Veida

I would like to end my visit with you in South Africa as a guest with a few impressions of my stay.

As a graduate of HDSA, a citizen of Israel since I made Aliyah in 1976 and as a chaver Kibbutz (Tzorah) since 1987, I want to say categorically that my fears as to the state of the movement I would find in South Africa, were totally confounded.

I was warned that that HDSA today was not at all the movement I left in 1976 to go on Aliyah and I have to say, it was not and for all the right reasons. The South Africa I left in 1976 is not the same South Africa, the Israel I came to in the same year is not the same Israel, in fact the world in 2009 is so different from that I lived in all those years ago growing up in South Africa.

I have worked for the last twenty five years in Zionist Education, as a shaliach in the United States, as a shaliach in the UK , on short term shlichuyot in a number of countries, as a senior team member at Melitz, the Centre for Jewish and Zionist Education, with the Israel Experience, and guiding groups connected to the various major Jewish Organisations in the USA, Canada and the UK in Israel as a guide and at times in the role of a scholar in residence. As a result of the recent fighting in Gaza and the South of Israel, I returned just weeks before my visit to SA from a speaking tour on the East Coast of the USA in Washington, Philadelphia, Hartford and Richmond. An additional area of work which I have developed over the past 5 years is a project called Jewish Journeys where I lead groups of Jewish travellers to places connected to the history of our People.

Two of my children were serving until recently in the IDF, my son Elad as a paratrooper, in the same regiment I served in many years ago and my daughter Maya still serves as an officer with one of the intelligence units of the IDF.

In short, from the moment I left SA for Israel I decided that my life's work would be connected to that which I feel most strongly about, the Jewish People and Israel. I am very involved in questions connected to our strength as a people, both as a fascination as I am so aware of the cost of powerlessness to the Jewish People over the centuries, and as an area of work in the guiding I do both in Israel and throughout Europe and North Africa where this is so often one of the most important motifs.

I say all of this as a preamble to my view that the Habonim Dror Southern Africa that I encountered falls clearly within the conversations crucial to the Jewish People. I found a group of committed young Jews, struggling in the most honest way possible to put together a number of commitments:

• A commitment to a Judaism in which ethical behaviour has a major place.
• A commitment to an Israel where the values which made the Jewish People great, which have enabled us to disagree so passionately whether it be via the pages of the Talmud or whether it be as the different responses to the modern world emerged and to still remain one People, still hold true (an open society, a society which affirms the right to diverse opinion, the right to the great freedoms which the voices of the Prophets have given us as a part of our core heritage and which was so eloquently continued in the Mussar movement in Lithuania and beyond their destruction in the Second World War to the great cultural hubs of New York, Tel Aviv, London and Paris).
• A commitment to a South Africa so wonderfully different from the South Africa I left.
• A commitment to truth even when it hurts.

These commitments are not always easy to hold together especially when one has not the experience it sometimes takes to deal with the disappointments of compromises and the vision to see beyond the compromises we need to sometimes make.

I would like to end with this: at our peril we push those with whom we have disagreements to the edges of our People. The great challenge of Peoplehood is to anchor ourselves to the values we share, not to confuse Tradition with many small 't' traditions we create and to use the energy of those who challenge the notions we hold as we make our compromises.

I recommend the chaverim and chaverot of Habonim Dror South Africa to you as these people. Nurture them so they may take their place in the generations of Israel.

Shalom,

Julian Resnick