By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Beth Abraham Synagogue, Temple Beth Or, and Temple Israel will host Women of the Wall Vice Chairwoman Tammy Gottlieb for a speech to encourage local Conservative and Reform Jews to vote in the U.S. election for seats in the 39th World Zionist Congress.

She’ll present the talk, Voices of Strength: An Evening of Unity and Action, after a kosher Israeli dinner at 6 p.m, Tuesday, April 22 at Beth Abraham. The Dayton Jewish Chorale will also perform as part of the program.

Gottlieb, who lives in Jerusalem, is also a World Zionist Organization executive board member representing the Conservative movement’s Mercaz USA.

Dayton is one of 10 stops on her U.S. speaking tour after Passover on behalf of Mercaz.

“The important thing is to get people to vote, because I think the Jewish people don’t know enough about these elections,” she tells The Observer via Zoom.

“And we are good friends with the Reform movement. We work with them a lot because our ideologies are similar.”

Jews in the United States, Gottlieb explains, receive about a third of all World Zionist Organization votes.

Israel’s third of the vote reflects the makeup of the Knesset. The final third comprises the remainder of the Jewish Diaspora.

“So the Israeli government does have a big impact on how, what the World Zionist Congress will look like, but it’s not the only impact,” she says. “And the Reform and the Conservative movements — that are the majority of the Jewish people in the United States — are represented in big numbers in the congress.”

Her goal, she says, is to ensure that U.S. Jewish representation stays true to the size of the Conservative and Reform movements here.

According to Pew Research Center’s Jewish Americans in 2020 survey, 9% of U.S. adult Jews identify as Orthodox, 17% as Conservative, 37% as Reform, 4% as another branch of Judaism, and 32% as having no particular branch.

Gottlieb says voting in the Diaspora beyond the United States begins after voting here concludes.

“By the beginning of September, we’ll know what happened. And the Israeli government is mirrored from the government that exists at the beginning of September.”

The congress will convene in Jerusalem in October.

Gottlieb grew up in Rehovot in a Conservative Jewish family, a rarity in Israel.

“The movement is growing now, but no thanks to the Israeli government. I grew up fighting for equal rights for liberal Jews in Israel.

“The World Zionist Congress is an arena that might influence these agendas of maintaining a Jewish people that is liberal and moral and all voices of all Jews, which is something that doesn’t happen enough in the state of Israel. We have this arena that looks at us as one people. It’s the framework that puts all Jewish people together. And there aren’t many places like that, that looks at the Jewish people as one.”

Beth Abraham is located at 305 Sugar Camp Cir., Oakwood. The program, including dinner, is free; reservations are required by April 17 to the synagogue, at contact@bethabrahamdayton.org.

To read the complete April 2025 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.