Many of you know Ben Cherner, though you may not know his name or you may not realize that you know him. Many usages prevailing in the movement to this day are traditions which had their inception with him. There is always an aura about the figure of a man who carries the title of "first" but who we do not remember. The adjective stuck to Ben because he had the faculty of attracting people to himself to carry on. I do not think that Ben went to college or had much formal training. I am certain that he took no courses in leadership technique, but he knew how to train people to follow in his footsteps so that there was a second and third and fourth.
The outstanding "first" in relation to Ben was that lie was the first organizer of Habonim. It was in 1934, shortly after Habonim was established, that we felt that one way of its taking root in America was to send out emissaries. We were very modest. We didn't think of shlihim from Eretz Yisrael. We wanted organizers to establish our new system of education. It was at that time that we decided to be heartless toward Ben, as we subsequently have been to every organizer and shaliah.
By 1934, Ben Cherner had not only served his apprenticeship in the movement but had already acted as an organizer for the Young Poale Zion Alliance. By 1934, he was a veteran, and was supposed to receive permission for aliya. The stories of organizers struggling and living on peanuts refer to Ben Cherner, who toured the New England region in 1933. By 1934, he had had his fill of peanuts and of traveling for the movement. He had done his duty. But the National Executive (four people we were, all told) decided that he must remain for another year to help in the transition from Young Poale Zion Alliance to Habonim. His task was to go into a community, get together the remnants of the YPZA, contact parents and prospective madrichim, and transform them into a mahaneh of Habonim. .
Ben was not much of an orator. He spoke quietly and intimately. He knew how to sing and he knew how to gather people around him. He set up several mahanot.
His first stop was Buffalo, his home town. He established a mahaneh in Buffalo so well that not only did Buffalo become the original stronghold of Habonim but gave us two organizers in succession. It was a dynasty: from Ben Cherner to Joey Criden; from Joey to Moshe Goldberg. When Moshe was called to New York, the Buffalo movement waned.
Then Ben went to Chicago. In Chicago his accomplishment was that he convinced the haverim of the movement that it was necessary to have a permanent organizer who would set up the organization. The organizer for whom Ben paved the way made Chicago the center of our movement for many years.
There is a "first" in connection with Ben which relates to the Pacific Coast. We were getting news of a growing community in Los Angeles, of a Far West in which Folk Shulen graduates knew Hebrew. After negotiations, we obtained $75 from several Los Angeles haverim. Naturally, we called on Ben to make the trip. That trip in 1935 was the first link in the chain which ultimately led to the development of the Los Angeles mahaneh, the summer Kvutza, the stream of organizers.
To understand the significance of Ben's organizational tours, one must visualize the years in which these were made. There existed a loose connection between the New York center and the groups. There was not too much money for printing. The mail was inadequate. The movement was kept alive by personal contact. The visitor was the warm link representing the movement. Hence a good deal depended on whom was sent.
Ben was a simple, soft-spoken boy. He went into a city without benefit of publicity notices or mass meetings. He went to private homes and got people around him to sing with him and talk with him. When he left, there was a nucleus which somehow carried on.
There was one specific job Ben tried to do which ultimately resulted in failure. He tried to maintain the agricultural training center in Illinois. At that time, there were training farms in Baltimore, in Minneapolis, and one in Illinois. They were small, inadequate, poor, unsanitary farms struggling under extremely difficult conditions. A large percentage of the "halutzim" were malcontents who could not earn a living. It was into such conditions that Ben plunged to try to clean up the place, to live in it, and to introduce a new atmosphere. The fact that Ben failed is not a reflection on him. It was more than a one-man job. When Enzo Sereni came, we consolidated all of these farms into the one at Creamridge, which was paradise by contrast.
Ben's was a permanent influence because he did not talk only of Eretz Yisrael; he set an example. It was in 1936 that he finally left. We had held him back two years beyond his time. We felt that we were committing a crime against Ben by holding him back but there was no alternative. There was no other candidate who could have done the organizational work. Even his leaving was, in a sense, a useful service. The senior leaders of the Labor Zionist movement set a disheartening example by not permitting their children to remain in Eretz Yisrael. The repercussions of the action of the Detroit group, who returned from Eretz Yisrael and spread stories to justify themselves, were serious. American halutzim who could not adjust to the rigors of pioneering did not help the atmosphere by returning home. For a/person who is normal, adjusted, and refined, to go to Eretz Yisrael was a feat. That too was a service.
Of Ben's many qualities, his primary one was his humanity, his, approachability. He loved people. He liked young people. He was young himself. Perhaps this accounted for his ability to gather young people around him. No course in leadership or technical training or knowledge could have made up for that basic human element. In our relationship to Ben, we appreciated his enthusiasm. He would not get excited or rush off to his work. He showed his enthusiasm by explaining his idea and then setting about carrying it out so well that the job seemed easily done.
His singing possessed an enchanting, quality. He was by no means a professional singer. Yet when he sat with a group of people around a camp. fire, he held them for hours. They sat and sang without moving or talking. His singing had a good deal to do with his influence in the movement. Many of our songs are versions which he taught to the first groups of Habonim. Similarly, some camp fire traditions and some of the stories reprinted by us in Haboneh have their origin in Ben's fertile mind.
Ben had very solid convictions, so solid that perhaps they account for one of the tragedies of his life. For good or for ill, Ben did not believe in the concentration of Americans in Eretz Yisrael. In that period, the rest of us did not believe in it either. We did not want an American landsmanshaft in Eretz Yisrael. Our attitude was changed by the realities of life, but Ben was stubborn. Only during the last two years did he begin to waver and to talk of transf erring to Kfar Blum. He had stuck to Naan no matter how strongly he was urged to join the American kibbutz.
Ben never thought of himself as a leader. He never permitted himself to think of, or anyone to refer to, himself as a leader. He considered himself a soldier. When he went to do organizational work, it was in the line of duty; when he went to Eretz Yisrael, it was realization; when he helped to organize the Union of Jewish World Combatants, it was in the line of duty. That was one of the reasons why he did not return to America as a shaliah. He knew that shlihut carried with it a connotation of leadership which he did not believe held for himself although he had always been in a position of leadership.
If Ben were here and could talk to us, he would talk of simple and prosaic tasks. He would talk of the needs for another Kvutza and another mahaneh and of dogged perseverence in organizational work, of the trials and tribulations of training and of self-realization in Eretz Yisrael, and he would finish by saying that, in the long run, this kind of obstinacy would succeed. If there is meaning in the memory of our haverim and of their services, it is the realization that they represented a continuation of the Jewish struggle for survival which began before them, that we carry forward that struggle today, and that those after us will not falter. That, it seems to me, is the fitting memorial to Ben Cherner.
Saadia Gelb
Furrows, January, 1947