By Donald H. Harrison

For the second time in a row since 1997, the Religious Zionist Movement increased its representation in the postal- and email-election to fill 145 positions on the American delegation to the World Zionist Organization Congress, while the political arms of the Reform Movement and Conservative Movement respectively lost ground or stayed approximately the same.

In the contest for the U.S. delegate positions to the 500-delegate World Zionist Organization Congress,  U.S. Religious Zionists representing the Orthodox movement polled enough votes to win 35 delegates.  For the first time, the Religious Zionists received more votes than Mercaz, the arm of the Conservative movement, which garnered 32 delegates.  ARZA, which won the largest allotment of delegates with 55, saw its front-runner position continue to erode from a high of 70 delegates in 1997.

The gains of the Religious Zionists can be seen from this chart showing vote totals over the last three elections with delegate counts in parentheses  Votes not accounted for in the chart were divided among nine smaller Zionist parties.

Year      Vote Total    Deleg.      ARZA  Deleg.      Relig Zionists Deleg      Mercaz  Deleg.
2006       75,686          (145)         28,851 (55)           18,163            (35)          16,793  (32)
2002       88,753          (145)         37,492 (61)           17,952            (29)          19,787  (32)
1997     107,832          (145)         51,469 (70)           11,664            (16)          28,001  (38)

One of the small parties, the Green Zionist movement, won 990 votes and 2 delegates in the current election, and is aligned with Mercaz.  That brought the Conservative-Green delegation to 34, one less than that of the Religious Zionists.

Compared to the 145 full voting delegates of the United States, 190 are elected from Israel and 165 are elected by Jewish communities of all other participating countries in the world.  The 35th Congress will vote on the budget of the World Zionist Organization, including its appropriations to help religious movements within Israel.

Besides the elected delegates with full voting rights, there are appointed delegates and two alternates per delegate, under the rules of the World Zionist Organization Congress.  There also are provisions for observers at the Congress.  Additionally, there is a requirement that one fourth of the delegates be students.

The latter rule enabled Adam M. Rosenthal, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, to become a delegate even though he was 40th on the Mercaz list, and Mercaz won only 32 full-voting delegates.  When two students ahead of him on the list indicated they could not attend the Congress, Rosenthal was moved accordingly. He is the son of Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal of Tifereth Israel Synagogue of San Diego, California.