The "poor of our city" have recently come out, again, to bolster an argument of those who are trying to explain why not fund essential national activity. Itamar Fleischman ("Israeli citizens should not fund Diaspora Jewry", 25.07) explains through them why it is not the role of the Jewish state to help the Jews of the world. 

I was reminded of a meeting of the Knesset's Absorption Committee, to which I was invited in January 1994 to explain why I was proposing the "Birthright" project (which has not yet been called that), and why Israel and the Jewish people should fund flights of wealthy Jewish children to Israel. "The poor of your city have gone before," Naomi Blumenthal explained to me, followed by prominent MKs from right and left, who were all in favor of Jewish brotherhood, but united around the approach expressed in the last sentence in Fleischmann's article: "The door of the State of Israel "The pocket should remain closed."

One is allowed to think that there is no place for a Jewish state in the 21st century, and even if it were right to establish it at the time, today it is an anachronistic and discriminatory idea. Former Zionists like Peter Bainert, whose article on this subject excites the Jewish world, are allowed to think that way, and we are allowed to argue with him. But those who fear the continuity of the Jewish people, and understand that its decline in the world is a fatal blow to us, in Israel, must also understand that the Jewish state, which in the first decades of its existence benefited quite a bit from the Jewish people in the Diaspora, especially in blood and blood. Helps in Jewish continuity in the world.

If, God forbid, most Israeli citizens decide that their country is not the Jewish state that Herzl envisioned, it would be really very strange if it finds it appropriate to fund projects like "Birthright" or help them maintain their communities even without a direct connection to Israel. But those who understand the significance of the fact that even after 75 years, the Jewish people are still far from the number of their sons and daughters on the eve of the Holocaust of European Jewry, and anxious about the shrinking of our extended family, can not treat world Jews as "foreign citizens" who do not pay taxes. , Should not be funded and should not be allowed to have a say in our conduct as a state.

Fleischmann refers to the multiplicity of organizations dealing with the Jewish people, and he is right that some of them have already passed their 100th birthday, and they exist more by the force of inertia than by the need for them. But the conclusion should be the establishment of modern and relevant worldwide Jewish organizations, and not the cessation of the Diaspora. Israel has no justification for existence as a Jewish state if the Law of Return is not important in its laws, and if moving away from a Jewish identity among the Jews of the world does not worry it and cause it to act. The problems of the Jewish world are also the problems of Israel, and part of their solution involves spending that we must remove from our budget.