‘We must make Zionism great again’

Once upon a time, some boys in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood used to beat up a kid named Mark Levenson because of the yarmulke on his head.

Today, at 68, Mr. Levenson of West Orange proudly wears his yarmulke as the newly elected president of the American Zionist Movement.

Perhaps emboldened by his childhood battles, and certainly inspired by his childhood home, Mr. Levenson brings a distinguished history of leadership to AZM’s coalition of 51 national Jewish Zionist organizations; the AZM, in turn, is affiliated with the World Zionist Organization.

“AZM has never been more energized, and the organizations that sit under AZM’s umbrella have never been more broad and diverse,” Mr. Levenson said. “This big tent of Zionists, and the healthy discourse around all issues pertaining to Zionism, is crucial to the future of our movement and the Jewish people.”

Acknowledging that “there is no easy answer or solution” to the twin evils of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, he said that AZM’s specific role among “many wonderful organizations out there that fight antisemitism” is to “focus on what we are best equipped to manage and handle, and that is the proactive promotion of Zionism and Zionist education across the USA and beyond.”

He and other newly elected officers were installed at AZM’s biennial conference in December in Manhattan. The conference’s guests included such high-ranking Israeli officials as President Isaac Herzog and Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana.

The incoming AZM vice president for interorganizational relations and communications is Nomi Colton-Max of South Orange, co-chair of the New Jewish Narrative. This progressive Zionist movement is described as “deeply rooted in the story of our people and the history of our struggle for peace and justice.”

Ms. Colton-Max said that differences in outlook between her progressive Hatikvah slate and Mr. Levenson’s traditional Mizrachi slate, which includes delegates from the Religious Zionists of America and AMIT, illustrate the value of a cooperative body such as AZM.

“Mark and I live 10 minutes apart, and we are friends although we don’t agree on politics,” she said. “It’s great that the two of us are representing Essex County because it shows exactly how we can work together and talk together and do what we need to do for the benefit of the Jewish community where we live.”

Both are heavily involved in local communal organizations.

Professionally, Mr. Levenson chairs the real estate department, the real estate transactions practice group, and the Israel business practice group at his law firm, Newark-based Sills Cummis & Gross.

His long list of volunteer roles has included serving as president of the New Jersey State Association of Jewish Federations, the Jewish Federation of Greater Clifton-Passaic, and Congregation Adas Israel of Passaic; co-president of the America-Israel Chamber of Commerce; co-chair of UJA lawyers division in New York; chairman of the YM–YWHA of Greater Clifton-Passaic; and executive vice president of the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston.

A former member of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, for the last 15 years Mr. Levenson has been either chair or co-chair of the New Jersey Israel Commission and holds leadership positions within the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization.

The Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce recognized him for his leadership in advancing New Jersey’s landmark anti-BDS legislation in 2017, and he  received the Anti-Defamation League’s Torch of Liberty Award in 2014.

He and his wife, Eta, were honored by the Jewish Family Service of MetroWest for their efforts to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health challenges. Following their son Eric’s death almost 10 years ago, they founded the Eric Eliezer Levenson Foundation for Hope to bring mental health awareness and programming to schools, communities, and families.

Ms. Colton-Max, a foreign policy analyst specializing in the Arab world and the Persian Gulf, is the U.S. chair of Brit Etz — The World Labor Zionist Alliance. She grew up in the Habonim-Dror youth movement in Canada and has earned degrees from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and McGill University. She has lived, worked, and studied in the Middle East and speaks Hebrew, Arabic, and French.

A past president of Congregation Beth El in South Orange, she has served on the  MetroWest Jewish Community Relations Council. She and her husband, Harold, received the Star of Essex award in 2015 for their service to the Jewish community and contribution to the lives of Essex County residents. Her previous position at AZM was vice president of programming.

Ms. Colton-Max noted that U.S. elections for the World Zionist Congress last spring were marred by allegations of voter fraud and other irregularities.

“We’ve come out of a tough, nasty election and it’s important to continue working across the aisle, as I’ve always done,” Ms. Colton-Max said. “I represent the progressive end of the American Zionist movement and that’s extremely important because often we are not included, or seen as not really interested in Israel, but we are there to help make it better.”

She said that the ideal of the American Jewish community speaking with one voice never truly has been possible “because we are very fragmented and we’ve always had multiple opinions. However, we can find areas we believe in mutually and can work on together. That’s exactly my role as vice president for interorganizational relations and communications. And there is a lot of work to do.”

In his speech at the convention, Mr. Levenson signaled that he’s ready to do that hard work.

Decrying the way Zionism has come to be viewed by many people as an ideology “to be hated, protested, and marched against” instead of being seen as a “positive and aspirational” movement “advocating for the establishment and preservation of a Jewish State in the ancient, indigenous, and ancestral homeland of the Jewish people,” he said that “we have not forcefully enough responded, nor perhaps even properly recognized, the full extent of the problem until October 7th, but it is now our job and obligation to do so.”

Describing his goal over the next four years, “We must make Zionism great again,” he said.

Toward that end, he wants to establish five task forces within AZM: Zionist education and programming; youth and outreach; social media, communications, PR, and rapid response; development; and election review and reform. These task forces would work in preparation for the next World Zionist Congress election, scheduled for 2030.

On the youth front, Mr. Levenson pointed out that according to World Zionist Congress rules, 25 percent of the delegates on every slate must be no older than 35. In addition, 40 percent of the delegates must be female. Mr. Levenson co-chairs the Mizrachi slate with Chana Shields of Teaneck, representing AMIT.

Mr. Levenson was introduced at the convention by his daughter Jessica Mirsky, who lives in Teaneck. Just 30 hours later, Ms. Mirsky gave birth to her fourth baby and first girl; that baby is Mark and Eta Levenson’s seventh grandchild.

“My sister, Hadassa, and I never needed verbal explanations about work ethic,” Ms. Mirsky said. “We watched it every day.

“As a teenager, I remember hearing our father spend countless hours on calls about the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. I wondered what he thought he could accomplish. He was a lawyer from New Jersey, not a politician. But all that effort mattered. He played a significant role in the enactment of New Jersey’s landmark anti-BDS legislation.

“Over the past 20 years, he has also worked tirelessly to strengthen the New Jersey-Israel trade relationship. His efforts helped increase the value of trade between the two to an average of nearly $1.8 billion annually in recent years. He was also incredibly proud of his work which, after almost 10 years, led to the signing in Tel Aviv of the Rutgers University-Tel Aviv University Memorandum of Understanding in 2021.”

Ms. Mirsky said that despite her father’s packed schedule, “he still finds time to visit my home once a week to put my kids to bed, goes to Philadelphia monthly to see my sister’s kids, and Facetimes with all his grandchildren multiple times a week. He lives the idea that you make time for what matters.”

This approach was modeled for him by his parents, Marvin and Hawley. Marvin Levenson, described by his son as “a mensch beyond belief who spent more time on nonprofit and Jewish organizations than he spent on his business,” was a major builder of Brighton’s Orthodox shul, Congregation Kadimah-Toras Moshe. Marvin Levenson was its president; Hawley Levenson presided over the sisterhood.

“My father was always up in the middle of night dreaming up new ideas,” Mr. Levenson said. “He told me — and I learned from this — ‘Whatever I do as a volunteer for the community, I’ll get back more than I give.’”

The Levensons lived in one half of a modest two-family house in Brighton. “When my siblings and I grew up and moved out, around 1978, the Iranian revolution was happening,” Mr. Levenson said. “My parents had two Iranian Jewish boys living with them in this small house for almost a year. When the boys finally were able to leave, they wanted to give my parents two Persian rugs they had taken with them. My mother refused. She said they should sell them and use the money toward their own needs.”

Mr. Levenson also was inculcated with a strong American patriotism. Both sides of his family came over from Eastern Europe in 1890s. “On my father’s side, my grandmother was born in Boston to a large family, the first child born in the U.S.,” he said. “The next one born in the U.S. was her brother Benjamin, around 1900. He served in World War I and was killed in 1918 near the German-Franco border. There’s a street corner named after him in Boston, and we rededicated that square in 2018.” He and Eta visited his great-uncle’s grave in an American military cemetery in northeast France in 1983.

Mr. Levenson’s deep dive into Jewish communal work began during his freshman year at Brandeis, when he interned at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston.

“Throughout my 40-plus-year career, I have kept Shabbat and have spent significant parts of every week devoted to Jewish nonprofits and Israel advocacy,” he said. “I sat on low-ranking committees at first, and one thing led to another.”

He and Eta moved to Clifton-Passaic in 1988 and to West Orange in 2004. They also own an apartment in Israel. Mr. Levenson has visited Israel more than 140 times since his first trip, which he made after graduating from NYU Law School and then taking the bar exam. His sister, Susan Wolf, has lived in Israel for more than 40 years. Though he considered aliyah at one time, Mr. Levenson said, he felt it was God’s will that steered him toward Jewish leadership in America.

AZM’s stated mission is to promote and defend Zionism in the United States, to deepen and expand the active relationship of the American Jewish community to Zionism in a contemporary context, to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among Zionist organizations through and with the AZM, and to be the central hub for Zionist resources in America.

Rabbi Doron Perez, newly elected president of the World Zionist Organization, echoed Mr. Levenson’s call to “make Zionism great again” in his keynote address at the December conference.

“I believe the number one, number two, and number three role that we have today is to advocate and educate about what Zionism means — the absolute integral role that Jewish statehood in our ancestral homeland plays, both in Jewish destiny and in human destiny,” Rabbi Perez said. “The inextricable link there is between the land of Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people.”

Today’s challenges, he added, should be seen as “a tremendous opportunity — and specifically for the AZM in America, and the World Zionist Organization all around the world — to stand up for our finest hour.”

Reflecting on AZM’s diversity, he said that “if we are able to respond with deep internal unity, maybe we won’t need external enemies to remind us that we need to come together.”