IN RECENT YEARS (1955-1957)

By the summer of 1955, when our "administration" took over responsibility for the movement, the Youth Workshop in Israel had become the central institution of Habonim. When we went on tour to the machanot, we came across more than a few thirteen-year-olds who already knew what year they were going to Israel, how they were going to accelerate their school programs and raise the tuition, and who of their chaverim was going with them. At the seminars which we conducted in 1956 and 1957, the most exciting sessions—at least from the standpoint of participation and interest—were the meetings of pre-Workshop groups. The administration of the Workshop had fast become a complex and extensive operation, run with the aid of scores of volunteer screening committees drawn from the professional community in each city. The central shaliach working in the national office had an extra title: Director of the Workshop.

Some of this had been true of the preceding few years, too. What was noteworthy in our period was that the movement could now feel not only the potential of its new project but the actual benefits it had produced. The establishment of the Workshop in 1951 had helped the movement come out of the dips and jolts of the initial period following the creation of Israel. By 1955, a few short years later, Habonim had still not overcome the "Zionist crisis," but it had weathered the first, worst reaction. Now there was a new garin training in Israel for permanent settlement; now the graduates of the first few Workshops were ready to take over the leadership of the movement almost in its entirety.

That summer there was a briefing session for new organizers and other key people at the New York camp at Red Hook. It marked the end of an era in which the movement had been led primarily by members of the last few classes of the Habonim Institute in New York and Israel and by graduates of the Jewish Agency's Machon in Jerusalem.

The new group of leaders gathered at the briefing session at Red Hook in 1955 was made up predominantly of graduates of the Habonim Workshops in Israel, as were the new mazkirut that began its work that autumn and the new merkaz elected at the Philadelphia convention in December.

That fact alone makes the years 1955-57 important ones in the history of Habonim's first twenty-five years. But what is more significant is that, barring an upheaval, the patterns of that period may very possibly extend well into the next quarter century. What we achieved only yesterday may give encouragement to the leadership of today, and many of the problems we faced then still remain to be solved by the chaverim of tomorrow.

What was the movement like in those first years of Workshop hegemony? To begin with, it was imbued with a lively Israeli spirit. The latest Israeli dances, performed by semi-professional Habonim dance .groups; the comic-heroic tales of labor in the fields and marches in the deserts of Israel told by the returning Workshoppers; and the Hebrew program at most of the camps were all manifestations of the closeness of the movement to Israel, as was the seven thousand dollars contributed personally by the chaverim to the Special Fund of the United Jewish Appeal during those two years.

Habonim was not only spirited and lively; it was youthful— and just plain young. Here something should be added to the generalization that the Workshop graduates had become the leaders of the movement. By this time a certain pattern had manifested itself: upon their return, and for about two years after that, almost all the Workshoppers of any given year belonged to the movement and were active in some way; and many were the leaders of their machanot. But by the third or fourth year after their return, these forces had shrunk considerably.

The reasons for this state of affairs are both too complex and too well-known to be dwelt on at length here. The problems of the Zionist movement in the new era of Jewish life, the uncertainties and the debilitating effects of the peacetime draft, the cold war and the hot arsenal, the decline of idealistic and non-conformist thought and the obsession with security even among college students—these were the pressures militating against identification with a Labor Zionist youth movement on the part of young adults, even those who, as adolescents, had spent a year in Israel.

Yet these chaverim were not all lost souls, past redemption. Most of them continued to look back on their experiences in Habonim and especially on the Workshop as among the most meaningful and exciting in their lives. Many of them were still oriented to Labor Zionist thinking, and a good number still considered themselves potential Israelis. What vas missing was the translation of these beliefs and feelings into a continuing, active affiliation with the movement.

Our interest in retaining these young adults was based not only on the hope that they might eventually fulfill the goals to which they had been educate in the youth movement. We needed their help now in running Habonim. It required a high degree of understanding and maturity to interpret the program of Habonim to a community which was pro-Israel but non-Zionist and in which the centers and schools of the various synagogue denominations were so dominant. The Workshop, h particular, needed people to represent it in dealing with parents and with the adult community in general.

Even the physical plant and financial setup of the movement required responsible supervision more than ever. In many cities the senior movement was building Labor Zionist centers in partnership with Habonim. In all seven of our camps, old facilities were being renovated and new buildings added. One high point of our term of office was the purchase of a large Midwest campsite for a sum of money that once could have paid for almost all of those early, fondly-remembered camps put together. An investment of such proportions demanded mature management.

Helping give the movement the direction it needed were the shlichim from Israel, most of them our own graduates from our settlements. But their number was woefully small, and, of course, their stay was limited to only two years.

So on every side the young-adult problem faced us. What did we do to try to solve it? One answer was the revival of Chavurat Aliya, a flexible framework structured to foster many forms of aliya in both individual and group arrangements. This seemed to be appropriate for a generation that had been exposed to Israel and knew of the many varied opportunities for service and settlement there. Aliya in garinim to the kibbutz was still stressed by the movement; indeed Garin Gimels formal affiliation with a Habonim kibbutz) Gesher Haziv, was effected and celebrated by the movement during this period. But we also wanted to give encouragement to the interest in settlement in moshavim and cities that existed among Workshop graduates, as well as among other young adults in the community at large.

We also tried in every possible way to involve the recent graduates of Habonim and the Workshop in various leadership roles, and we worked on the development of a transition process through which these young adults could move into the senior movement. But it would be less than candid to say that these noble experiments were met with notable success. Aliya from the movement certainly continued. Young adults did play central roles in the running of Habonim. And the senior movement showed a steady increase in membership and even leadership drawn from the ranks of former members of the youth movement. Yet the specific means which we devised for holding, integrating, and activating our older chaverim in an ongoing process of Labor Zionist involvement did not produce the results that the movement needed.

The one most significant development that at least partially met this problem was the participation of members of the senior movement in the administration of our projects, especially the camps. Labor Zionist chaverim who were graduates of the youth movement themselves and whose children were now of Habonim age took a renewed interest in our affairs. The utilization of seniors in their thirties and forties as substitutes for the missing Habonim people in their twenties was somewhat of a new departure for the movement. It obviously
had many implications for the traditional character of Habonim, but it was also a re-assertion of the interdependence of the youth movement and the senior organizations in the Labor Zionist family. We needed adult assistance, and the "seniors" were equally as much in need of Habonim as a challenging Labor Zionist project. Perhaps the two elements working together will someday find the correct approach to the young-adult generation both need.

Let the reader not conclude from all of the above that Habonim in the years 1955-57 was only a collection of problems and troubles. It was an exciting venture, full of the unique experiences, deep satisfactions, and plain good times that Habonim always had. In the last few months of our term of office, we could see our progress most clearly. By September of 1957) almost all of the people, too numerous to mention, who had been working in the office the preceding two years had gone to Israel, the army, or elsewhere. Remaining were only our central shaliach, our incomparable administrative secretary Zelde, and the writer. A whole new generation of Workshop graduates had come to the fore; and, in a few short months, at the convention in December, the transition would be completed.

That autumn we ran a big expansion drive, replete with buttons, flyers, and prizes. We celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Habonim camping and issued Adventure in Pioneering to mark the event. The Workshop that left that September was the largest in several years and the first to spend almost a full year rather than eight or nine months in Israel. The convention itself—held, appropriately enough, in the new Labor Zionist center in Chicago, central city of the new Midwest camp—was a good one. It included the launching of a Histadrut project for one of our kibbutzim, a presentation of the historical development of Habonim's ideology by David Breslau, and a stimulating general discussion on social issues and ideals conducted by the chaverim themselves on a very high level. None of us could help feel during those few months culminated by the Chicago convention that Habonim still was, as its promotional material claimed, "the liveliest yet the most serious Jewish youth organization in America."

With the close of the convention came the end of our term of office. Of course, as in the summer of 1955, the transition was not so abrupt as these words would indicate. There was a certain continuity on all fronts: leadership, ideology, projects, achievements—and problems, too. But, in a sense, it was the end of another era, the first that bore the unique stamp of the Youth Workshop in Israel. I am confident that succeeding generations of Habonim will find both the profound satisfaction that we experienced in our movement work and the answers to some of the questions which we left unsolved.

DANNY MANN, Philadelphia, 1960