IDI, the Israel Democracy Institute, has been working for the last several years for a constitution for the State of Israel. Israel, born in battle in 1948, missed the historic opportunity to enact a constitution. Six decades later, with no separation of Religion and State, with an Arab minority of 20 percent, and with every group already entrenched in their rigid positions, the only way to have a constitution is by consensus.
This, however, turned out to be easier said than done. Nevertheless, the IDI has managed to draft a constitution, present it to the Knesset for deliberation, and put in motion an unprecedented public discourse on the need for a constitution.
At the same time, IDI has started to engage its friends overseas in its constitutional efforts. On three occasions, board members of AFIDI (American Friends of IDI) hosted one-day seminars in their hometowns, where IDI fellows participated: David Fox in New York, Michael Gelman in Washington DC, and Tony Gelbart in Boca Raton. Next in line was Mexico City.
AFIDI board member Roberto Sonabend, Co-President of Publicidad Virtual, a Mexican-based company excelling in sophisticated virtual advertising, made IDI's trip a special event. He and his hard-working team, which also included his family members and volunteers (whom he called "ambassadors"), prepared a first-class three-day event, which stood up to the highest standards possible. Jodi Fleisig, Atlanta-based Director of AFIDI, was instrumental in this success, as well as the Israeli IDI team in Jerusalem.
Roberto Sonabend's idea was to involve the entire Jewish community of Mexico City – quite an ambitious task. To accomplish that, he planned some 12 events, most of them with one IDI visitor addressing a small group: meeting with the conservative Rabbis; Rabbi Benny Lau, a friend and supporter of IDI's Constitution by Consensus, spoke with all of the Orthodox Rabbis in the community; I spoke with teachers, intellectuals and writers; and more. Then there was an event for the professors and students of the Faculty of Law at the University of Mexico (UNAM) – one of the largest universities in the world (400 thousand students!) – in which we spoke not only about the constitution, but on Israeli affairs in General.
At the heart of the trip were three major events: the first, for the Presidents of the Jewish Organizations; the second, for leaders and pace-setters of the Jewish community; and the third, for the public. There was a full house on every occasion, with some people so intrigued that they came to all three – a testimony to the efficient way Roberto and his team had spread the word.
The topics of the three major events varied - Shabbat, the Israeli Arabs, the Law of Return – but the umbrella was one: How Do We Maintain a Jewish and Democratic State? The pattern in each event, however, was the same: greetings from Roberto Sonabend and Dr. Arye Carmon, Founder and President of IDI, and then Bernie Marcus, International Chairman of IDI and IDI's generous funder, gave a passionate speech in which he told the audiences what a great job IDI was doing for Israel and why IDI was so dear to his heart.
Then I showed some slides from IDI's recent Index of Israeli Democracy, reflecting the decline of trust in the democratic institutions in Israel and of people caring to go to the ballots. This created the sense of urgency for IDI's constitutional initiative. Then Professor Kremnitzer, a Senior Fellow at IDI and former Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University, presented the liberal, non-Orthodox point of view, and Rabbi Lau responded with the Orthodox one.
At this point, the rift seemed rather unbridgeable. At the dinner at the Hacienda, for example, Rabbi Lau gave a passionate pitch about the holiness of Shabbat. "What is the meaning of a Jewish state without keeping the Shabbat?" he pleaded, and many in the audience nodded. Then Professor Kremnitzer took to the podium and with the same conviction argued that free people were allowed to decide what they wanted to do on their day of rest, and lo and behold, the same people nodded again. An impasse, then? A zero-sum game? Either/or?
This is when Dr. Arye Carmon stepped in. In an eloquent way he described the arduous path IDI has taken to bring Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews in Israel to agree on a formula which both communities could live with: how to close down commerce on Shabbat but allow cafes and cinemas to remain open; how to initiate civic compact, which will legalize the marital status of those who don't wish to or can't marry in the rabbinical way; how to maintain the status quo in religious affairs but open new opportunities by raising equality to a constitutional level, and more.
This is the quintessence of IDI's Constitution by Consensus: compromise. When do you have a good compromise? When both parties don't get everything that they want, but they get what matters to them most. And there has to be fair symmetry, so that both parties walk away equally dissatisfied.
From the vibrant Q&A sessions that followed the presentations, it seemed that we had brought the message home. Many voiced their criticism to this compromise, and again, it only showed us that if you're attacked with the same ferocity from both sides, you're obviously in the right direction.
Personally, the Mexico City experience left me deeply moved. In the public meeting I told the story about a Jew who wasn't allowed into a synagogue, being told that "he is not Jewish enough." The poor Jew walks away in dismay, when he suddenly hears a voice from heaven: "Son, don't take it so hard; I myself have been trying for years to get in, and they wouldn't let me."
A young boy came to me afterwards and told me that this is exactly how he felt. It made me sad: here is a vibrant and warm Jewish community, which is so devoted to Israel, and which is still polarized in such way. It dawned on me how little I knew about this community, how little we Israelis know in general about the lives of our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. Yet, at the same time, it seemed to me that the conciliatory and optimistic message we brought from Israel resonated well in this community. I believe that we demonstrated that if Jews are willing to compromise in order to remain one people, original solutions can be reached.
This dialogue must go on.