Page 12 - Issue 3

We've only just begun by James Grant-Rosenhead

In recent discussions with movement bogrim around the world, I have noticed that a distorted picture
of the HDTB in Israel is sometimes getting portrayed. There are frightening rumours flying around,
such as 'everyone has to work in the youth movement' or 'studying at university is no longer acceptable'.
To set the record straight, not only have such policy statements not been agreed upon, but these
questions have not even yet been put on the table for discussion. Such rules about membership of the
tnuat bogrim do not exist, and it would be wrong to even call them 'norms' of the movement in Israel.
The reality of life as an adult in Habonim Dror is
much more complex, and will probably continue to be
so, even though some people might prefer to have
the movement prescribe their life choices for them.
We are not a religion, with clear do's and don'ts.
We are a movement at a very early stage of
development, which is perhaps much harder, since
each member, each kvutsa, and each tzevet, is
constantly assessing and debating the right way
forwards, with no predefined black and white
answers (nor blue and red ones) codified for us to
follow.

So how are such policies being perceived, if they
have not even been discussed yet? I think that it is to do with peoples' frustration with the gap
between our reality and our vision, and I will try to explain why…

I will start with a general summary of why and how the tnuat bogrim grew out of the youth movement.
There is, and should always be, a healthy gap between the vision which we (the movement) are striving to
achieve and the current reality which we are in. We must keep this gap healthy all the way through the
movement, both in the youth movement and in the tnuat bogrim. If that gap is too wide, then the
movement runs the risk of becoming so disconnected from reality that it is no longer effective in
positively changing our members' lives, nor in changing the reality around us. Our high ideals can thus
become a fantasy game, or a mere hypocrisy, instead of being actually applicable to the lives of our
members. HDUK in the 1990's is a good example of such a situation, whereby the movement continued
educating towards chalutzik garin aliyah to traditional kibbutz. There was so little dugma ishit of this
hagshama, for such a long period of time, that the ultimate ideals of the movement were reduced to a
hypocritical fantasy. On the other hand, if that gap is too narrow, then it is an indication that our vision
is not utopian enough, and that we are guilty of 'making the goalposts wider' or 'aiming for the branches
of a tree, instead of reaching for the stars'. We should always
match our methodology to dealing with how to change the
current reality, but we should not 'throw out the baby with
the bathwater' by limiting our ideals according to our current
reality. The movement in the 1990's is also relevant here, for
example by ditching socialism in HDSA, or by ditching the
primacy of aliyah in HDNA, both of which also came after an
extended period of time without the dugma ishit of movement
graduates trying to bridge the divide between the movement's
words and deeds. In either case (too wide or too narrow), the
creation of the tnuat bogrim is a clear attempt to maintain a
healthier gap. For movements like HDUK and HDOZ, the tnuat bogrim returns our theories from
hypocritical fantasy to reality. For movements like HDNA (and hopefully HDSA in the future)
the tnuat bogrim returns our practise from pluralist pragmatism to pioneering idealism.