Natan Sharansky Won’t Seek New Term at Jewish Agency
Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky Image by Getty Images
By Josefin Dolsten September 7, 2016
— Natan Sharansky announced he will be stepping down from his position as chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel in June.
Sharansky, 68, will complete his second term before he leaves. He took the post in June 2009.
“I’m not going to serve another term,” he told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “I told the prime minister. It’s not healthy for the organization. There must be new people and new ideas.”
Sharansky, a famed Soviet prisoner of conscience who was able to immigrate to Israel in 1986, said he will continue working to foster connections between Diaspora Jewry and Israel without specifying in what capacity.
“All my life I’ve been doing the same job really – connecting between Israel and world Jewry. I’m not going to leave this topic,” he said.
The Jewish Agency, the world’s largest Jewish nonprofit group, promotes Jewish immigration to Israel and Israel awareness abroad. It also runs programs for vulnerable operations in Israel. Most of the organization’s funding comes from Jewish communities outside Israel.
Sharansky’s recent efforts include trying to secure a compromise for an egalitarian plaza at the Western Wall and calling for wider recognition by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate of conversions done by rabbis outside the Jewish state.
He has served in the Knesset and in various ministerial roles. Most recently he represented the right-leaning Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2006.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
