Page 14 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - January 19

TH
HABONIM’S 80 ANNIVERSARY
AN EXTRACT FROM DAVID PATTERSON’S MEMOIRS 2002
DAVID PATTERSON (1922 – 2005)
I some four-hundred senior members of Habonim
joined Habonim in 1942 when I was twenty
years old. Six weeks later, I was told that a
Veidah (a kind of conference) was to take
place in London over the Christmas weekend. Out
of sheer curiosity, I volunteered to attend.
Habonim Central Office in London wrote that I
would be staying with Hindle Perlman who was a
nurse at the Hammersmith Hospital.
Wartime train journeys were interminable. Ten
hours later, I arrived at Euston and took a tube to
the station indicated in the letter. I wandered
around in the blackout until I found the address,
which turned out to be a derelict building! This
was my first experience of Habonim
arrangements! I took the last tube to
Hammersmith and arrived at the hospital late on
Christmas Eve where two nurses confirmed that
Hindle did indeed work there and gave me a
different address for her. They allowed me to stay
in the waiting room where I slept on two
armchairs, which kept sliding apart so that most of
the night I was suspended on my neck and ankles!
At six o’clock, they gave me a cup of tea and
tactfully suggested that I should leave. I got the
first tube back to North West London and found
my way to the second address – another ruined
building! Undaunted, I wandered around until I
found a door with a mezuzah, banged loudly and
woke the owner who wasn’t best pleased to be
disturbed at 7:15 on Christmas morning! He
directed me to the nearest Synagogue and as soon
as the service began, I was given the address of
the Kimche family who were members of
Habonim.
They gave me a warm welcome and later took me
to the Stepney Green Girls’ Club where the Veida
was taking place. What a revelation! There were
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and the programme was fascinating and
remarkably humorous. I was introduced to Hindle
Perlman who told me that the previous evening
her sister Leila had walked up and down the tube
station platform shouting “David Patterson” for
hours on end! The Veida continued the next day
where we listened to several lectures, one given
by Moshe Shertock who later as Moshe Sharet
became Prime Minister of Israel, followed by an
intense and passionate discussion. That weekend
formed a turning point in my life. I felt that I had
discovered something, which I had always been
looking for, and I became acquainted with a group
of young men and women of outstanding ability
with an idealism and enthusiasm, which were
infectious.
The Veida and the Zionist cause kindled of a
flame inside me that has remained with me
throughout my life. I became deeply involved
with the movement in Liverpool and then in
Manchester where I lived in the Habonim Bayit,
(House) in 88 Bury Old Road.
Early in the summer of 1943, I visited Kibbutz
Shmariyahu at Latton near Cirencester, which was
a Hachshara (training farm) for young people who
were preparing for an agricultural life in Palestine,
later Israel. I was so impressed with the young
people I met there that it seemed to me that I too
should live in a Kibbutz. I came to appreciate just
what a particularly fortunate generation we were
to have experienced the origins and creation of the
State of Israel and to have felt such deep
emotional ties with everything related to it.
Because of the powerful influence of Habonim, I
decided to study Hebrew and Arabic, which I
thought would be a useful background for life in a