Today's young generation is flooded with endless technological and media stimuli and shows interest in anything new and advanced to the extent that sometimes it seems the young are abandoning the fundamental principles, history, and values on which previous generations were raised. When I was young, membership in a youth movement was the basis for ideological fulfillment and a social center to meet other people my age, and it was there that I received an injection of energy for social involvement and community work.
One of the high points of my upbringing was a special event into which all the worldviews, energy and work were funneled: the Zionist Youth Congress. The feeling was amazing. Youngsters, teenagers brimming with motivation from schools, youth movements, cities, and kibbutzim, came together to carry on Theodor Herzl's vision of building a model society in the Land of Israel. I'll never forget the debates and arguments, the agreements, the compromises, and the voting that gave us all the sense that we too, the young, could influence things. It felt as if we had set up the parliament of the next generation.
Today, years later, notebooks have been replaced by iPads and tablets, pencils by a touch screen, but the fervor for social involvement, discourse, and influence remains. This year marks dozens of events and milestones on the way of the Zionist movement: 120 years since the first Zionist Congress in Basel; 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 70 years since the U.N. voted for our right to establish a Jewish state in the Land of Israel; and 50 years since the victory in the 1967 Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem.
As is the case every year, about a thousand young people who represent the different sectors that make up the prolific human mosaic of Israel will attend the World Zionist Youth Congress. Young people who are secular and religious, right-wing and left-wing, from the center of Israel and its periphery, will take part in value-centered debates on contemporary issues in Israeli society, tour the country and take part in learning experiences, and will meet with other young people from all over Israel.
I don't see technological advancement as something that cuts these high-quality youngsters off from working on behalf of society. The opposite: Integrating technological advances helps us. With the boundless ideal of fulfilling the Zionist dream and establishing a model society in front of us, we have a lot of work to do. We must strengthen our Jewish and Zionist identities, teach values, encourage excellence, teach people to accept those who are different, and promote advancement, as well as encourage aliyah from the various diasporas and fight anti-Semitism and the anti-Israel boycott movement -- all of which are just some of the challenges we still face.
The youth representatives are the leading edge and the future leaders of the state of Israel. They join the pieces of the puzzle that comprise Israeli society and the Zionist movement.
The verse in our literature that says "Start children off on the way they should go" (Proverbs 22:6) fits in well with Zionist leaders' call to integrate young people into Zionist and public activity.
"Without the youth, no movement will be possible," Zionist visionary and author Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote in his day. The Zionist movement, which threw off a 2,000-year coma, was established by young people full of motivation, vision and understanding that without their active, central involvement, the Jewish state would never have been founded.
Yaakov Haguel is head of the World Zionist Organization's Department for Zionist Activities in Israel and Combating Against Anti-Semitism.
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