Page 15 - Issue 11

Kenes Mazkirim 2009

There are few things in this life worth giving a damn about. The contemporary age of

mass media, globalisation and the fast replacement of reality with virtual reality have
deadened the senses of imagination of the ordinary citizen to such a blunt point that
there is precious little that can rouse the masses off their asses if it doesn’t involve

prescription pills.

However there is one annual event that elicits trembles in the hearts of mortal men
and women as it beckons near. A gathering that takes place here in Israel and is
unmirrored and unmatched in any place on Earth for its figurative enormity and

literal hilarity. News
of this assembly

stirs those caught
slumbering in every

sleepy corner of the
globe, and gathers
them in with a

powerful magnetism.
For when one feels

the call of the
Kennes, it is time to
shake the mothballs

off the Chultzat
Tnua and board El Al
The leaders of Habonim Dror from Australia, New Zealand, Holland, North
for the Holy Land.
America and the UK catch some rays during a ‘break between sessions’ (When
they came back to their respective countries and explained to the rest of their
Habonim Dror’s
tzevet how intensive the seminar was, remember that the camera never lies!!!)
Kennes Mazkirim
V’Rashei Chinuch
2009 proved to be completely deserving of the understated preamble above.

Members of the Manhigiut (leadership) of Habonim Dror from North America,
Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Uruguay, Brazil,

Mexico, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey assembled for five days in February to
compare notes and unite over common ground.

Days were spent in peulot discussing our shared vision for the Jewish People and
finding the common centre that unconditionally binds us though we pursue that vision

in ways relevant to the uniqueness of each of our own Kenim. An eye-opening siyur
(excursion) in the northern town of Karmiel examined the way that our sister