But the challenge of managing this transition at such a behemoth of an organisation, with its thousands of employees across the world, was not for Mr Bielsky. He soon returned to his much easier old job as mayor of Raanana.
For the last nine years in which Nathan Sharansky has been at the helm of the Jewish Agency, the venerable organisation has largely succeeded in making that transition.
But while the it has downsized, painfully, and directed much of its resources to a smaller number of educational programmes, some of which are quite effective, its purpose of existing remains unclear.
It’s easy to blame Mr Sharansky — a brilliant man with an exceptional life-story — for failing to articulate a new mission.
But he is the first to admit being a poor politician lacking in charisma.
He makes up for that in abundance with intelligence, but for the agency to truly discover a role on the Jewish stage, it needs a revolutionary, and none of the men who occupied the role of chairman since David Ben Gurion have been that.
As of Wednesday, the Jewish Agency has a new chairman.
Isaac “Bougie” Herzog is a consummate politician. He is a scion of chief rabbis and son of Chaim Herzog, who served as chief of military intelligence, military governor of the West Bank, ambassador to the United Nations, Knesset member and ultimately President of Israel, all while building one of the most lucrative and powerful law firms in the country.
Herzog Junior breathed Israeli and Jewish politics practically from birth.
His soft-spoken exterior hides both a quick brain and, when necessary, a silent killer instinct. And though he seldom is given credit for it, he got closer to beating Benjamin Netanyahu than anyone else in the past decade.
But can this child of the establishment become a revolutionary at 58?
He enters the job at a time when relations between the Netanyahu government and the diaspora — particularly the largest Jewish community in liberal-minded American Jewry — is at rock bottom.
Mr Herzog already began on the wrong foot when in the first interview he gave after his selection he called intermarriage “a plague,” angering many American Jews who have already accepted that intermarriage is a fact of life that has to dealt with, not extirpated.
But the circumstances of his appointment still afford him a chance if not to foment revolution, at least to build some bridges. The board of governors appointed him despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s express wishes.
He is the first member of the opposition to Israel’s prime minister to take the role and that will allow him a degree of independence.
Solving the tensions and disagreements between Israel and the diaspora is an impossible task for one person.
Many of the issues simply cannot be resolved and we all will have to learn to live with them. At the very least, this can be the start of a a new, more honest period of dialogue.
If Mr Herzog chooses to put aside party politics — including, most importantly, his own barely-concealed ambition to run for president in three years when Reuven Rivlin’s term ends — and embark on a series of listening tours to America, as well as other less glamorous diaspora communities, he will find partners.
If he simultaneously utilises his knowledge of the Israeli media to serve as a spokesperson for world Jewry’s concern in Israel, he has a chance at finding a role for himself and the organisation he now leads.
