Members of the Jewish Home-New Mafdal party voted Thursday to begin a recruitment drive prior to the upcoming party primaries. They also decided to vote in new leaders for party institutions, and to increase the number of young people and women in influential posts.
“I would be happy for everyone to join us,” said current party head Science Minister Daniel Hershkowitz.
“I recognize the need to update the face of the party, to refresh its ranks and open to new sectors of society, from a place of genuine unity and mutual respect.”
“This is the first time in the religious Zionist world that a political party has called on the general public to come play a direct role in selecting its representatives in the next Knesset,” MK Uri Orbach told Arutz Sheva’s weekly magazine B’Sheva.
“This step essentially means opening the gates to everyone who identifies with the values of religious Zionism,” he added.
Orbach called for religious Zionist unity. “The Jewish Home and the National Union [Ichud Leumi] must run together in the next elections,” he declared. He expressed hope that the Ichud Leumi would hold primaries simultaneously with the Jewish Home, with positions on a joint list already decided. “That would send a message of unity already,” he explained.
Religious Zionist parties should unite to help the public get the representation it deserves, Orbach said. “This isn’t about power for its own sake, this is about justice. It is only just that organized religious Zionism have influence as the representatives of one-fifth of the Jewish population of the country.”