as it’s been during my lifetime,” and a political atmosphere containing “whiffs of authoritarianism” that “threaten our way of life,” Shapiro insisted that Jewish voices are being heard.
Yes, he said, anti-Israel protests have rocked some college campuses, “but there are hundreds more where that’s not happening.”
“Whether we are weak will depend very much on us,” he said, responding to a pundit who recently suggested that Jews are “prominent but weak” today in America. “Do we treat ourselves as under attack, or do we stand up as full citizens and rally our allies?”
Zohran Mamdani, with his anti-Israel agenda, may have won the mayoral race in New York City, he said, but voters in other states such as New Jersey and Virginia elected mainstream Democrats, governors who understand that Israel is our major ally in the Middle East. “There’s a lot to work with,” he said.
“We have plenty of allies in both parties, but we can’t let complacency creep in,” he warned. “We need to call out the extremists in our own camps.”