“I Am Israel” The Shifting Paradigm of Shlihim: Shelley Kedar

“When times change, actions change. When actions change, words change.” This quote from S. Y. Agnon opens Shelley Kedar’s dissertation, which explores the implicit themes and educational beliefs of Jewish Agency shlihim, Israeli emissaries who dedicate a period of time to working with Jewish communities outside of Israel in order to create connections among Jewish people to each other and to Israel.

As a professional with a long history of roles in the Israel education field, Kedar entered the EdD program at the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in order to enhance her work with worldwide Israel education. “While as a practitioner I had and have a lot of practice-based knowledge, I thought that devoting time to academic research would add a deeper dimension to my practice,” she said. “I found the idea of being in a cohort of high-level professionals very appealing, and the faculty at the William Davidson School have greatly enriched my experience.”

“My research aims to understand the dynamic constructs that underlie shlihim’s Israel education work,” Kedar said. “Agnon’s insight points directly to how I approach studying shlihim—what they say, what they do, how they relate, and how that changes in relation to the times. All this contributes to what they bring to and leave with the Jewish communities they serve.”

“Shlihim can nearly be understood as a brand today,” said Kedar, reaching almost every institution in Jewish life. “When war broke out in early October, communities around the world felt an instant personal connection and worried for the welfare of ‘their’ shlihim.” The idea of a “mishlahat,” or delegation is uniquely Israeli, and the paradigm builds from the idea of “hevre” that for many Israelis is established during their army service. The closest comparison Kedar could study as part of her literature review was research on other ex-pat communities, like Americans teaching English in China.

Kedar’s methodology is built from a model of Practice Architecture, which examines the “sayings, doings, and relatings” that contribute to the process of shaping a designated practice. “The shlihim who work in youth movements, schools, Hillels, and federations are usually not formally trained educators, yet their profound impact is transmitted through all that they say, the programs they lead, and, perhaps most of all, through the relationships they develop,” said Kedar.

Kedar has studied workplans, job descriptions, and training materials, and she has conducted in-depth interviews with shlihim. “Even something as seemingly straightforward as the way shlihim are introduced influences the relationships members of their host community have with Israel,” said Kedar. “One shaliah shared with me that the experience of being hosted by a New Jersey family created a personal tie with her family back home as well as one between the community in the United States and the shaliah’s hometown in Israel.” These personal ties made the anguish of the October Hamas attack and subsequent war all that more wrenching.

Currently director of the Connecting the Jewish People Unit at the Jewish Agency for Israel, Kedar has a career that is all about connecting Jewish people to each other and to Israel, a task that the current war has made more critical. She founded the Adelson Shlichut Institute at the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is responsible for developing and implementing content and training for all shlihim worldwide, and she was Hillel International’s first vice president of Israel education and engagement. She has also served as a shlihah herself twice! In her 20-some years dedicated to this work, she has observed shifting paradigms.

“It used to be that Israel was an icon, the land of milk and honey, and Israel education was events like shakshuka in the sukkah,” Kedar said. “That iconic idea worked for the generations of 1948 or 1967, but today, even with the massive outpouring of support for Israel, we live in a more nuanced world. We count on real, humanizing connections to establish lasting ties.” “The paradigm that will serve Jewish communities and Israel today should be more holistic,” said Kedar, “and that translates directly into the roles of shlihim.”

“Now, each shaliah is seen not as a source of information but as a unique person who conveys in many simultaneous and human ways, ‘I am Israel.’” What Kedar calls a “we-dentity” replaces the one-sided model of “identity.” “Today’s world demands that we allow all voices to be heard,” she said.

Israel education has a lot to learn from the ideas Parker Palmer developed about Brave Spaces and the push for institutional DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), said Kedar.

“If we were brave about Israel education, how would we see things differently?” Kedar asked. The Brave Space concept acknowledges the challenges that both students and faculty have when they are discussing difficult and/or sensitive topics such as race, power, privilege. “Talking about Israel today needs to start from the personal, not the political.”

“If you ask today’s shlihim, most of whom have just finished their IDF service or are on a service year fresh out of high school, about their motivation, it is not merely altruistic or even educational. They are curious about Jewish life around the world, and they are seeking their own meaning from the experience. To many, shlihut is an adventure or a taste of a different way of life,” said Kedar.

What’s clear, according to Kedar, is that the experience of shilhut is inherently reciprocal. “For many years we saw shlihim as bringing something to others, whether that was a taste of Israel or a particular ideology. Now, for a variety of reasons, we know that shlihim themselves are changed by the experience,” she said.

Former shlihim are the leading voice for Jewish peoplehood and world Jewry in Israel, said Kedar. “More than 60 percent of people leading Jewish peoplehood organizations in Israel are previous shlihim, as are more than half of all community center directors across Israel.”

Ultimately, the fact that thousands of Israelis leave home each year for a determined length of time (not as expats who go abroad indefinitely) and return with authentic “peoplehood” relationships makes a significant impact on Israeli society. Kedar recalled that in 2017, when tensions rose surrounding egalitarian prayer at the Kotel, shilhim wrote an open letter to the Israeli public raising awareness and conveying the perspective of those outside Israel. “The unique relationship shared by shlihim and those in North America is powerful and mutual,” said Kedar.