The Results Are in for the Most Important Election That You Haven’t Heard About….
by Dan Pava
In March, I authored an article that appeared in the New Mexico Jewish Journal about the World Zionist Organization elections, explaining how this would affect Israel and the Jewish world. Votes for the US have been tabulated after polling ended on May 4th. The results show that an unprecedented number of American Jews voted in the election, and reflects the current polarization of views about Israel among denominations. The election also resulted in an investigation into some fraudulent voting.
To recap, once every five years, Jews all over the world have the right and civic duty to cast votes and make our voices heard in Israel through the World Zionist Congress (WZC) elections. The WZC is essentially the parliament of the Jewish People. Representatives are sent to the Congress in proportion to votes that were cast for the 21 different slates. They will help set policies and direct the allocation of a $1 billion+ annual budget, which affects Jews around the world and which will convene in Jerusalem in October 2025. The representatives who are elected — with one-third of them coming from the United States — will make key decisions on allocating over $1 billion annually to various programs in Israel and the Diaspora. Some of these include educating and of promoting Jewish Zionist education in the Diaspora, promotion of aliya (immigration to Israel), combating antisemitism, cultivating values of social activism and mutual responsibility, youth leadership, and promoting Jewish-Israeli education, fostering liberal democratic values, and promoting Jewish and Israeli culture.
In early June, the American Zionist Movement AZM, the US federation of the World Zionist Organization, announced preliminary results. According to their press release, ‘An all-time record 230,257 votes were recorded in the election for United States delegates to the 39th World Zionist Congress,” and this “marked an over 86% increase from the 123,575 votes in the most recent U.S. election in 2020. In this year’s election, 224,237 valid votes were cast online, and 6,020 valid votes were mailed via paper ballots.” More about those invalid votes follows.
Herbert Block, Executive Director of AZM stated that “Thanks to this historic participation in the election, U.S. Jewry is poised to make an indelible mark when the World Zionist Congress gathers in October.”
The mark may be indelible but seems to indicate that the delegates will bring differing Zionist views to the Congress. So…nu…what else is new?
According the same press release, there was a, “thorough investigation of some serious voting irregularities identified during this year’s election, which affected a small subset of the overall votes cast… Five slates would have benefited from an orchestrated scheme of problematic online registrations and votes involving prepaid credit cards and/or anonymized email addresses. A sixth slate received votes resulting from invalid paper registrations and ballots cast on its behalf…As a result of the investigation thus far, 18,948 invalid votes were canceled, from these two categories, and have not been included in the official total of 230,257 votes.”
The Association of Reform Zionists of America, the Israel arm of the Reform Movement, announced in a June 5th press release: ““This is more than just a win for our slate — it is a resounding mandate for the values we champion,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism. “In a moment of global uncertainty and rising antisemitism, our community stepped forward with clarity and courage to say: we will lead, we will protect democracy, and we will build a more just and inclusive future for Jews everywhere.””
Jeffrey Salkin on June 9th, writing in the Religion News Service “Liberal Jews are reclaiming their Zionism” that, “ The big news is that the 2025 WZC election shows that, while some early results are still being challenged, the Reform movement received the largest number of votes — 47,887 out of the 230,257 ballots cast, or roughly 20% of the vote.” He added, “While it is hard to discern what the impact of the Reform movement’s success will be, ideally it would mean increased funding for Reform programs and education. But at the very least, it sends a message that Reform Judaism is part of the Zionist conversation, and it cannot be ignored. It is also an act of resistance in the face of the xenophobic, violent Zionism of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. It is also a win for the pulpit,” wrote Salkin,
He goes on to note, “As well as Reform Judaism did in the election, Orthodox Judaism did even better…According to eJewishPhilanthropy: “Overall, Orthodox Jewry is the biggest winner of this election, with slates affiliated with the denomination garnering more than 40% of the vote — roughly four times higher than Orthodox Jews’ share of the American Jewish population.””
I recommend reading Salkin’s entire short essay as he makes some promising assertions about how this split could play out during the next World Jewish Congress. It should be noted, by my calculations, that other progressively oriented slates garnered about 60,000 votes, which added to the URJ slate would mean around 108,000 votes, or around 47%. Tabulation of the results can be found here.
Yeshiva World News on June 5th also noted the combined numbers of the Orthodox turnout in the election, stating, “At the forefront of this historic surge was Eretz HaKodesh, which earned 29,159 votes, coming in third overall and solidifying its position as the dominant Orthodox voice…Eretz HaKodesh joins forces with other Orthodox-aligned slates—Am Yisrael Chai, ZOA, Aish, Vision, Beyachad, Israel365, Achdut Israel, Orthodox Israel Coalition/Mizrachi, and Shas, – bringing the total Orthodox vote well beyond a simple majority, for the first time establishing a religious majority within the American delegation to the WZO.”
As the American Zionist Movement (AZM) website, last updated June 5th, notes, "The 39th World Zionist Congress will convene in Jerusalem from October 28 to 30, 2025. With the U.S. Jewish community turning out a record number of voters in this year’s election, the overall American Jewish delegation to the Zionist Congress is positioned to have a greater backing and prominence than ever in advancing a multitude of high-priority Jewish and Zionist causes.”
There are other elections happening in Jewish communities such as Canada, the UK (where early improprieties there caused a delay in holding their election), and Australia (ending July 27th), and those results may clarify whether there is more support for the Orthodox or more liberally minded slates.
These slates will need to negotiate representation and form coalitions to prevail in policy and budgetary decisions. The fact that voter turnout in the 2025 elections far exceeded that of previous elections, and that these votes are split between traditionalists and modernists would indicate renewed and intense interests in what is at stake for the Zionist enterprise during the rest of the 2020s and beyond.
Dan Pava is a board member at Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe. He is also vice chair of Nature Israel USA. He decided to help get out the vote for the URJ because he believes Israel is at a critical juncture now.
Additional information:
World Zionist Congress Elections: https://azm.org/elections/
The Times of Israel reported on June 29th, “Shas, 3 other slates punished for voter fraud at US vote for World Zionist Congress.” As a result, the report adds, “final outcomes may not be clear for months.”
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