Natan Sharansky Wins Second Term as Head of Israel’s Jewish Agency
New Term: Natan Sharansky has been unanimously reappointed as head of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Image by getty images
Natan Sharansky was elected today to a second four-year term as chairman of the Jewish Agency in a unanimous vote by the organization’s Board of Governors. Deputy Chairman Rany Trainin was also reelected to a second term.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking on Monday to the Board of Governors in Jerusalem, urged its members to extend Sharansky’s appointment.
Sharansky, a former dissident, was incarcerated for nine years in the Soviet Union. After his release in 1986, he immigrated to Israel where he was reunited with his wife Avital. He served as a member of the Knesset for nine years and as industry and trade minister, interior minister, housing and construction minister, Jerusalem affairs minister and deputy prime minister. After leaving political life, he was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency in 2009.
In his role as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky has put greater emphasis on building bridges between Israel and Diaspora Jewry and less focus on what was traditionally the organization’s outstanding mission of promoting aliyah.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Make a Passover Gift Today!
Dive In
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Fast Forward FSU shooting suspect used neo-Nazi imagery on social media, ADL finds
-
Fast Forward Pope Francis’ final speech called for ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Israeli army fires deputy commander after finding ‘operational errors’ in killing of 15 Gazans
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Sports Israeli mom ‘made it easy’ for new NHL player to make history
-
Communications The Forward Announces Gifts of Domains Yiddish.com and Yiddish.org by Elie Hirschfeld and his wife Sarah Hirschfeld, MD
-
Culture How this Marc Chagall painting explains Pope Francis’ soul
-
Opinion He’s one of Israel’s worst extremists. So why is Yale legitimizing him?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.