Together We Will Win: 39th World Zionist Congress
“B’yachad ninatze’ach.” Together we will win: Reflections from the 39th World Zionist Congress
The 39th World Zionist Congress convened today in Jerusalem, bringing together hundreds of delegates from across the globe to shape the future direction of the Zionist movement and the international Jewish people at Large. The Congress, which meets every five years, serves as the “parliament of the Jewish people,” where representatives debate policy, elect leadership, and chart the course for major Jewish organizations worldwide.
But before any resolutions were drafted or speeches delivered, something extraordinary happened in the registration line.
We stood there, hundreds of us, inching forward at a glacial pace. I was imagining the person in the front of the line was like the sloth in the animated film Zootopia! It should have been frustrating. We should have been checking our watches, sighing impatiently, wondering why we weren’t moving faster. Instead, something magical unfolded.
People began talking to strangers. A conversation here, a laugh there. Soon the entire line hummed with animated discussion. Orthodox Jews spoke with secular Israelis. American Reform delegates chatted with what they call ultra orthodox or haredi. Every conceivable expression of Jewish identity seemed represented in that line, and rather than standing in isolated impatience, we were connecting, genuinely connecting, across all our differences.
In that moment, I felt hope. A sense of family. The living reality of am Yisrael. The people of Israel, bound together by something deeper than our disagreements.
At lunch, I shared this observation with a more experienced delegate. She smiled knowingly. “I can tell this is your first Congress,” she said. “Just wait until tomorrow when all the fighting starts.”
She’s right, of course. Tomorrow, the difficult work begins – debating contentious issues, grappling with questions that have no easy answers. There will be passionate disagreements. There always are. The Jewish people have never been monolithic, and a Congress designed to represent our diversity will inevitably surface our divisions.
But disagreement doesn’t have to mean destruction. Debate doesn’t require demonization.
This Congress opens at the end of 2 years marked by profound pain and tears. Throughout the recent war, a battle cry echoed through Jewish communities worldwide: *B’yachad ninatze’ach*—together we will win. That unity, forged in crisis, carried us through the darkest hours.
Now comes the harder test: maintaining that unity when the immediate threat recedes and our internal differences resurface.
Make no mistake, the fighting may be paused, but this is far from over. The challenges facing the Jewish people remain immense. We cannot afford to fracture now. We need each other. We need to remember that line at registration, where our differences enriched rather than divided us, where curiosity replaced contempt, where we saw each other as family. Where we learned that Labels are for cans, not people. No one cared whether you were Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or secular. We were all simply Jews, standing together and it was beautiful.
We must learn to disagree respectfully. We must love one another despite, and perhaps because of our differences. The Congress hall may echo with heated debate in the coming days, but let us never forget what happened in that registration line: proof that when we choose connection over conflict, when we lead with curiosity rather than judgment, we discover that our diversity is not our weakness.
In fact it is our greatest unstoppable strength.
For two years, we have been saying ’B’yachad ninatze’ach.Together we will win.
Today we finally have all the living hostages home, but we have not yet won. The harder work of building a future worthy of all we’ve sacrificed to reach this moment is laying before us. We need to decide how we will win. In truth, we’ve had the answer all along. B’yachad ninatze’ach. Together we will win.
