Safe and sound

We are happy to report to you that Shnat 2010 came to a successful end, and all the Shnatties have returned home or continued on their travels, safe and sound!

Here are a few shots from the sikkum (concluding) seminar at kibbutz Shfayim, on the coast:

One on ones

Peer-led evening program

Closing tekes (ceremony)

Madrichim good-bye speech

Farewell pillow-case signing

It's been a great year! Best of luck to all the Shnatties, and we hope to see you here again soon!

Mesimot and Socio-economic Seminar

As we start the final week of Kaveret, I'd like to share with you scenes from some of the mesimot that our Shnatties have been working on in the past three months.

First up is the after-school enrichment activities run by one of the Kiyum Meshutaf (shared existence) tzvatim (teams) in Sakhnin, an Arab-Israeli city in the north. The kids in these activities volunteered to stay after school in order to participate in these English-enrichment and activities run by Australians and New Zealanders, and the programmes are so popular that there's not enough space for all the kids that want to participate! In this programme, the kids made a "recipe" based on the different "ingredients" of their identity, which as you can see include family, Arab culture, friends, and Israel, and through this talk about how what dilemmas of identity they face and how they balance those different aspects.




Next is the Carmiel tzevet, which works with Jewish Israeli youth, both sabra and immigrant, in the Emda school in Carmiel - an amazing place for troubled teens that incorporates both small classes which try to strengthen the teens' formal education, and a lot of different informal activities including hiking and a new program of dog-training in a real kennel! On this day the school students were helping out in a work project to repaint their moadon (clubhouse) by the school, and the Shnatties were there working with them and having fun:


Another one of the Kiyum Meshutaf tzvatim, tzevet Tamra - an Arab village not far from Carmiel. The tzevet here spends the mornings teaching English classes in the local junior high school, and in the afternoons they run informal activities in the Hanoar Haoved ken next to the school - building up a deeper relationship with some of the kids from the school, including educational programmes about peace and coexistence, and sometimes just hanging out with the kids. Here they are in the Tamra ken (local chapter - equivalent to Habo House) waiting for the after-school activities to start:


Another mesima with Jewish youth is at the Dshanim School in Kiryat Ata (near Haifa), a school that takes dropout teens and gives them a smaller, more personal learning environment so they can try to overcome difficulties and succeed. The Shnatties tutor kids one on one in English, a subject usually considered to be hard and boring, but because our Shnatties are really cool and friendly, the kids all want to sign up for regular English tutoring with them! Some of the tutoring practices basic vocabulary, and some combines English vocabulary and important concepts for teenagers to discuss, like freedom of speech, equality, and responsibility. Here are two madrichim from the Dshanim tzevet in the school courtyard, during a break between classes:



Meanwhile, as the Shnatties have been dealing with some of the different populations within Israeli society and especially as they come into contact with its more troubled facets, they have also been learning through weekly courses about these different groups and what processes have led Israel to its current economic and social situation. The peak of that learning process was a two day Socio-Economic Seminar which dealt with the Zionist vision, the history of privatization, the current reality and the question of what their responsibility as Jews and Zionists is towards the issues they are meeting in their mesimot and in Kaveret generally. The seminar included a day siyur in Tel Aviv, both through some of the tougher neighborhoods of South Tel Aviv like the Shchunat Ha'argazim, Neve Sha'anan foreign workers' district, and the Hatikva Quarter:

As well as a visit to the posh Kikar Hamedina in North Tel Aviv, for a better understanding of the gaps:


The day concluded with challenging, very meaningful discussions of what their responsibility is for this situation, and for similar situations in New Zealand and Australia.


As a bonus, here are two of the Shnatties from the Akko house describing their culinary experiences on Kaveret:

Rabin Seminar and Rally

As mentioned in the last post, one week ago the OZ/NZ Shnat group travelled to Nordia Hostel to meet up with Shnatties from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the US, Canada, England, Scotland, and South Africa, and together to have a joint seminar about the legacy of Yitzchak Rabin: the meaning of peace in politics and in education, the difficulty of educating for peace in times of ongoing conflict, and the obligation of Habonim Dror to take an active role educating towards peace and against violence and extremism. This incredible world-wide seminar brings together Habo members from so many different countries with different perspectives and understandings, around shared content which is very important for all of them, and so it is always an interesting and meaningful experience. The seminar included programs in mixed groups (with the option of Hebrew, English and Spanish-language groups), a guest speaker, fun bonding evening between the different countries, and a final tekes to commemorate Rabin and discuss Habonim Dror's role.

Around 150 Shnatties from around the world

The amazing Shnat madrichim relaxing during a break on the seminar! (Gabe, Ea, Merose and Amos)

The final tekes of the seminar

This Saturday night, the Shnatties met up again in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square for the Rally, the 15th annual memorial event since the assassination. The speakers included President Shimon Peres, members of the Rabin family, and prominent writers and public figures, and there were musical performances by noted musicians including Mosh Ben-Ari and Avraham Tal. Some of our Shnatties in attendance:

The sign behind them reads, "Fighting for Peace"

The square was packed

You can read more about the rally in Ha'aretz.

Kaveret underway

Since the last blog update, things have been busy here for the Shnatties! They enjoyed resting up after Poland and spending Rosh Hashana here in Israel with family and friends. After getting back from chofesh, the Shnatties settled into their new houses, to practice living independently – shopping on a budget, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and enjoying having a space of their own to run activities or just hang out. Here you can see some of them hanging out around the house in Carmiel, and doing a cool crafts project:

Their first week was the beginning of their regular Kaveret schedule which includes mesima (volunteer projects), Yom Kvutza, Hebrew classes, an Israeli society course taught by their Kaveret rakazim (coordinators), and va’adot (committee) planning time where they meet in different committees that are responsible for different aspects of their life – from house maintenance, to budgeting and shopping, to planning cultural events for the group. They also have on most Thursday afternoons a joint State Time where the Akko and Carmiel houses meet and split up according to state to start their discussions about returning to their kenim and leading together.

That first week also featured the very meaningful “relationships seminar”, a unique Shnat experience where the group, which has now spent many amazing but challenging months together, tries to deepen their friendships and also challenge ech other on difficult issues. They do this by spending a two day seminar exploring the meaning of feedback, dialogue, barriers, communication and forgiveness. In both Akko and Carmiel this seminar was very successful and meaningful for all the Shnatties and really set the tone for them starting off living together for the rest of Shnat.

The next week was the Sukkot holiday, and on Shnat, Sukkot week also means the annual Yam L’yam (sea to sea) tiyul! All of Habo’s English-speaking Shnatties from around the world came together to explore the land of Israel on foot, starting from the Mediterranean beach in the west, all the way east to the Kinneret. This four day tiyul featured long days of hiking in mixed groups with the American, Canadian, British, Scottish and South African Shnat participants, through Crusader castles, past great Rabbis’ tombs, down river beds and up mountains (including the famous Mt. Meron, Israel’s second-highest peak) , preparing and eating food in our ‘field kitchen’, and running get-to-know-you activities in the evening. The grand finale was arriving at the Kinneret beach after four long days of hiking and jumping in the water for a refreshing swim! In all the Yam L’yam this year was a huge success, with great bonding between the different countries and a hard but rewarding hiking experience.

After Sukkot and Simchat Torah, the holidays finally came to an end and the regular routine finally kicked in. The Shnatties are doing six different mesimot this year: at the Dshanim school in Haifa, in Akko, on a Coexistence tzevet in several Arab towns in the area, in Carmiel, in Tzfat, and in Tiberias. They are running a variety of activities, from running English activities in schools, doing one-on-one tutoring, doing after-school enrichment activities, and even running peulot in the ken just like they have in Australia and New Zealand. One special project running for the first time this year, is the correspondence project with Australian Habo, where students in year 6 and 7 from several of the mesimot are writing English letters to year 6s and year 7s from Habo OZ, and they are going to correspond to practice their English and help connect the Habo kids to Israel!

This past week they Shnatties also travelled to a special encounter with the Chavot Hachshara - the Shnatties of Habonim Dror’s Israeli sister movement, Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed. This meeting was part of Shnat for a long time but hadn’t happened in the past few years, and so it was especially exciting to bring the two groups together as youth movement leaders from Israel and the Diaspora together who have a lot things in common and a lot of differences. They spent a full day together in the Chavot talking about how they understand their Jewish and Zionist identity, and how they see the role of their movements in their communities. Many interesting discussions came up and the Shnatties will see the Chavot again at the upcoming Rabin Memorial Rally in Tel Aviv.

In preparation for that rally, the group also visited a Yitzchak Rabin memorial exhibition in Carmiel this week, dealing with Prime Minister Rabin’s life, his term as Prime Minister and involvement with the peace process, the incitement leading up to his assassination, and the political climate in Israel today. They will also be attending a seminar this weekend with all the Habonim Shnatties from around the world, including Spanish and Portugese speakers as well as English, where they will learn together about Rabin’s legacy of pursuing peace and the state of that legacy in Israel and Diaspora communities today, as well as thinking together what Habonim Dror’s role should be in carrying that on.

Poland write-up

Here is a write-up by two Shnatties to share with parents and friends what they experienced in Poland:

If you were to look up the word "Poland" in the dictionary, you would find "A republic in central Europe; the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939 started World War II". In the Shnat dictionary you would find a very different meaning. The reality of Poland for us was a very intense journey in an emotional, mental and physical sense. We went to concentration, labour and death camps including Auschwitz, Berkenau Majdanek, Plaszow and Treblinka. Testimonies were read. Memories were honoured. We visited the ghettos of Warsaw and Krakow and relived history in Synagogues, Cemetaries and at the Tykochine Shtetl. At Mila 18 we learnt of our ancestory, the uprisers of the Dror Movement. Simply put, we slept a little and learnt a lot.

It was a very difficult experience for us to be at the actual sights of the holocaust, many of us for the first time. All the stories and education suddenly became tangible and real. A lot of us struggled with conflicting emotions and were very confused that sometimes the predominant emotion we experienced was not, in fact, sadness. After much discussion we decided that this was not a negative thing because there are more powerful and complex emotions which better equip us to act, rather than simply dwelling on the sadness.

The reason that the Poland journey is such an integral part of our shnat year is for us to see and experience some of the greatest evils the world has ever committed, in order for us to be empowered to strive towards greater good. Throughout the journey, a huge emphasis was placed on our shichvah (group). We learnt about Dror’s role in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and how their brave madrichim (youth leaders) had such an impact in revolting against the Germans. This enabled us to critically evaluate our place, as a shichvah and individuals, in the movement back home. We dissected what it means to be a leader in a movement and began to think about how we could effect change (although not quite to this scale).

We feel that it is this aspect which set our journey apart from the others. As well as uncovering the horrors of the holocaust we were able to be inspired by the work of our movement and others, and this has set us down our own path in preparation to rejoin our communities next year as bogrim (leaders).

Aleh Ve’hagshem

Jade (Melbourne) & Hayley N (Sydney)

Poland Journey 2010

I am happy to write to you that the Shnat group has returned from Poland safely and soundly, having gone through a challenging but very meaningful experience there. The group visited extremely difficult places and also heard stories of hope and heroism, and went through it all together.

The first day was spent in Cracow, walking around the old Jewish quarter - Kazimierz - exploring the syngagogues and Jewish culture that existed for hundreds of years. Outside the Temple Synagogue there, Hailey read the story of her great-grandfather, a former president of that synagogue, whose name is still inscribed on stained glass window there:


The second day we traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau, which was a long and intense day. At the close of the day, the first tekes (ceremony) of many that were planned by some of the shnatties was held:



The third day was spent mainly in Cracow, first in the Plashow labor camp outside the city, and then in the Jewish ghetto area, including the former youth movement apartment where resistance was organized inside the ghetto. In the morning of the forth day, we visited the Jewish cemetary of Lublin and talked about some of the Hasidic leaders buried there. Then we walked around what used to be Nazi headquarters in Lublin, and focused on some of the different groups involved in the Nazi party and Hitler’s regime. In the afternoon we went to the concentration and death camp, Majdanek, situated only a few kilometers from downtown Lublin.

We spent the fifth day, walking around the Ghetto area and learning about its history and different aspects of life inside the Warsaw Ghetto. By one of the last remaining pieces of ghetto wall, Tal read his great-grandfather's last letter from inside the ghetto:



We also visited the Jewish cemetary of Warsaw, a massive cemetary with an incredible number of different stories, from famous Yiddish writers, to Jewish communists, to Hasidic saints, to get an understanding of the great diversity of pre-war Jewish society.

The sixth day we visited what once was the shtetl of Tykochin, where Jews had lived peacefully for many hundreds of years before traveling to Lopochowa, the site of their eventual demise. The afternoon we were in another death camp, Treblinka.

The last day in Poland was spent in Warsaw talking specifically about the youth movements and how they responded to the situation around them. We visited the site of a “chava” (literally – farm, but equivalent to “Shnat”) and Dzielna, the site of the Dror commune in the ghetto. The afternoon was spent walking through the path of remembrance and heroism, learning and discussing the uprisings and other various acts that took place in the ghetto. We finished with a rainy but moving final tekes at the Rapaport monument:



We left Poland Wednesday night and returned to Israel early Thursday morning, starting the Rosh Hashana chofesh period. Hopefully they've gotten some rest since the flight. After chag and Shabbat finish Saturday, they will be starting their first days of Kaveret and mesima (volunteer projects) Sunday morning.

Kaveret & Poland

Hello parents and friends!

The Shnatties have wrapped up their stay on Kibbutz Revivim with their last days of work and ulpan, and throughout the last few weeks, many kibbutzniks specifically mentioned that they considered this group to be hard-working and great to have around. They also had a fun party by the pool with Revivim coordinators Goldie and Ofra!
They also left their mark visually with a few beautiful new murals around the kibbutz including this one painted by Misty on the Ulpan office:



From there it was north to the youth hostel in the historic Galilee village of Pekiin, where Jews, Arabs and Druze have been living together harmoniously for thousands of years, for their Kaveret Preparation Seminar. The Shnatties spent four days talking about the meaning of their group life in their new Kaveret houses and planning how they would like to shape this life as a community, choosing what
mesimot (educational project) tzvatim they will be doing in different Israeli communities and what approach they would like to bring to these projects, and how this all fits into the question of Zionism and their responsibility to the Jewish People. They also took a break from talking to tour the historic area of Pekiin, visiting the ancient synagogue, the cave where Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai is reputed to have hidden from the Romans for 12 years and written the Zohar, and the fountain in the village center, where they enjoyed Druze-made pita with labane, zaatar, and olive oil as a refreshment after climbing through the hilly village.


Historic building in Pekiin depicted on Israeli 100-shekel note

On Sunday, with great fanfare and excitement, moved their belongings
and themselves into their new houses in Carmiel and Acco:

Shnattie belongings in Carmiel:


The group in Akko:


After moving in they spent a day with their Kaveret rakazim (coordinators) touring their cities, both learning where useful spots like the grocery store, bank and post office are located, and hearing more about the history and socio-economic situation of the place where they will be living. Tomorrow they have a day to rest and pack their bags, and tomorrow night we will be taking off for Poland.

A thorough itinerary with contact details for the group whilst in Poland was sent to all shnat families. If for some reason you have not received the information, please contact Daniel or Jo. Please note that there will be no internet or mobile phone contact for shnatties while out of Israel. We will post another blog update once the group returns!