The Million Dollar Question

The challenge: Imagine you were given a million-dollar budget to solve our image problem. What kind of campaign, program, or effort would you develop? Tell us what message you’d want to convey, the channels you’d use to do it, and who you would target.

Yitzchak Nachshoni

I would start with a campaign against generalizations. At the moment, while the flames of hatred are raging, I would stick to a simple message: “I won’t generalize and you won’t generalize. Let’s relate to each human being, no matter who they are, as an individual.”

In the second stage I’d expand the campaign with a message about accepting and respecting each other’s differences. The idea is to bridge the gaps and foster connection and dialogue.

I believe in getting the message out from the bottom up, through a grassroots endeavor, beginning with an ad blitz – signs, billboards, radio ads, social media — and subsequently through personal meetings, one-on-one or in small groups. There are many excellent kiruv organizations that do this, and I’d harness them all.

I would know that I’d succeeded if I saw that I’d turned back the clock to the time when I could reach out to my secular neighbors and elicit a response. For years, I’ve lived alongside the most left-wing, antireligious members of Israeli society, and we always managed to communicate amicably. But as the pandemic progressed, the media’s incitement campaign reached such lows that I felt unprecedented, blatant animosity from people I knew and respected.