- Rebecca Leibowitz -
On an otherwise typical day in April 1909, sixty-six Jewish families gathered on a desolate sand dune on what is now Rothschild Boulevard to divide the land by using seashells. Every piece of the city was designed to reflect the identity of the "new Jew", and it is from this ideology that the new urban metropolis of Tel Aviv bears its name. That same year, Degania Alef, the first kibbutz, was established by the shores of the Kinneret, built out of swamp land with Jewish ploughs. We recall these stories as moments in the romantic time-line of the founding, against all odds, of a modern Jewish State. These facts about Israeli heroes of years ago have become part of a collective story.
What is the modern pioneering story of the Jewish people?
Last month, I explored additional examples of personalities and places of the Israeli past with a group of assistant and associate directors of camps from across North America. At site after site, monument after monument, this group challenged our guides and educators for the story behind the story: What does it mean that Yad Vashem does not allow groups to visit without a museum-trained guide? Does it matter that a number of those first members of Kibbutz Degania either left the kibbutz or committed suicide? What are the messages that those who write our collective Jewish story want us to hear? And what is left out?
Among the themes, the one that most shocks me is that those young pioneers were just teenagers, who acted out of a social responsibility. In many cases, they left their families behind in far-away lands to do something irrational but sexy. Many of these young pioneers paid the price for going against the grain.
The romantic kids of Israeli history were very similar to the campers and students that we all work with today, albeit with one small difference. In today's manifestation of the Jewish community, young pioneers aren't doing it alone; We, the educators of the Jewish community, are running the programs, planning their curricula, hiring their counselors, and translating for them the collective Jewish story.
Mini-Israel is not just a tour-bus stop in Latrun, half-way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem - it's happening all over the world, and it is today's Jewish community that is defining this experience for the next generation. Intentionally Jewish spaces, such as Jewish summer camps, have the opportunity to create learning laboratories to explore what it means when Jews recognize their collective responsibility to rule these spaces with whatever values we choose to impart.
Israel, with its beauty and complexities, exists today with a Jewish autonomy and majority. The way that Israel chooses to tell the story of the Jewish people, both through what the government highlights and what it does not unearth, is an educational model for us all, and one that we must take seriously and with criticism if we are to reach today's youth. It is through this process that we find the trends and themes that allow us to makes the stories that we tell continuously compelling, generation after generation, long after the pioneers have seemingly gone.
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