The Movement for Reform Judaism

Wherever Ron Prosor, Israel’s new Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, goes, he takes his Jewish values with him. Top of these values is one very close to our hearts as Reform Jews: “Tikun Olam” – Repairing the World.

Career diplomat Mr Prosor is no stranger to London – he served here more than a decade ago as press attaché. He told Gesher Chai: “In my previous role [as Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general], I sent Israeli doctors to operate on people in the former Soviet republics, in Asia, in Africa, in the remotest places in the world, to do eye surgery, or to rectify cleft palates, or whatever. I know it sounds a bit of a cliché, but they and we are doing it for the benefit of humanity. This is ’Tikun Olam.’

“From my point of view, ‘Tikun Olam’ is Jewish Values. I’ve seen it work and it’s amazing. You see it in Ethiopia or in Arusha, Tanzania, or in Kenya, where we have people working to help people with irrigation and dairy farms. We are different from other countries which send help. Our people go and work in the fields or the barns or the cow sheds. They are not worried about getting their hands dirty. They don’t sit in the cities, in air-conditioned offices, dispensing advice from afar. We don’t do it from the top down. We do it at eye level.”

Turning to Israeli society and its many problems, Mr Prosor is a firm believer in granting “equal opportunities to all.”

As director-general of the ministry, he said: “I made it a point to have an Ethiopian Jew on the ministry’s prestigious cadet course. I didn’t want all of the cadets to come just from the elite, the Oxbridge, of Israeli society. Today, that cadet is now a diplomat at our embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. We have also had an Arab Muslim, the daughter of one of our Supreme Court Justices, on the course.”

This caused a knock-on effect, he noted. “In a sense, we are creating a feeling of togetherness in our society by allowing equal opportunities. Already, I have had people coming up to me from within the Ethiopian and Arab communities asking me how they can follow in the cadets’ footsteps. They are like the torch lighting the way for others.”

Mr Prosor is launching a massive new strategy in Britain to make Israel’s case more actively in the media and outside London.

Earlier this month, the whole embassy travelled up to Manchester to meet local dignitaries and members of the various faith communities. Mr Prosor also met Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and his City counterpart, Sven Goran Eriksson – separately, of course – “but I hope to bring peace one day!”

He said: “We have to reach out and take our case to places where we have not been for years. It is a tough job, but that’s what we are paid to do.”

He has already made a “challenging” appearance at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and was due this month to enter the lions’ den at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas).

Mr Prosor is also reaching out to diplomats from the Arab world. Having already met the Jordanian and Egyptian ambassadors, he intends to talk to his counterparts from Morocco, Tunisia and other Arab states.

Mr Prosor said that Israel had to make its case as “a democracy under fire. We don’t always have the best answers. [But] there is a lot that we can be very proud of, as debates in Israeli society show — and this has not been conveyed enough to the British public. I intend to have a much higher media profile and I feel that we should try to present our cause to everyone. The best thing we can do is to conduct a dialogue.”

On the peace process, Mr Prosor said that in 2008, the Middle East is “at a crossroads: it is either [Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud] Abbas or Hamas. We have to strengthen the moderates, those who are willing to compromise in order not to give the extremists the upper hand.” 

 For the Israeli Embassy, in London, click here

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