As Israeli government reforms to undermine halachah are in full swing, delegates from around the world have come together with the Orthodox Eretz Hakodesh slate in the World Zionist

The skies over the Kosel are still a bright summer blue, but for secular-religious relations in Israel, winter set in months ago.

Since winning power in June, Naftali Bennett’s government has moved quickly on a series of religious reforms that undermine the role of halachah in public life.

Finance minister Avigdor Lieberman has targeted working chareidi mothers with childcare subsidy cuts to strong-arm kollel students into the workforce. Co-prime minister Yair Lapid has vowed to give the Reform movement full access to the Kosel by January — a move that Meirav Michaeli of far-left Meretz characterized as “liberating” the holy site.

All of that is happening because religious political influence is at its lowest ebb in decades. For the first time, no party committed to the defense of Israel’s religious status quo is in government.

Against that gloomy background, a convention thousands of miles away under the thunderous showers of Monsey, NY, provided a path forward.

Hundreds of participants from around the world gathered last Shabbos to celebrate Eretz Hakodesh, a movement that has broken the historic liberal control of some of Israel’s most important institutions by giving representatives of American Orthodoxy a seat at the World Zionist Organization for the first time.

The move to open a religious slate in the WZO — a legacy body that gives Jews overseas a say in how massive funds are spent in Israel — has been a game changer in terms of religious influence. Everything from public shemittah observance, to admitting yeshivah bochurim into the country during Covid and defunding the liberal Jewish movements, have been made possible by the movement’s success.

“There’s only a certain amount you can do from the outside — you need a seat at the table of these institutions,” says Eretz Hakodesh founder Rabbi Pesach Lerner. “The 20,000 votes from the frum community in America that came in a few months’ campaign two years ago gave us 20 delegates to the World Zionist Congress, enough to create a revolution and take control back from the left-wing. Imagine what we could do with 100,000 votes.”

Building that kind of base ahead of the next elections in three years’ time is the next goal for Eretz Hakodesh. It requires a delicate balancing act — one endorsed by Torah leaders such as Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Gershon Edelstein — to operate within institutions that contain Reform representation without conferring recognition on them as movements.

It also requires a big tent approach in evidence at the Shabbos events. “There’s a reason you’re seeing shtreimels, black hats, and kippot serugot here in one hall,” says Rabbi Lerner. “That’s because none of us can do this on our own.”