New president aims to increase connection
Daniel Wyner wants to rebuild the community's post-October 7 connection to Israel, ‘without that trauma’
Daniel (Doody) Wyner has been appointed president of the Zionist Council of NSW (ZCNSW), succeeding Orna Triguboff.
Wyner previously served as the council’s treasurer. He was involved in the Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) as a student, and in a Zionist youth movement growing up.
He told The AJN he was taking on the role with “a sense of excitement”.
“The relationship that each and every single Jew has to Israel is important. And so my role coming in as the president of the Zionist Council is to make sure that we can build on that connection,” he said.
Wyner said the community’s connection to Israel after October 7 reached a level he had never experienced in Australia, but that it had been fuelled by trauma and the desire to bring the hostages home.
“It’s trying to bring back that level of community connection that we had in the height of some of our most traumatic times, but not built off trauma, built off the desire of wanting to just be connected more, wanting to learn more of what was going on in Israel,” he said. “Whether you’re on the left, you’re on the right, in my view, it’s actually irrelevant. I just want us to feel as a community that closer connection to Israel.”
He said the relationship between Israel and the diaspora was shifting. “I don’t know that Israel needs the diaspora as much as the diaspora now needs Israel,” he said. “When you hear the word Zionist, there is a negative connotation to that. So I think it’s incumbent on us to be able to say, I am a Zionist and I can be proud to be a Zionist.”
Wyner said advocacy beyond the Jewish community was being led by the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA), with which the council works closely, while the council’s focus was on the grassroots.
Beyond Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut and the October 7 commemoration, he said the council runs speaker events and education conferences for Jewish school teachers, supports Birthright Israel programs for young adults, and is developing volunteering programs in Israel, from rebuilding in the south to working in soup kitchens in Tel Aviv.
“Ideally the goal is that the community sees that another way of connecting with Israel is not just donating,” he said. “I don’t want to sound like it’s a bad thing to donate and support Israel. I think it’s fundamental. But I also feel like there is more that can be done.”
He pointed to next year’s 60th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem as an opportunity for celebration.
Wyner said he also wanted to address the drop in involvement he experienced himself after youth movement and university, as people start careers and families, working with Jewish schools and the NSW Board of Jewish Education.
“We don’t want to just be running the same type of events over and over again because we think it’s the right idea. We want to make sure that it is actually hitting the mark,” he said.
He paid tribute to his predecessors, including Rodney Naumburger, Orli Zahava and Triguboff, the latter two who led the council through the period after October 7, and said they had left it on a strong footing, both financially and in its impact. He also credited Richard Balkin, under whom the council went through a period of renewal about 15 years ago, when Wyner was first involved.
“I now am a custodian of an organisation that’s built on unbelievably strong foundations, and it’s incumbent on myself and our new team to take this organisation forward from strength to strength,” he said.
Triguboff said she felt it was “the right time for a change in leadership”. She will remain on the board as immediate past president.
comments