President Ronald Lauder, distinguished members of the Governing Board,
Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for friendship. Thank you for this vote of confidence. 
This is a defining moment for confidence; both for the Jewish World and the family that is the World Jewish Congress. We are a global Jewish family – bound by a shared history, a shared destiny, a shared mission. Here today, We have members from nearly a hundred communities around the world. Since the dark days of 1936, we have stood shoulder to shoulder and have overcome great adversity together.
And together, united by our deepest commitment to Jewish values and ideals, we have held the world to a higher standard of responsibility and accountability.
This is also a profoundly meaningful moment for me. It represents the culmination of a personal journey. Today marks the beginning of the public expression of a transformative love affair with Judaism, Israel and Jewish affairs; a transformation that began in my late teens – so basically five years ago.
Let me share a little secret with you. When I was a seven year old child, growing up in New York City, my mother and father correctly diagnosed that I was suffering from a serious malady Jewish doctors call yiddishkeit deficiency.
Being concerned and caring parents, they hired a private tutor. The tutor asked me: “Do you know what the Torah is?” I said “No”. Do you know what Shabbat is?” I said “No”.
So the tutor, who was wise, began to open up to me the vast treasure trove of Judaism. She told me about the great Jewish heroes: King, King Solomon, King David, Jeremiah and Isaiah.
At the end of the first lesson, the Tutor became optimistic and gave me a pop quiz. She asked me, “Now can you tell me what a prophet is.” Without a moment’s hesitation I said “of course I can,” “A prophet is when you buy something for five dollars, and you sell it for ten.”
I can tell you now, forty years later, I have come to understand what true profit is.
True profit lies in appreciating the depth and strength of the Jewish people. True profit is to be found in the glory of our past; the miracle of our present; and the promise of our future.
And today, once again, we stand together ready to overcome enormous challenges, in order to secure that future and to fulfill that promise.
Unfortunately today, We face a revival of the traditional hatred of Jews in some parts of the world. At the same time, we are contending with a new and virulent strain of anti-Semitism – an outgrowth of the unholy “red-green alliance” that targets the Jewish State, while also demonizing Jews everywhere, whom they vilify as extensions of the Jewish State.
President Lauder, fellow members of the Governing Board:
Everyone in this room is also witness to the dizzying events unfolding in this part of the world. We watch with a sense of urgency, hope and trepidation, as millions of our Arab neighbors rise up against despotic governments and tyrannical rulers – from Tunisia to Syria, from Yemen to Libya. They demand human rights, political rights, and freedom. The world calls this the Arab Spring.
We don’t know if the Arab Spring will blossom into a warm summer or descend into a cold winter. But what we know for sure is this:
another spectacular revolution for freedom took place more than 3000 years ago. And guess what? We celebrate that revolution every spring, year after year. We might even want to call it the Jewish Spring.
It happened when a reluctant Jewish leader named Moshe demanded freedom for his people from an Egyptian tyrant called Pharaoh.
That was the first time that a people rose up and demanded the right to freedom and liberty under law. That was the defining moment of history when a people demanded to become a free nation, seeking justice and self-determination.
This Jewish experience would become the definitive ideal for freedom and liberty in the world.
That powerful confrontation between an Egyptian despot and a Hebraic Leader --more than 3 millennia ago, gave birth to the entire notion of human rights, civil rights and equal rights which has shaped the free world today.
This Jewish ideal would also serve as the foundation for the French and American revolutions, and the birth of Liberal Democracy.
It was this ideal that inspired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – a great friend of the Jewish People and the Jewish State – when he declared on April 3rd 1968, in the Mason church in Memphis, Tennessee: "I've been to the mountaintop… and I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land."
What Dr. King was doing was embracing the essence of the Jewish Spring: liberty, freedom, human rights, equality under G-D. He echoed Moses, by demanding that these values become a reality for the disenfranchised everywhere.
But let us, the Jewish people, the very people who first drafted the manifesto for universal human rights, who inspired so many democratic revolutions, who were the first to demand collective freedom and self-determination, embraced by billions the world over… as we celebrate the universality of human rights, let us always remember our particular Jewish rights.
Isn’t that an amazing idea? Even Jews have Human Rights!
Why is standing up for Jewish Rights so important? Because as the world increasingly embraces the language and agenda of universal human rights, ironically, the global political assault on our basic human rights, our Jewish rights, is intensifying.
The double irony is, that the Jewish state is the only state in the world whose rights to sovereignty were twice affirmed in the last century, first by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. The League of Nations unanimously recognized our right to, quote: “reconstitute their national home in that country.” In other words, they too formally recognized our natural and historic right to LIBERTY AND NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION in the Land of Israel.
But today, the very notion of Jewish National Self-Determination is under assault, in the name of human rights!
The Palestinian ploy to obtain international endorsement of unilaterally declared statehood, is the latest offensive on the very legitimacy of the right of the Jewish People to national self-determination, in peace and security.
Our Jewish rights are being eroded. AND THE WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS WILL LEAD THE CAMPAIGN TO REGAIN THEM.
Nahum Goldman founded the World Jewis Congress in 1936 because he understood that the world had abandoned the very Jewish rights we are talking about today. And we know how that default on our rights led to unspeakable tragedy.
So Let us stand together today and uphold human rights… civil rights… equal rights… Jewish rights.
The notion of Jewish rights goes beyond the Jewish nation state and extends to Jewish communities around the world. Jews have a right to live in freedom, democracy, security and equality wherever we live. Tragically, the assault against the Jewish state has intensified anti-Semitic behavior throughout the world.
Now in 2011, we are confronting that challenge head on.
We will once again strive to hold the world to a standard of human rights and values that it failed to uphold during the Shoah and beyond. We will remind the world of the values and principles that the World Jewish Congress helped protect throughout its history.
The scourge of anti-Israel sentiment is merely the new, and politically correct form of anti-Semitism. So while we protect national Jewish rights in Israel, we will also defend the rights of all Jews throughout the world to live in freedom, security and equality. Those are our Jewish rights.
The World Jewish Congress has always served as a champion of Jewish rights from Holocaust restitution and the Swiss Banks, to exposing the true identity of Kurt Waldheim, to supporting Soviet dissidents in their struggle for freedom. The power of the World Jewish Congress is in our ability to unite the Jewish world around these values, and to stand firmly, courageously and even defiantly as a free people.
Human rights… civil rights… equal rights… Jewish rights.
Just as we remember the courageous uprising of the Jewish people against tyranny over 3000 years ago, our own Jewish spring, let us here, in Jerusalem – the eternal capital of the Jewish people – once again reaffirm to ourselves, and the world, our commitment to Tikun Olam through the implementation these Jewish ideals.
Let us demand that the world uphold the same rights, ideals and principles that began with the Isralites in Egypt, that were sanctified on Mount Sinai, that brought us here to Jerusalem, and that have shaped the modern world, and must – for the sake of humanity as a whole – continue to shape our world in the 21st Century.
The World Jewish Congress' will carry the torch forward. Human rights… civil rights… equal rights… Jewish rights –that is our eternal Jewish spring. Thank you.
