Habonim Dror, the Tnuat Bogrim, and "wtf mate?"
So every member of HDNA knows the score, right? It's the North American chapter of the international movement Habonim Dror. And then there's this thing called the Tnuat Bogrim (graduate's movement) which some people might have heard of.
The relationship between these organizations can get complex at times. Things like funding and Israeli Shlichim flow down to Habonim from the Kibbutz Movement through Habonim Dror Olami (World HD). However, it is not World HD who runs most of our programming: in America we plan our own stuff (as might be expected) and in Israel the Tnuat Bogrim plan and run all the educational aspects of the movement, even though technically HDO has authority.
This is all interesting, but not really what I mean to talk about today. For you see, as those of you who read the Habonim Dror Olami website already know, the Tnuat Bogrim has recently declared that they will no longer be a part of HD Olami, and made a huge request to the national movements like HDNA - transfer control of your shnat (workshop) programs over to the Tnuat Bogrim.
Before we get into what this means, let me just ask one thing of you. Don't spread this around. By this I mean don't get on the phone or AIM to your best friend and be like "Yo HDNA is not gonna be a part of world habonim dror any more!" or something like that. I know little enough about what's happening that I probably shouldn't be blogging about this - meaning that you know even less than that, and starting rumors about this and creating panic is exactly what HDNA does NOT need around now.
That being said, here's what this power struggle means. If HDNA choses to disown the Tnuat Bogrim, they lose their educators. The Tnuat Bogrim runs MBI, and more importantly it runs Workshop - I'll get into why it's so irreplaceable, but for the moment just accept that it's fairly true. If, however, HDNA choses to follow the Tnuat Bogrim out of HD Olami it loses the political ties that bring it Israeli Shlichim, funding from the Kibbutz Movement and the Jewish Agency, to say nothing of it's existing connections to the other national movements (especially those in latin america). Again, though these connections could theoretically be reforged it would be a huge disaster to the movement to lose them.
All this brings the following question into the spotlight: why? Why does the Tnuat Bogrim feel the need for these extreme measures? The reason is one of ideology.
Ever since the 1970's the kibbutz movement has been on a downswing. Fewer and fewer kibbutzim were being founded, and more and more were becoming privatized as agriculture and defending the borders became less relevant to Israel's current situation. As a result of this aliya, which was the official goal of the movement up through the turn of the century, has been in a steady decline until in the 1990's nobody had made chalutzik aliya for 10 years and nobody running the movement was seriously planning to.
This eventually resulted in the creation of the Tnuat Bogrim - if you wanna learn more than that, either ask me or go on Workshop. The TB is made up of people who made aliya not to traditional kibbutzim but instead to "kibbutzei ironi" or urban kibbutzim, and instead of farming the land work towards reforming Israeli society. Work that is (in my opinion and theirs) both loyal to the ultimate goals of the movement as they have always been and relevant to today's society.
Unfortunately HD Olami doesn't agree with all this. Silvio Joskowicz, the world Mazkir Tnua (chief movement secretary), is a kibbutznik who has privatized along with the kibbutz he lives on, a kibbutz I had the privilege of sharing with him for a few months earlier this year. He has been mazkir for 9 years, where previously the mazkirut had passed from the hands of a spanish speaker to an english speaker every 4 years. And all in all the World HD office is run like the office of a corporation, with him being the CEO of aforesaid company and having final say in all matters.
Now this goes against our principles, because we believe in shituf (cooperation) and democracy. And the TB have tried to institute structural changes in order to put some checks and balances on Silvio's power, but all of these efforts have come to nothing over the past few years. Which brings us to what's happening now.
What happened about a week ago was that James and Mauri, representing the english and spanish speakers of the Tnuat Bogrim, put a letter on Silvio's desk in the world office with a list of structural changes. Some of these changes would have to be instituted before the TB would run any more programs for HDO.
Alot to take in, no? It hasn't been much easier following it day by day, less than 100 miles away from where it's all been happening.
Who's in the right, you ask? As I've already said, if needed my vote goes for the Tnuat Bogrim. But I think what will happen is that both sides will make some concessions and when the dust settles there will once again be only 1 habonim dror, hopefully a better one.
If you want more info on the current situation comment here and I have a list of all the major letters/public forum posts that I found relevant to the conflict to date that I can e-mail you. Several were in portugese or spanish so I used a free online translator to handle those, and then cleaned up the grammer by hand. I encourage you all to read it, either from me or on the HD olami forum topic about it, before speaking about it to friends - remember that even if you know what you want to explain to your friends, you need to know MORE than that to explain it well.
Ah well. I'd love to talk about this more, so feel free to comment or IM me about it. Hope y'all are doing well!
Aleh V'Hagshem!
Josh Marantz
The relationship between these organizations can get complex at times. Things like funding and Israeli Shlichim flow down to Habonim from the Kibbutz Movement through Habonim Dror Olami (World HD). However, it is not World HD who runs most of our programming: in America we plan our own stuff (as might be expected) and in Israel the Tnuat Bogrim plan and run all the educational aspects of the movement, even though technically HDO has authority.
This is all interesting, but not really what I mean to talk about today. For you see, as those of you who read the Habonim Dror Olami website already know, the Tnuat Bogrim has recently declared that they will no longer be a part of HD Olami, and made a huge request to the national movements like HDNA - transfer control of your shnat (workshop) programs over to the Tnuat Bogrim.
Before we get into what this means, let me just ask one thing of you. Don't spread this around. By this I mean don't get on the phone or AIM to your best friend and be like "Yo HDNA is not gonna be a part of world habonim dror any more!" or something like that. I know little enough about what's happening that I probably shouldn't be blogging about this - meaning that you know even less than that, and starting rumors about this and creating panic is exactly what HDNA does NOT need around now.
That being said, here's what this power struggle means. If HDNA choses to disown the Tnuat Bogrim, they lose their educators. The Tnuat Bogrim runs MBI, and more importantly it runs Workshop - I'll get into why it's so irreplaceable, but for the moment just accept that it's fairly true. If, however, HDNA choses to follow the Tnuat Bogrim out of HD Olami it loses the political ties that bring it Israeli Shlichim, funding from the Kibbutz Movement and the Jewish Agency, to say nothing of it's existing connections to the other national movements (especially those in latin america). Again, though these connections could theoretically be reforged it would be a huge disaster to the movement to lose them.
All this brings the following question into the spotlight: why? Why does the Tnuat Bogrim feel the need for these extreme measures? The reason is one of ideology.
Ever since the 1970's the kibbutz movement has been on a downswing. Fewer and fewer kibbutzim were being founded, and more and more were becoming privatized as agriculture and defending the borders became less relevant to Israel's current situation. As a result of this aliya, which was the official goal of the movement up through the turn of the century, has been in a steady decline until in the 1990's nobody had made chalutzik aliya for 10 years and nobody running the movement was seriously planning to.
This eventually resulted in the creation of the Tnuat Bogrim - if you wanna learn more than that, either ask me or go on Workshop. The TB is made up of people who made aliya not to traditional kibbutzim but instead to "kibbutzei ironi" or urban kibbutzim, and instead of farming the land work towards reforming Israeli society. Work that is (in my opinion and theirs) both loyal to the ultimate goals of the movement as they have always been and relevant to today's society.
Unfortunately HD Olami doesn't agree with all this. Silvio Joskowicz, the world Mazkir Tnua (chief movement secretary), is a kibbutznik who has privatized along with the kibbutz he lives on, a kibbutz I had the privilege of sharing with him for a few months earlier this year. He has been mazkir for 9 years, where previously the mazkirut had passed from the hands of a spanish speaker to an english speaker every 4 years. And all in all the World HD office is run like the office of a corporation, with him being the CEO of aforesaid company and having final say in all matters.
Now this goes against our principles, because we believe in shituf (cooperation) and democracy. And the TB have tried to institute structural changes in order to put some checks and balances on Silvio's power, but all of these efforts have come to nothing over the past few years. Which brings us to what's happening now.
What happened about a week ago was that James and Mauri, representing the english and spanish speakers of the Tnuat Bogrim, put a letter on Silvio's desk in the world office with a list of structural changes. Some of these changes would have to be instituted before the TB would run any more programs for HDO.
Alot to take in, no? It hasn't been much easier following it day by day, less than 100 miles away from where it's all been happening.
Who's in the right, you ask? As I've already said, if needed my vote goes for the Tnuat Bogrim. But I think what will happen is that both sides will make some concessions and when the dust settles there will once again be only 1 habonim dror, hopefully a better one.
If you want more info on the current situation comment here and I have a list of all the major letters/public forum posts that I found relevant to the conflict to date that I can e-mail you. Several were in portugese or spanish so I used a free online translator to handle those, and then cleaned up the grammer by hand. I encourage you all to read it, either from me or on the HD olami forum topic about it, before speaking about it to friends - remember that even if you know what you want to explain to your friends, you need to know MORE than that to explain it well.
Ah well. I'd love to talk about this more, so feel free to comment or IM me about it. Hope y'all are doing well!
Aleh V'Hagshem!
Josh Marantz
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