(Speech delivered upon being recognized as a honoree at the Los Angeles Ameinu annual awards dinner on December 10, 2008)
My parents were involved in Labor Zionism before I was born and I started going to Habonim Camp when I was ten years old. From the minute I went, I was hooked. And I’m not talking about the political philosophy or the Zionist thinkers or the kibbutz ideology; although I certainly bought into that – and could recite it to you today. Habonim had me hooked because I felt so truly alive there. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out why that was. In part it was the sense that I could do anything! I told a ghost story at the Saturday night campfire when I was 10. I played on the women’s basketball team –where my nickname was Big Bells (as opposed to my younger sister, who was Little Bells). I was a writer, I was a producer, I was an educator. And Cantor Aviva Rosenbloom, you will love this: Itaught songs; I led songs; I performed songs. These were things I could never do in my regular life. In a “bourgeois” teenage world that often seemed narrow and pinched, Habonim was wide open to whatever we could think of and whatever we wanted to be.
Let me talk more about the singing. At Habonim we sang all day. We sang when we raised the flag in the morning and when we took it down at night; we sang our way into each meal and we sang after each meal; we sang on hikes and when we drove from place to place; every group and every activity had its song; and then of course there was the half hour scheduled each day for singing, when we learned a new song. And everybody sang. Not just the girls, but the guys. It wasn’t about having a good voice or even, really, about making a pleasant noise. It was a joyful noise. It was about who we were and how we expressed ourselves.
The same goes for dance. At Habonim we danced every Friday night. We danced the hora – for those of you who don’t know, that’s the circle dance you’ve seen at Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs. But we didn’t have a band or a DJ, or even a tape recorder or a record player – we just sang Hebrew songs. We sang and we danced. And everybody danced – not just the girls, and not just the geeks, but the cool kids and the big, tough guys. We all danced. And it wasn’t about getting the steps right, because there’s only one step. And it wasn’t about style, or grace, or choreography. It was just the most elemental expression of who we were. We danced the hora and we sang our songs and around and around we went. After a long long time we ran out of songs to sing, but we kept on dancing. By this point we were dancing with a heavy step, almost a stomp, sweating, breathing hard, silent, but unwilling to breakaway.
And then the most incredible thing happened. Someone would start a chant: Mi anachnu? Who are we? And the group would answer: Yisrael! (Israel) And the leader would ask again: Mi kulanu? Who are we all? Yisrael! And it would go on with the names of cities and kibbutzim and landmarks in Israel and the Jewish world –Haifa– Yisrael! Gesher Haziv – Yisrael! Gilboa – Yisrael! We would shout out our response and we would dance our heavy, sweaty dance. We went around and around with this call and response, and then a couple of other chants (for those of you who remember – Abba/Ema, Ema/Abba etc.), until finally, finally we couldn’t sustain it any longer and the tension broke. We didn’t stop our hora, but we went back to a song.
Now maybe I am not remembering this correctly, and I’m sure some of you remember it differently. But this is the Habonim that I experienced. We were not religious in Habonim but this dance, and this song, was an intensely spiritual experience. It was the purest possible expression of who we were: it spoke to our solidarity with each other, with the Jewish people; and with the Land of Israel. It spoke to all our values in Habonim. It was about kibbutz – or maybe our myth about kibbutz. It was about chevra, our word for friendship or camaraderie. It was about being a youth movement – because there were no adults to tell us what to do or lead our dance. It was about ruach – the word we commonly used for spirit, sort of like school spirit; but the ruach that was in the room when we danced was something else altogether – to me, it was magic.
One of our songs had these Hebrew words: shuvi shuvi v’nasov, ki darkeinuein la sof, ki od nimshechet ha’sharsheret – round and round we’ll turn, because our path has no end, because the chain never breaks. That was Habonim. Habonim didn’t just teach us about Jewish peoplehood and Labor Zionism; it made of us links in the chain. For two months every summer, we really tried to live our ideals of Jewish culture, and kibbutz, and social justice. Maybe this is why so many people from Habonim have grown up to be leaders in our Jewish and secular communities. In Habonim we learned that one person can make a difference for many others, and that working together we can change the world. We learned that every person counts. We learned to subsume our individual desires to achieve the common goal. We learned the dignity of labor. We learned how to be leaders and how to stand up for what we believe in and how to make it stick. We learned that idealism can infuse our everyday lives. And for many of us, it still does.
I went to my first Habonim meetingwhen I was 10 years old. It was a small group, just the Habonim types from the San Gabriel Valley, and I believe we met at the Dybnis family’s school. I don’t remember the program at all but it must have been Shabbat because afterwards they danced the hora. I had never seen anything like it, and I just knew I had to join this group. So I did.
Just one thing before I give up the stage. As much as I love Habonim, I have to say the Hebrew I learned there was a little warped. I have been taking a Hebrew class at American Jewish University, formerly UJ, for many years. Imagine my surprise when I found out that “tnua”, the word we used in Habonim for “movement” – the “youth movement” –a word of deep and almost spiritual significance, a holy word – in Israel the word “tnua” mostly means “traffic.” As in, “Sorry I’m late, the TNUA was horrendous.” So let’s not take ourselves too totally seriously.
Thank you everyone for your kind attention, thank you Habonim for everything you’ve given me, and thank you Ameinu for this wonderful honor. I will always remember this night and I will strive to keep the ideals of our tnua moving.
