Members of the socialist-Zionist youth group Habonim Dror in the US are increasingly pushing back on Zionism’s centrality in the movement
SINCE HABONIM NORTH AMERICA’S founding in 1935, its mission has largely centred on the work of preparing members to help build kibbutzim and other structures for communal living in Palestine (or, after 1948, Israel).
Habonim’s constitution frames aliyah as the ultimate way to achieve hagshama, or actualization of the movement’s values, and as recently as 2013, a study surveying nearly 2,000 Habonim alumni found that around a quarter had at some point moved to Israel, even if half of those who did so later returned to the US or Canada.
But the relationship between Habonim members and Israel is changing. Today, many younger “Habos”—heavily influenced by the socialist, egalitarian values they learned at Habonim’s summer camps and movement seminars, and horrified by Israel’s rightward march—are now wondering whether those values are in conflict not just with Israeli government policy, but with the ethos of Zionism itself.
Last summer, in a dramatic escalation of tensions within the movement, nearly 600 members and alumni of the organization now known as Habonim Dror North America (HDNA) signed a petition calling for a radical shift in the organisation’s relationship to Israel.
FULL STORY Revising the Dream - Habonim Dror(Jewish Currents)
Photo: A 1939 publication about Habonim's Camp Kvutza
