Page 16 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - January 19

HABONIM*
JOSÉ PATTERSON
I into a new world of awakening Jewish
was a teenager during WW2 and lived in
Southport where, thankfully, we were
sheltered from the horrors of the war. Every
Saturday night members of the Southport Jewish
Social club met to enjoy dancing to the music of
Victor Sylvester or jiving to Joe Loss and his
band. Everything went smoothly until the person
in charge forgot to wind up the gramophone or
change the steel needle!
Suddenly and without warning, my three close
friends persuaded me to join Habonim – a
watershed moment. The translation of the Hebrew
word Habonim is simply: ‘The Builders.’ It
became a worldwide Zionist Cultural Youth
Organisation founded in England in 1929 by Aron
Wellesley. The Habonim Badge is in the shape of
an outline of the Hebrew letter Beth – which is the
first letter of the Hebrew word Bonim – builders,
and filled in with drawings of bricks. It was all
very new to me but I was keen to join so I
swapped my Social Club ballroom dances and
learned a completely new one - the Horah.
The Habonim Initiation Ceremony was twofold.
New members, proudly wearing their badges,
offered a handmade cardboard brick and solemnly
recited The Promise:
I promise to do my best to make myself worthy of
bearing the name of Jew.
To uphold the name of the Jewish people.
To train myself in the knowledge of my people.
To play my part in the upbuilding of Palestine as
the Jewish National Home.
To serve the Jewish people for their good and for
the good of all me. To be a loyal citizen of the
country in which I live.
The liberating spirit of Habonim was exhilarating.
Our new little group – Gedud Hanamal – The Port
– became the focal point of my life. I was plunged
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consciousness, learning the history of the Jewish
People and the Zionist cause. It was heady stuff. It
was the usual practice at our meetings for each
member to be asked to contribute something of
interest. I was given a book of poems by the
famous Hebrew poet Bialik – and later asked to
talk about one of his poems: ‘Be-ir HaHaregah,’ –
‘The City of Slaughter’ which was written after
the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. The poem described
the devastation when, without warning, armed
Russian Cossacks had ridden into a Jewish village
and slaughtered men, women and children. It had
a tremendous impact on me etched forever in my
mind. Nevertheless, it was by no means all doom
and gloom. No meeting was complete without
Hebrew folk songs and dances. What energy, what
ruach – high spirits. Shiny-faced sweaty youths
thundered round the room singing and dancing for
hours on end. No one knew this of course but deep
inside my sensitive soul, I nourished a teenage
neurosis. I was always on the lookout for
embarrassing tell-tale signs of perspiration and
praying that liberal applications of rather evil
smelling ‘Mum Antiperspirant Cream’ would
work. The very next week I was swept off my feet
dancing the Horah with kids wearing royal blue
Habonim shirts unashamedly displaying navy blue
damp sweaty patches in their armpits!
I hardly knew any Hebrew but I joined in with
gusto and chanted with everyone else. One such
chant was mentioned which I thought was about
someone called Billy B. His name cropped up all
the time although his surname was never
mentioned and I did not like to ask. To be honest,
I had a bit of a crush on the enigmatic Billy B. I
imagined him to be a fine handsome pioneer –
draining swamps, reclaiming the land and helping
to make the desert bloom in far off Palestine. It