Movements of the people

Here’s a gem of a secret for you: save for a positive environment at home, the best way to instil a strong Jewish identity in young Jews is to send them to a youth movement. Last week, I went back to my old movement, Habonim Dror, for the first time in a few years, and it reminded me exactly why.

It’s equally applicable to all the movements, where the minutiae of Israeli society are explored, Jewish texts pored over, and life-long Jewish friends made, and it’s really something to see. Where else in Australia could you see 50 16-yearolds reading and analysing Zionist poetry from the Second Aliyah?

In total, this summer, more than 750 Jews, all aged 21 and under, came to express their Zionism and to pass it on to their peers across Australia’s six youth movements. From religious to labour to reform Zionism and everything in between, there is a dynamism in Australia’s youth movements that hasn’t been stronger in decades.

Oftentimes students reject Jewish-themed classes in secondary school, preferring to let their minds wander to happier places. But not at the movements, where each week hundreds of students actively choose to participate in further Jewish learning for no reason other than because it appeals to them. They participate in a collective, informal atmosphere, learning about Jewish history, culture and peoplehood, as they have in Australia for almost three quarters of a century.

Each of the last two years has seen more than 150 participants go on youth movement Shnat programs, the highest numbers ever. Students learn at programs like the famous Machon in Jerusalem, volunteer in small development towns, work on kibbutzim, and are absorbed into Israeli society; and all these students choose to do this because they want to understand and identify more with their Judaism and with Israel.

Over the years, the impact of the movements is impossible to ignore – much of Australia’s Jewish communal leadership, as well as many of our expats now overseas, came through the movements. Movements around the world have produced Mark Regev, Tzipi Livni, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ehud Olmert to name but a few.

And increasingly, aliyah is a bigger part of the process in Australia. I’ve watched over the past five years as more than a dozen of my closest friends have packed their bags for kibbutzim, the army and the white sands of Tel Aviv beach, making their lives as army officers, physiotherapists, teachers and lawyers.

There is nothing like the atmosphere generated by 250 young Jews screaming “make aliyah, make aliyah, we won’t shut up ’til you make aliyah” to celebrate one of their peers making the huge ideological leap to Israel, and these scenes are now happening increasingly often at camps and weekly meetings across Australia.

I’m told that 2010 was the biggest year for aliyah from Australia in about 30 years, with more than 260 Australians moving their lives to Israel from all walks of life – young, old, religious, secular, left-wing and right, and many of them youth movement graduates.

Because no matter the situation in Israel or your perspective on Israeli politics, aliyah and Zionism transcend individual issues. Israel is an expression of Jewish peoplehood, and nothing can undermine that at its core. The desire to move to Israel to improve the country and the Jewish people is fierce, and no number of loyalty oaths, flotillas or wars can change that.

If anything, it’s quite the opposite; many of my friends who have made aliyah have seen elements of dysfunction within Israeli society and sought to be part of the positive change they think it needs, and movement graduates, through their ideals of positively moulding the society around that, possess values that embody that.

If you want to find some of the most active members of our community, those who grapple each and every week with complex issues of Jewish peoplehood, religion and culture, then to me it’s a no brainer. Some are saying that generation Y couldn’t care less about Judaism, that they don’t understand what it’s like for Israelis, and if only they sat down to take an interest, the Jewish world would be better off.

To them I say that they should look no further than centres of young Jews in the community having their identities developed better than almost any other institution we have – our Zionist youth movements.

• Aliyah moves to Facebook, 100 years after Deganya
• Who’s talkin’ ’bout my generation?
• The Independent features Habonim UK: “a hothouse for the entertainment industry”