Olimot Corner is the column in the Iton about movement members who have recently made Aliyah. Our latest column is about Hannah Blount, bogeret of HDOZ and member of Garin Tzur in Tel Aviv.
Several years of messima in Habonim Dror Australia made me extremely practiced at eyerolling. No matter the genuine belief in the vision and purpose of the movement, no matter the love for hadracha, Judaism, Zionism, and a handful of other choice buzzwords, the rhythm of daily movement life did not respond well to being challenged. Of course, technically, my weekly HDOZ messima in the ken could have been more creative, but, well, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The Olim way over in Israel would metaphorically - occasionally physically - prod my shoulder and babble on about how HaNoar HaOved vHaLomed was constantly creating, initiating, and rocking up to schools without warning in order to grow and invite new chanichim into the movement. Eyeroll.
“Open a new ken in Melbourne!”
“Canvass chanichim outside public schools!”
“Invite the Russian speaking Chabad community to Habo!”
Alternatively: get off my back and let me just keep doing what I’m doing. There are plenty of nice Jewish kids walking through these gates every week, camp sign-ups are strong, and canvassing at the Jewish day schools is laborious enough as it is.
As these things go, I am now one of those irritating Olim who does messima in HaNoar HaOved vHaLomed and compares its ability to create, initiate, and rock up to schools without warning to that of HDOZ. Whoops. Not that any Habonik is particularly lazy or uncaring, rather the insular and family-driven culture within the Australian Jewish community is not conducive to breaking tradition and routine.
I began a messima in Snif Bat Yam, and we opened the year with a chanichim headcount of a round, even, zero. Unlike the well-instituted kenim of HDOZ, there is little to no tradition of youth movement attendance in Bat Yam. Olim from the former Soviet Union do not exactly have old photo albums of them and all their friends in blue-shirts-red-strings to show their children and ship them off to yom peuilut. So out we went to the local schools to rally a bunch of utterly random kids. There are now two small kvutzot of chanichim in the Snif. On one hand, the drive to canvass chanichim who are not the comfortable ‘NOAL-type’ came from a lack of choice. On the other, there is a genuine belief in HaNoar HaOved that any child can be a chanich of the movement. Any school can become a stronghold of the blue and red, and any kvutza can decide to become madrichim.
It is pretty brutal to build a Snif from scratch. You tempt kids through the gates with pizza and games, and then try and proclaim them a kvutza. Often, this is the point at which they do not come back. Or you gently introduce some discussion of democracy and politics, only to hear that these sixteen-year-olds hate Arabs with a Ben-Gvir-manufactured vengeance. In Australia, I would have given up in a heartbeat. Why bother coaxing ‘unobvious’ chanichim into the ken when there are generations of ‘Habo families’ to pull from instead? It has been extremely interesting and very motivating to see how the movement here takes a glance at any given community and gets busy building structures and initiatives that meet the youth where they are at.
I look forward to my future Aussie chanichim strengthening their eyeroll abilities as I push them to diversify their kenim and canvassing structures and reach beyond the comfortable yet small boundaries of the ‘Habo-type’.
