In a new documentary film about the emotional journeys of American Jewish visitors to Israel, a young woman named Caryn Aviv takes a tour of the west bank security fence.

As the camera pans across a graffito on the wall that reads "From the Warsaw Ghetto to Abu Dis Ghetto," Aviv says she is troubled and perplexed.

TEL AVIV – These days, even a call to an Israeli telephone operator for a listing can prompt despair over the state of Israeli politics.

Asked for the number of the Israel Democracy Institute, an operator asks a reporter, "But where is our democracy?"

It’s a question many Israelis are asking these days.

Shaken by a string of corruption scandals at the highest levels of government and inundated with media talk of the government lacking direction and responsibility, Israelis’ faith in their politicians and their democracy are at record lows, polls show.

A recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that only 60 percent of Israelis say they are interested in politics, down from 73 percent two years ago. While high by American standards, the numbers are remarkably low for Israelis, known for being highly politicized.

JERUSALEM – Comparing the challenge of overcoming his agency’s financial woes with the ancient Israelites’ struggle to enter the Promised Land, the chairman of the Jewish Agency’s budget committee tried to sound an upbeat note.

"We can do it," Shoel Silver told the agency’s board of governors Tuesday.

Nobody said it would be easy. The Jewish Agency is running a deficit this year of roughly $25 million and expects a budget shortfall of $45 million in 2009.

JERUSALEM - Some of the Jewish world’s top minds gathered in Jerusalem conference rooms this week to map coherent strategies for the challenges facing the Jewish people.

From confronting radical Islam to keeping young Jews in the fold, the academics, former diplomats, and communal leaders talked strategy on the eve of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ Facing Tomorrow conference.

The conference and preliminary discussions Tuesday were organized by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank. The event is drawing global leaders such as President Bush.

TEL AVIV — A recent rabbinic court ruling in Israel is prompting thousands of converts in the country to worry if their conversions to Judaism are at risk of being revoked.

The ruling in the city of Ashdod retroactively annulled the conversion of a woman conducted 15 years ago after she acknowledged that she is not religiously observant today.

Shimon Peres says Israel and the world are entering a new era that is equal parts dangerously uncertain and rich in possibility. "Our problems today are the problems of the world," Peres said in an interview with JTA. "Who is going to win, terror or peace? Who is going to win, Iran or [the] nations?"

For Peres, who began his political career as an aide to David Ben-Gurion and at age 84 is capping it as Israel’s president, says his country’s current challenges are dwarfed by those of earlier eras.

"In 60 years we overcame more difficult periods," he said.

Founded with the express purpose of "ingathering of the exiles" — but with no more large groups of Jews to save — Israel is facing the end of the era of mass aliyah.

Recent reports that the Jewish Agency for Israel was considering shutting down its flagship aliyah department have prompted discussion about the future of immigration to Israel even as agency officials quickly denied the department was closing.

JERUSALEM – Wearing a white knitted kippah, Sen. John McCain stood at the Western Wall, tucked a note inside one of its crevices, and pressed his hand on the ancient stone, striking an image clearly meant to speak to American Jewish voters across the sea that he is indeed their man.

McCain, the Arizona senator who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, spoke Wednesday of his "deep and abiding commitment to Israel" — a theme he stressed throughout his meetings this week with Israeli leaders.

TEL AVIV – The one with glasses and a wide smile was the brother of a friend, the one with blue eyes and side curls the son of another.

In the close-knit world of religious Zionism, no one feels far removed from the grief for eight young people gunned down while studying Talmud in their Jerusalem yeshiva.

NIR ETZION, Israel – Perched high in the forested hills overlooking the Mediterranean, a group of U.S. rabbis and Jewish leaders hunker down to study a riddle harder to solve than it might seem: how to make Israel meaningful to their congregants.

A group from a Reform synagogue in St. Louis muses about solutions: hanging signs in their synagogue in Hebrew and English, organizing a Birthright-style tour for the shul’s religious school teachers, hosting youth retreats with Israeli teenagers as guests, and using Jerusalem stone in a planned renovation of their synagogue, Temple Israel.