An unexpected collective identity

Late Friday afternoon, several dozen young people gathered in a public shelter in a neighborhood park in Holon. They sat on a tattered carpet, around two Shabbat candles stuck in disposable cups and a braided challah on an aluminum tray. The welcoming of the Sabbath ceremony was held as usual. One member of the Central Holon Hashomer Hatzair ken - nest, the term used for youth movement clubhouses - read the weekly Torah portion with a modern interpretation.

The Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony is an old tradition in Hashomer Hatzair [the Young Guardian], and it is faithfully observed in all the movement's 55 kens. It began as a kind of defiance - the young boys and girls, dressed in shorts, spent time together in the ken, "without parental supervision," says Dr. Yizhar Ben Nahum, a historian from Yad Ya'ari, the center for documentation and research of the Kibbutz Ha'artzi movement and Hashomer Hatzair, in Givat Haviva. "But over time, the young people began to spend their time in discotheques, and they [the Kabbalat Shabbat ceremonies] began to lose their significance." Today, says Ben Nahum, the movement's attitude to the ceremony is much more serious, and its religious significance has been restored.

The socialist Zionist movement, whose traditional blue shirts with white laces are in evidence at all the demonstrations of the left, has begun in the last two years to move closer to Judaism. Ben Nahum sees a real revolution: "In the beginning, the movement was characterized by an interest in Judaism, but only from the historical and folkloric aspects. In essence, this was a secular movement, which openly educated toward atheism. Today it has changed."

In brochures distributed to movement activists about two months ago, alongside humanism, Zionism, socialism and brotherhood among nations - the values the movement has been teaching its members for 90 years - another goal has been added: "to educate toward creating a person involved in Jewish culture and creative within it."

In this spirit, at the end of July, when the 20,000 members of Hashomer Hatzair gather at the ninth "Shomria" - an event that has been taking place once every decade since the founding of the movement - they will see a performance the likes of which has probably never been staged in the past in this context: Representatives of the adult members will perform in a play based on content from the Talmud, adapted to the current situation in Israel.

Yaniv Sagi, the movement's secretary-general, says that Hashomer Hatzair's distancing itself from Judaism was a mistake. "The movement has always aspired to a connection with Jewish culture, but it wasn't expressed," he says. "The reason is that our identification with the leftist camp in Israel placed us, too, in the fight against the religious."

Tzipka Efrat, 88, a member of Kibbutz Ein Hashofet and a graduate of Hashomer Hatzair, says the change in the movement can be considered a new realization of the old values. "The worldview that was once common was perhaps atheist, but the movement considered the Hebrew Bible our history, and Judaism the most solid infrastructure of a cohesive society, which is the basis of an enlightened society. We believed in the autonomy of man, and in his responsibility toward himself and society. We didn't believe that God guides us, and nevertheless we used to observe the Jewish holidays. On Simhat Torah [the holiday of the rejoicing in the Torah] we visited a Hasidic synagogue and sang Hasidic tunes with all our hearts, with our youthful longing for a more beautiful life.

"In our day," says Efrat, "one of the important goals of enlightened people was to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic society, and not to allow the ultra-Orthodox to take over Judaism, which is one of its most beautiful components, for themselves."

Lost relevance

During the past 15 years, in the wake of the financial crisis in the kibbutz movement, the Hashomer Hatzair movement dwindled. Settling in a kibbutz - the traditional goal toward which the youth were meant to aspire - was no longer realistic, and the number of activists dropped steadily.

"This glorious youth movement lost its relevance," says Sagi. "We continued to say with missionary zeal that the model of the just and good life is life in a kibbutz, but the situation changed, and we didn't introduce innovations. We didn't identify the changes in Israeli society, and we didn't find new ways to fulfill our goals."

In an attempt to bring in new members, after years in which the movement shrank and closed kens, Sagi is now leading a profound change in philosophy, which is arousing a great deal of opposition in the kibbutzim: On the one hand, they are recruiting people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods and new immigrants; and on the other hand, they are abandoning the idea of fulfillment of goals on a kibbutz, in favor of new models of communal life, in an attempt to restore the vitality and the intimacy lost by the large kibbutzim.

For now, the first pioneer is Kibbutz Pelech in the north, home to several communes of former movement members. Each commune is living in its own building and conducting a communal life - an intimate framework, in which the individual does not turn into one member among many. In order to help run the entire kibbutz, the communes help each other out. At the same time, the movement is encouraging the establishment of small urban communes, whose members work within and for the community, mainly with weak populations.

Hashomer Hatzair's main problem, says Sagi, was its elitist, Ashkenazi image, which aroused antagonism among its new target audience. Hashomer Hatzair of the 21st century is no longer a leftist, Ashkenazi movement; today many members have rightist political views, and don't consider kibbutz an ideal way of life. "Today the movement is more of a popular movement, and less a reflection of the middle-class and above," he says. "I find that this has a great deal of socialist importance - this is how we reach a broader and less affluent population among the Israeli public."

The goal of the movement, according to Sagi, is education. "We have to impart our value system to Israeli society," he says. "Our success will be measured in the number of youth members who have acquired a set of values with which they will demonstrate responsibility in their urban communities."

An example of the new vision can be seen in the Central Holon ken, which was in the past one of the largest kens of the movement, and at its peak numbered more than 1,500 members. During the 1990s, it started to thin out, and finally it was closed. In 1994 it reopened in a small public shelter and managed to bring in only 30 members. It was closed again; and in September, 2001 was reopened.

Among its 80 members today, it is hard to find young people who fit the Hashomer Hatzair stereotype: Most are traditional in their religious observance, with rightist views and and new immigrants from the CIS. Shiran Shalev, an 11th grader, joined because she wanted to be involved in activity that isn't "hanging around in the mall with friends." Shalev says that her parents expressed reservations when they heard about her decision to join Hashomer Hatzair. "But I'm not here because of the politics," she says. "And I'm not the only right-winger in the ken, and nobody tries to change my views when I express them during political activities."

Danit Angel, the communarit, or leader and coordinator of the Ramat Aviv ken, came to the movement from a right-wing, traditional home. Her ken, which was about to be closed about three years ago, now numbers 84 members. "There is no longer an ideal image of a "shmutznik" [a slang term for a member of Hashomer Hatzair], to which everyone is supposed to adapt," she says. "It's no longer a priori that everyone goes out to demonstrations of the left - I don't go to every demonstration, either. In the past it impossible to find a ken leader like me who didn't attend all the demonstrations dressed in a Hashomer Hatzair shirt."

In the Yeruham ken, which was closed in the mid-1990s and reopened two years ago, it's even more difficult to see that this is a branch of a glorious kibbutz-sponsored movement - most of the activity is not related at all to the traditional values of the movement. "We managed to renew activity in Yeruham not out of socialism, nor out of Zionism," says Sagi. He says that the majority of the 60 members there are new immigrants from the CIS. "We discovered that they don't participate in informal educational activities, so we asked them what activity they would be interested in - they asked for English lessons." The movement gave them a teacher and "they themselves asked to have a ken established. I feel that part of our role in Israeli society is to work with new communities and to create a link between them and more veteran communities."

In the ken in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Rehovot, where most of the members are new immigrants from Ethiopia, there is an Ethiopian mediator who advises youth leaders on how to approach the members. Her goal, according to Sagi, "is bridging between the veteran Israeli movement and the new population."

The approach to new communities has arrested the movement's decline. In a census of the youth movements about seven years ago, there were 14,800 members, and in the last census about two months ago, the movement reported 15,100 members. In addition, this year 200 requests - three times as many as last year - were received by graduates of the movement wishing to postpone their military service in order to do a year of service as leaders in the various kens. Eighty young people are interested in joining the next Hashomer Hatzair Nahal group [an army unit that combines combat with agricultural or community service], as opposed to 20 last year.

But quite a few people in Hashomer Hatzair and in the Kibbutz Ha'artzi are opposed to the new philosophyof Sagi - and not just the older people. They claim that it abandons the original vision and the foundations on which the movement is based.

One critic is Tal Almaliah, 25, a graduate of the Einot Yarden ken in Kibbutz Snir. Almaliah, who in the coming months is supposed to move to Kibbutz Pelech, believes that before the movements turns to a broad population, it must devote more resources to encourage the revival of the kibbutz ideal. "We mustn't aspire to be like other youth movements," he says. "What is special about us is that as adults we implement the values of the socialist settlement. Our role is not to pay social dues, but to contribute to society by creating an alternative lifestyle."

Doron Lieber, a former coordinator of the Hashomer Hatzair's education department, who lives in Kibbutz Metzer, also opposes the change: "Instead of educating toward community involvement in the cities, let them devote most of the resources to fulfillment of the kibbutz [ideal] in the 21st century. Hashomer Hatzair is the reserve force of the left and of socialist life, and its training base is the kibbutz," he says. "It is unacceptable that just because it's difficult to sell this produce today, the movement should resort to a more popular policy and submit to public opinion. Let them invest in Jessie Cohen [a disadvantaged neighborhood in Holon], but don't allow them to forget us, the kibbutz members, who fund the movement."

Tzipka Efrat, on the other hand, welcomes the recruitment of members who are observant of tradition. "There is no need to talk in the ken about atheism - there is greater socialist importance in turning to large communities. We can talk about cohesiveness and social justice on the one hand, and on the other hand make it clear to them that the movement will not observe religious commandments. The reality has changed."