Page 62 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Autumn 21
P. 62
DUBLIN HABONIM 1950’S The community, until the late 1940’s, was
MEMORIES strictly Orthodox. We had all the trappings of
a typical European shtetl. Everyone seemed
FRANK FARBENBLOOM to know everyone else’s business. If you
were not seen shopping at the local kosher
EDITED VERSION OF THE butcher, people would talk about it.
PRESENTATION I MADE ON THE As kids, most of us went to Zion School for
RECENT CHUG BAYIT, MARCH 15, our elementary education, then later to
2021 Wesley or Alexander, the two main
D Bnei Akiva was the dominant
Protestant secondary schools.
ublin Habonim in the
1950’s as a Peleg was
youth movement.
not much different from
all the other small communities My personal memory of
of the time. Habonim starts when Asher
We did not do much that was Benson and Mike Abels
different from any other Peleg - reinstated Habonim in 1948.
hiking, singing, dancing, earning Like so many other 12-year-
our badges in Tsofiut and Zionist olds, the catalyst was “there's
History. There were lots of girls there”.
sichot; about hachshara, I say “reinstated” because there had been a
hagshama atzmit, aliya and of course making flourishing peleg during the late 1930s and
a brick for Hakdasha early 40s. Chaim Herzog and his brother
One thing we did do differently from the Yaakov were chaverim when their father was
others concerned the neckerchief worn as Ireland’s Chief Rabbi. In 1939, a few weeks
part of the uniform. Ours was yellow to make before the war, about a dozen members of
the colour a symbol of pride against the Dublin Habonim attended the famous
Nazi’s Yellow Star. In 1952 when a dozen or Bedford Habonim camp which is reputed to
so Irish showed up at the Barnston Dale have been the largest gathering of Jewish
Veida wearing yellow kerchiefs, there was youth in the UK up to that time. So there had
some negative feedback, but it was accepted. to have been an active Peleg.
Dublin in the ‘50s was not the same Dublin What happened?
as today. Then the population was about six Sometime in the 40s when camping in the
hundred thousand - today it has tripled. Then Dublin mountains, a fire was lit on Shabbat
there were about five thousand Jews – today and Irish Habonim went up in flames.
there are less than fifteen hundred. There
were no Muslims other than a few students at I told you it was an orthodox community.
Trinity. Today there are more than thirty Apparently, it was okay to park your car
thousand Muslims in Dublin. around the corner from the shul on Shabbat
but don’t light a fire! So, we come to 1948
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