Giora Romm- Chairman of Board

If we divide the years since the establishment of the State into different periods, it becomes apparent that we are now in the midst of a period that can best be called “the period of doubts”. Broad swaths of the public are casting about for an updated definition of our national identity, both in the context of the increasing complexity of the present situation in Israel, and in the context of giving thought to “what direction we are going in” while the more heedful among us add: “what can we expect for our children, and our children’s children”.

Historians of Zionist nationalism and sociologists of a society which, for many years, subscribed to the constitutive powers of the “national melting pot” could no doubt give a plausible explanation for the current existential confusion that is reigning. Perhaps it is to be found in the political divisiveness that is so characteristic of Israeli society today. It lies perhaps in the feeling that we have reached too many crossroads at one and the same time. Is this confusion an outcome of the relentless and continuous external pressures which both friends and enemies subject us to? There may well be a host of other reasons which we have not even defined or given a name to.

Metzilah was founded in order to give in-depth consideration to the key question of what major issues need to be examined, and to look at the nature of the bonds that keep us together as a society. Metzilah wants to dust off the moral compass that has given us our national direction up to now and to consider how to recalibrate it. This is a heavy responsibility which we are taking upon ourselves, with all due modesty, to bring together wise and decent people, to connect them to the various activities that Metzilah hopes will resolve the identity crisis and, thereby, disperse the fog that is obscuring our path.