Budapest and the unfinished work of Zionism

here was something arresting about gathering in Budapest. Less than a kilometre from where Theodor Herzl was born, leaders from 24 Zionist federations met to consider a question that feels both urgent and perennial: how to sustain Jewish life in a world that is, once again, testing its resilience.

The setting made abstraction difficult. Hungary was once home to one of Europe’s great Jewish communities. Then, in the spring and summer of 1944, over just eight weeks, approximately 440,000 Jews were deported, most to Auschwitz-Birkenau, devastating a civilisation that had flourished for centuries. Many of their descendants would go on to shape Jewish communities far from Europe, including in Australia.

Yet Budapest resists being understood solely through the lens of loss.

Jewish life remains visible, even unselfconscious. Hebrew appears in shopfronts. Israeli voices carry through the streets. Synagogues and schools continue their work. It is a reminder that history, however devastating, does not always have the final word.

Against this backdrop, the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) convened its first global leadership conference of Zionist federations.

Over three days, 60 leaders from Europe, North America, South Africa, India and Australia discussed questions that would have been familiar to almost every previous generation of Jewish communal leadership: how to cultivate identity, how to engage younger Jews, how to respond to antisemitism, and how to sustain meaningful relationships with Israel while nurturing Jewish life wherever Jews live.

Delegates from Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, South Africa, Canada and the United States described variations of a common reality: communities navigating uncertainty while searching for ways to flourish.

Some of the most interesting conversations came from the smaller communities. Leaders from Greece, Bulgaria and Romania discussed their renewal, speaking of youth camps as incubators of identity, integrating newly arrived Israelis into communal life, and making Israel experiences accessible to as many families as possible.

Equally encouraging was the emergence of younger leaders assuming responsibility. Leaders from Switzerland, Hungary and Russia in their 20s and 30s were collaborative, pragmatic and optimistic about the future.

The conference also revealed something about the WZO that is often overlooked. Too frequently, the WZO is reduced to the mechanics of its elections. In Budapest it served a different purpose: convening serious engagement across ideological, religious and geographic divides.

Political affiliation receded into the background. Orthodox and Reform, left and right, large communities and small ones focused instead on the practical work of sustaining Jewish life.

Because beneath the practical discussions sat a larger question: whether Zionism, having achieved statehood, has exhausted its purpose. Budapest suggested otherwise.

There is an ongoing assault on Zionism and, with it, a temptation to retreat from the language itself. But retreat concedes definition to others. The alternative is more demanding: to articulate, to inhabit and to insist upon its meaning.

Long before Herzl, Jews prayed to return to Zion and to be gathered from the four corners of the earth. Herzl did not invent this longing; he translated it into political form. The establishment of Israel was not the conclusion of that story. It was its activation.

If Zionism in the 19th century was largely about sovereignty, Zionism in the 21st century is about the relationship between Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael – between the Jewish people and the Jewish homeland. It is visible in education, aliyah and shlichut, in philanthropy and advocacy, and in the simple understanding that the fate of Jews in Sydney, Johannesburg, Athens, Kyiv and Jerusalem remains intertwined.

There is no real equivalent anywhere in the world to this relationship between a people and a homeland. That is why Zionism remains the living, breathing expression of an ancient Jewish idea woven through our prayers, our texts and our collective memory. It should make us proud.

As the conference concluded, the setting returned to mind. A city where Herzl first encountered the world; where Jewish life was nearly extinguished; and where Jewish life now persists.

Surrounded by leaders from every inhabited continent engaged in the work of sustaining a people, Herzl’s vision did not feel like an artefact of history. It felt alive; and yet unfinished.

Alon Cassuto is the CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia.