An anniversary is a time of reflection; one retraces the years and comes to the beginning: the first Camp Kvutza. Suddenly all is focused clearly and is full of an inner glow - the beginning. So much comes alive: the haverim, the studies, the camp, the campfire with its songs, but above all, the Kvutza: the living and studying together, a mutual investigation of the problems inherent in the ideals which we held in common. Looking backward, one senses how much importance there was to this beginning, but at that time, there was merely the living together at a Camp Kvutza among the gentle hills of New York State.
Today the conception of "idealist" has acquired a strange interpretation, and it may even sound boastful to say that we were an idealistic Jewish youth. But in truth and most sincerely, we tried by our own living to create a new world: a world in which the Jew would live in his own country, the forms of living there to be based on Socialism.
At the Camp Kvutza these ideals were most meaningful. They guided and directed our lives. It was very hard for we were going against the stream. American Jewish living surrounded us. It was the time of the depression, the economic collapse after 1929. All around us the youth was concerned with jobs, with making a livelihood. Yet we, the tiny group of Poale Zion youth, were far away from all that worried Americans. Our minds and our hearts were concerned with another land and our problems were foreign and distant to American life. We lived in our ideal: a worker's life in Eretz Yisrael. As one looks back twenty-five years, how strange it was, how revolutionary, how "peculiar."
Many of us were born in the United States. Some came to the country as young children. Our schooling, our style of life, our thoughts were molded by the country we lived in. We loved this country with its sense of human dignity and freedom, its pioneers, and its absorption of the downtrodden and poverty-stricken millions of human beings who flocked to its shores. We were overwhelmed by its vastness, its mountains and plains, its lakes, rivers, and oceans. There were before us the grandeur of the West, the charm of the South, the beauty of the Appalachians, the awe of Niagara, the breadth of the Hudson. We were conscious of the stirrings of new forces in American literature, art, and music. The life of America was our life: the jazz, the night club in Harlem, the new forms of the dance, the new theater, the politics of the country, the stirrings of the vast labor masses - all this was part and parcel of our day-by-day living.
Yet we dreamt dreams away from all that America was, vivid with the hope of the liberation of the Jew, and saw ourselves in our mind's eye with our comrades in the Promised Land.
Why? What moved us? How did we come to these thoughts, this tiny group out of the millions of American Jews? Again and again at the Camp Kvutza, it was important to know the reason. I tried to understand why the haverim chose this ideal. What moved these few to meet for a study of Poale Zionism and ways and methods of bringing this ideal to others?
So I asked and found that one's Jewish consciousness was awakened by the haunting sadness of the Kol Nidre melody. Or again, it dawned in a crowded college auditorium as the Twenty-third Psalm was read by a Christian clergyman, and moved one to closeness to all people of the Book. Another was fired by the tales told by a recent arrival from Eretz Yisrael who worked in Petah Tikva with the Haverim of the Second Aliya. I learned that often the home and the parents were in opposition and added nothing to these unknown deep springs which lived in the consciousness of our comrades. Some homes were "Bundist," motivated by the thought that Jews need to build a Jewish entity wherever they may be. In some homes, Russian revolutionary songs of freedom and Siberian exile were sung, but not a Jewish folk song.
Zionist, Poale Zionist, consciousness grew out of this strange soil, and at times against the wishes of the parents who were aghast at their child's "peculiarities." Why dream of the liberation of the Jews? How about other peoples enslaved by cruel despotic governments? Why far away Eretz Yisracl? There was a working class to be helped in the United States. There were problems to be solved here: tender children working beyond their strength, exploited by those intent on profits; there was a large mass of workers with no job security. Why Eretz Yisrael? There are two million Jews in New York City alone. Much must be done for them, to hold them to some kind of Judaism, to teach their children about their glorious heritage. Why not work here at home?
In the first Camp Kvutza, all the above elements were ever present; they motivated the program of work. We tried to add to the elements already influencing the haverim. In the short span of time spent at Camp Kvutza, there was the singing of the Eretz Yisrael songs which linked us with our unknown comrades. The rhythm, the poetry of the words, the sentiment of rebuilding and heroism, all spoke deeply to us. Around us was the camp fire, bright and cheerful, amidst the dark shadows of the trees, the tense young faces lit by the flame, and young voices filled the air with Hebrew or Yiddish songs of Eretz Yisrael and Jewish revival. We wanted to know more and more about the ideal we so earnestly believed in. For Poale Zion ideology, we went to the writings of Borochov and Syrkin.
To the Camp Kvutza was brought much out of the American life in which we found ourselves. We well understood the pioneering life of Eretz Yisrael, for in America we were still close to pioneering, and American history glorified the pioneer who moved West to build up the great United States. To the Camp Kvutza we also brought the new educational theories just coming into being in the United States.
I had just received my Bachelor of Science degree in education from Teachers College of Columbia University. My special contribution to Camp Kvutza was to bring to our studies the new educational philosophy of John Dewey, William Kilpatrick, and E. T. Thorndike. These, my teachers, were breaking new ground in education. Twenty-five years ago their educational philosophy was a complete departure from what was then prevalent. It was new, challenging, and audacious. It was a theory of freedom in education and especially John Dewey's philosophy, opposed to all forms of absolutism. The personality of the learner was stressed; he was motivated, he studied on his own level, his personality was respected, he was taught to work and think in a group. The project method was concomitant with these new theories. Adult education was assuming its rightful place. All these methods admirably suited our need, namely, to study our ideology and to pass on our ideals to many American Jewish youths.
How happy I was that I was privileged to study under John Dewey, Kilpatrick, and Thorndike! I was fired by the new philosophy of education which they taught and I had learned the new techniques which they advocated. Both in planning the program of the Camp Kvutza and in carrying it out, the haverim wholeheartedly accepted these new methods which I so enthusiastically advocated. My share in the program was to teach and demonstrate those new techniques so that the haverim could take them to the clubs of which they were the leaders.
The new methods were so well fitted to our Poale Zionist ideal, which was to give the Jew inheritance in his land. The new education stressed respect and dignity of the individual. It aimed to enrich the individual by giving him the tools whereby he could continue his investigations. These new methods taught the individual how to motivate a study not by committing to memory many facts, but to study for the love of the subject - study deeply and creatively. So we studied the creative discussion method. We sought to draw out every individual to full participation. Especially suited to our Camp Kvutza idea was the fact that these new educational methods stressed group work and participation in group discussion and reaching conclusions by group thinking. This group work was in complete accord with the cooperative ideals of Labor Eretz Yisrael. What a new world these fundamental methods of learning opened up for us! We sensed the democracy of these techniques. The study of E'retz Yisrael problems lent themselves particularly to the new project method.
I had some years of organizational work behind me, but never bad I enjoyed a more innerly satisfying experience. It was group living and learning which was deep and lasting in its influence.
Camp Kvutza twenty-five years ago was a small pebble thrown into the vast ocean of American Jewish youth.
The small ripple it caused has moved farther and farther. The waves in its wake have reached the Promised Land. For haverim from the Camp Kvutza have settled on the soil of the land. By their example they have influenced others to come to Israel. They were on so-called "illegal" boats, they were in Cypress, they fought in the War of Liberation of Israel, and they served in Sinai. Their children are growing up in Israel.
And the genesis was that first Camp Kvutza twenty-five years ago.
Happy are we to have been comrades and partners in that great adventurous undertaking.
Sophie A. Udin, 1957