Former Israel Defense Forces general Doron Almog was unanimously elected to lead the Jewish Agency for Israel and pledged to shore up Jewish unity and the centrality of Israel in his inaugural speech.
“We want to reach the heart of every Jew on Earth,” Almog said following the vote in a large assembly hall in Jerusalem’s Orient Hotel.
At the same meeting, Mark Wilf was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency’s board of governors, replacing Michael Siegal.
Almog, 71, a previous head of the IDF’s Southern Command, has dedicated his life after leaving the military to running a widely lauded rehabilitation village in the Negev desert for people with physical and mental disabilities
He is expected to officially enter the position in September. He will take over from Yaakov Hagoel, who has served as interim chairman for the past year.
In his inaugural speech, Almog laid out the key his primary goals: “To reach the heart of every Jew on Earth. To instill pride in our Judaism and the State of Israel, the most important enterprise of the Jewish people since 1948. To instill pride in this one miracle called the State of Israel and its extraordinary achievements in science, technology, culture, agriculture, medicine, society, economy, army, aliyah, and more.”
