YITZHAK NAVON CENTER FOR A SHARED SOCIETY

Overview "Our society must be characterized by moral, social and humanitarian values. The vision of an exemplary society is not an aspiration to be relegated to some far-off utopian future, but a necessary condition for our survival today." Yitzhak Navon, Presidential inaugural address before the Knesset The Yitzhak Navon Center for a Shared Society (YNC) is a multi-faceted, experiential complex-in-the making dedicated to fostering social solidarity. Further to a decision of the Government of Israel, it is being established to perpetuate the legacy of the country’s fifth president, who dedicated his life to fashioning Israel as an exemplary society in which all its citizens – Ashkenazim and Sephardim, religious and secular, new immigrants and veterans, Jews and Arabs, Christians and Druze - would feel at home, to which Jews abroad would be drawn, and which people the world over would hold in high esteem. To this end, the YNC will promote familiarity and mutual respect between the diverse populations of Israel, inter alia by preserving and nurturing the culture of Sephardi and Mizrachi Jewry, the wellspring of the president’s values, which counsel the Rambam’s “golden path” of tolerance and moderation that inspired his lifelong devotion to social cohesion. The Center is being built as the gateway to Neot Kedumim, a sprawling 600-acre (2,400 dunam) experiential Biblical nature reserve where the ancient becomes contemporary. Situated halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the park already enthralls 250,000 visitors annually from Israel and around the world. With the opening of the YNC, they will be further enriched by an array of interactive installations utilizing cutting-edge technology and the latest advances in museology that together will highlight the richness of Israel’s diverse society as well as the profundity of the bond between Israel and the Jewish people. We invite you to join us in this historic endeavor to make of Israel all that its visionaries imagined it becoming.

For decades we were engaged in building our state. Now we must concentrate on building our nation. Yitzhak Navon, Presidential inaugural address

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