Page 13 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - September 14
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that, if I spent a couple of years doing hadracha, Movement, happening on our watch. Our
2 years from then I would be able to come back instinctive first response was defensiveness -
to Israel for a whole year, together with my we'll make Aliyah, join Tuval, and reverse the
group from the Movement, on Shnat Hachshara. process! We'll turn the tide of individualism
It sounded like a good idea at the time… back towards collectivism!
I began working as a Madrich on Sunday But then I returned to the Lul on Bet HaEmek. I
evenings. I can't imagine what I could possibly loved the Kibbutz society, but not their 14,000
have taught the kids, since I had no significant stinky chickens! None of us wanted to be
education in Jewish history, Zionism nor farmers. Our passion about Tuval met a dead
Socialism. It was only as a Madrich at summer end.
machaneh at the end of my first year of
Hadracha that I began to really learn. During Our solution to the anachronism of traditional
the pre-machaneh 'pioneer', the tzevet had a two- Kibbutz life came only years later, whilst
day crash course seminar in Jewish Zionist working in the Mazkirut of HDUK in Finchley
history, emphasising the story of European Jewry Road. Understanding that few were now making
– the Pale of Settlement, pogroms, the French Aliyah from the Movement, and that the last
revolution, the Emancipation, the Dreyfus affair, garin to Tuval was already 15 years past, we
Herzl, the birth of Zionism, and the wars of identified an existential crisis - with no dugma
Israel. It blew my mind. It rewrote my ishit and no hagshama, shnat hachshara had
collective memory. The history which I knew become a gap year game. The whole Movement
previously, that of the Kings and Queens of was more of a lefty, creative, social club than a
England which I had learnt at school, was real pioneering force. We actively sought out
replaced by the stories of my Jewish ancestors. I partners who understood this challenge and we
began to internalise the Movement’s messages. were inspired to find that our Israeli counterparts
were already reinventing socialist Zionism in the
The missing piece of the puzzle was socialism. I form of the urban-activist-educational Kibbutz
grew up in a Conservative family, my parents and adult graduate movements. Our encounters
happily supporting Margaret Thatcher and then with Tamuz in Bet Shemesh and with Hanoar
John Major as they dismantled the welfare state, Haoved Vehalomed's Ravid and Eshbal brought
one privatisation after another. I neither everything we had learnt in HDUK into place,
understood nor cared about such issues and both for our personal lives and for attempting to
planned to be a successful upper/middle-class rebuild the Movement.
barrister. The utopian life on Kibbutz Bet
HaEmek during Habonim-Dror Shnat Hachshara So far, it essentially seems to me that what I
was a complete contrast to Jewish life in Leeds, learnt and gained from Habonim-Dror -
but I didn’t see the political and ideological culturally Jewish socialist Zionism, best
connections until we were presented with the manifested holistically by chalutzik kibbutz life
privatisation of our supposed 'meshek yaad' in Israel - wasn't merely a good idea at the time.
during our seminar at Kibbutz Tuval. It was like It's been the right idea since 1929 (or at least
being told that all of our dreams were delusional. since we became pioneers of Kfar Blum in the
It was a historic, collective failure of the 1930's) and it's still the right idea today!
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