Page 25 - Issue 11

Pesach at Hurst Grange, Habonim

Hachshara Farm, UK (1951)

By Lionel Holland

Life on hachsharah at Hurst Grange wasn't by any means all work and noisy argument.
Habonim, although avowedly a secular organization, attached great importance to

Jewish festivals, which are, after all, manifestations of Jewish national identity. One
annual event to which we paid particular attention at Hurst Grange was the
celebration of Passover. The central event of the Passover festival is, of course, the
reading of the "Hagadah": a compilation of stories, recitations, prayers, songs,
blessings, anecdotes, quotations from Jewish sages, psalms, hymns of praise to God
the Deliverer - all having to do with the Exodus from Egypt. The Hagadah has existed
in its present form for longer than
anyone knows - maybe two
thousand years. At an Orthodox
Jewish Passover celebration, the
Hagadah is read from beginning to
end; the reading (presided over,

and mostly led by, the family
patriarch) is interspersed with
songs, feasting, and homiletic
anecdotes and stories told by the
elder males. Less strictly religious
families have each their own mode of
observance. I've seen non-observant Boger Habonim, Geoffrey Felberg at the
Hurst Grange Refet
families where the ritual part of the
Passover feast is abbreviated to a few minutes. For these, the important aspect of
the festival is the family gathering (as is the case with Christmas, for many
Christians).

At Hurst Grange we celebrated Passover on our own terms, based on the Socialist-
Zionist doctrines of Habonim. Our festival was all about freedom, emancipation,
national independence, and such like; with much emphasis, also, on the Spring aspect,
in recognition of our commitment to cultivating the Land, and making the desert
blossom like the rose. Our poetry readings at this season were heavy with selections
from "The Song of Songs", which we would read with great relish, as erotic poetry.
'Thy belly is like an heap of wheat, set about with lilies" ... heady stuff - perfect
Spring fare for healthy twenty-year-olds, through whose veins the hormone-rich
blood was racing joyfully. God the Deliverer of Israel was not mentioned - except,
oddly, in the ritual blessings which punctuate any Jewish ceremony, for which we
always stuck to the traditional formula "Blessed art Thou, a Lord our God, King of

the Universe ... " etc., etc. These pious words always struck me as a bit