Page 5 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - February 14

TO BE A JEW AND AN ISRAELI IN
THE 21ST CENTURY
ARYEH WOLFIN, KFAR HANASSI
B Zionism.
ack in the early nineteen fifties, while I
was on the Machon Lemadrichei Chutz
LaAretz in Jerusalem, I had occasion to
attend a function of our Israeli sister movement
at the time, HaTnuah Hameuchedet, together
with the other members of our group from
British Habonim. We were labelled by our
hosts, Israeli-born Sabras, as” Goleitzim” and
they turned their noses up at us. Our broken
Hebrew mingled with English revealed to them
that we were Jews from the Golah. This was
considered to be the most inferior status and we
were unaware of its implications.
Soon after my aliya to Israel, more than 50 years
ago, I was asked to be interviewed by a
correspondent of a well- known British
newspaper, who was visiting Kfar Hanassi at the
time. My youthful enthusiasm caused me to
reply to him in the affirmative and I was ready
for action. “Why did you come to live in
Israel?” he asked and I naively exposed him to a
long discourse on Zionism and what it was all
about. All the stuff in which we were
indoctrinated in the Movement came out in the
interview, which lasted for about an hour, with
me doing most of the talking. A week later I
received the newspaper with the article on Kfar
Hanassi and I located my contribution, which
was presented in the most modest terms – one
line stating that “Aryeh Wolfin came to Israel in
order to be normal and uninhibited”. It took me
some time to realize the implications of singling
out this one quote from my hour-long interview.
On reflection, there is a connection between the
two events, the Zionist DNA which produced
the mythical Sabra, who created the Yishuv in
Eretz Yisrael prior to the creation of the State
and then the Chalutz, the Palmach and the
Hagana, to name just a few of the symbols of
5
The Sabra was a contradiction of the
Diaspora Jew. He symbolized an ancient Hebrew
Ghetto mentality, a new healthy and normal
superman and was the Zionist answer to the
human being. Little wonder that during the
Holocaust they could not accept nor understand
that the Jews in the Ghetto allowed themselves
to be led to their slaughter like cattle. The Sabra
became a myth created by Zionism, particularly
the socialist stream. He considered himself more
of a Hebrew, connected to the ancient land,
rather than a Jew, a concept which evolved
during the two thousand years of exile, a period
he preferred to skip over. His identity linked
him directly to the Tanach, identifying with its
heroes and associating them with the familiar
places mentioned in the Bible, places that he
knew and that were now within easy reach. The
Sabra was considered good and the image of the
Golah Jew was considered bad for the cause. In
this context, Yiddish, “the language of the
Ghetto” was frowned upon.
The Movement adopted the Sabra image as part
of the chalutz archetype which it projected. The
image became more apparent as visits to Israel
in the framework of year and summer schemes
became abundant, whereby chanichim were
exposed to the Sabra culture, which they saw as
a model of Movement aspiration. It was
strengthened by the arrival of the annual
delegation of Sabra madrichim from our sister
Movement, HaTnuah HaMeuchedet, who came
to inject some Israeli Sabra culture into
Movement summer camps. Little wonder that
the appearance of chaverim at movement
functions adorned in kafiyas and Palmach-style
battledress jackets, wearing khaki woollen two-
pointed caps, became a commonplace
phenomenon.