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Zionism Zine zionism zine “...you envisage the shadow of a distant dream you shared with your comrades, a dream of a far-off land, of Eretz Israel and its life of friendship and work, human dignity and pride.” ~In The Days of Destruction and Revolt, Zivia Lubetkin i’ve never wanted to kiss the ground so much as the things that grow out of the ground the trees the plants the weeds the delicate kumquats josh and tzivia combed them from the trees kept them in a bag offered me to bite through the narrow orange skin speckled like a golf ball it is the skin that’s sweet, i’m told not the fruit they’re unbearable sour the size of a grape and I can’t get through it fruit is stronger in eretz yisrael branches reach out to touch my face I want to kiss each leaf let the wood leave its mark on me in the chaparral I feel compelled. - erica kushner garin tzur mazkirol tnua 5781 This zine was created by members of Habonim Dror, a Progressive Labor Zionist youth movement. Zionism is many things for us—a source of inspiration, a historical legacy, a vision for a just society, an answer to antisemitism, a connection point with Jews around the world. Zionism is a deep idea, but sometimes it is sharp and bright. It seizes us with both hands, reaching up out of the pages of our own journals and shaking us by the shoulders: Wake up! Zionism is a wide river, with many different people living on its shores, floating their dreams and their sorrows downstream on rafts of every possible design. Can our we survive these currents? Channel them? We are the people that crossed a river. Yet Zionism can feel out of our hands—whether because we see Israeli leadership do horrible things in its name, or because we are told by other leftists that it is a form of racism. So it becomes a question: is Zionism ours? What does it look like when it is? How can we imagine it? Art, writing, and reflection give us the tools to explore our relationships to Zionism outside of the realm of a political debate. We created this zine to give ourselves a voice. We hope these pages fill you with different and perhaps contradictory emotions, that you will agree and disagree with what’s written, and that you will in turn be inspired to write your page in the story of our people. i left veida with so many hard feelings. hurt, betrayal, confusion. the world felt like it was crashing down, and as i started to imagine what my life would be like without the movement, i felt unbelievably alone. until my chanich (in 71, who hadn’t been at the veida) called me. he had heard pieces of what happened at the veida and was scared and confused. while i was explaining, he told me that he heard that i was in tears during the seminar. at first, i felt embarrassed and ashamed that i had publicly lost my composure like that, especially as the rosh of galil. i started to try to explain my watery display of emotion, why these issues felt deeply personal to me, but he stopped me. he told me they were proud to have a rosh who would care so deeply about the state of the movement, and fight so hard for what she believed in. that may or may not be true, but again, tears sprang to my eyes. i wondered why i felt so much shame in others knowing how much i cared, and i realized that it has become increasingly difficult to fully and unconditionally devote yourself to something. kvutza, the movement, zionism. the entire structure of our society fights against it. so many times in my life i have made myself smaller. i could talk about how i used to wear a cross that i found in a parking lot to elementary school because i didn’t want the other kids to think i was jewish. i could talk about how i didn’t come to a college class on a day where we were talking about israel, because i didn’t want to out myself as a zionist and be responsible for explaining how my zionism is different. i could talk about all of the times that we, as a people, have been forced to wear our identities silently, like a star of david hiding on bare skin underneath a shirt, in order to avoid violence, persecution, and discrimination. but i don’t want us to hide, and i don’t want our chanichimot to grow up in a world where their judaism puts them at greater risk of pain. i want to announce to the world that even the broken parts of judaism are mine, and it is my community and culture that hold me responsible to mending the injustices it has caused. i feel somewhat lost when imagining how we are supposed to educate our chanichimot to embrace their jewish identities when there will always be people who the try to silence our songs. but it begins with being jewish together, loudly. my chanich asked me what i thought would happen to the movement. at first i told him i didn’t know. we sat in silence for a few moments, a dark heaviness in the air. i didn’t know where it came from, but i blurted out, “but i have hope”. he sounded confused as he asked me why i had hope after everything that had happened. and the answer was instantly clear to me. i have hope because i am not alone. i have hope in our vision, that we are in the process of building and rebuilding, together. i have hope in the immense care that people feel toward our movement, and for the people who have chosen to dedicate their lives to it. i have hope in the partnership that lies in my kvutza, even when we are worlds apart. i have hope because i am a jew. - jenna abrams, rosh galil 2020, garin tzur bekah diamond-bier josh weinberg, garin tzur When I was running the New York City Ken in 2017, I was told about an upcoming event to celebrate the anniversary of the Partition Plan for Palestine. (On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of this plan, which would have partitioned the land of Palestine into two states—one Arab and one Jewish. An event was going to be held commemorating the 70th anniversary of this plan, which allowed for the establishment of the State of Israel.) Upon being told of this event, I was immediately unsure of how or whether we wanted the ken to be involved. It wasn’t that I didn’t care (or that I didn’t want the ma’apilimot and chanichimot of the ken to care) about what’s going on in Israel and the history of its formation. But the combination of a purely celebratory, rather than more reflective event, along with the fact that it was a top-down political decision that was being celebrated (rather than something that felt organic, worker-led, or chalutzic) made me worry. I considered the possibilities of attending or declining to attend again and again, but I kept coming to the question: what would this event look like if we weren't there? With that in mind, I decided to bring the ken. After bringing this process to the rest of the ma’apilimot running the ken, we decided to run a two-part process for the ken around the Partition Plan for Palestine event. First, we ran a ken event for all the chanichimot in the ken (elementary through high school). In this event, we learned about the utopian vision of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the two states proposed in the Partition Plan and we discussed the gaps between that vision and the actual reality. We told the chanichimot about the event that was going to take place and everyone made signs about our vision of what Israel ought to look like to bring to the event. Later that week, high schoolers and ma’apilimot in the ken came to the event in Midtown holding signs with quotes from movement songs, the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and our own ideas: “Od Lo Gamarnu,” “The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice, and peace,” “Coexist,” and “Zionists against the Occupation.” For no one else at the event did the passing of the Partition Plan for Palestine seem like a particularly “political” thing: they mostly celebrated by waving Israeli flags and handing out chocolate bars with pop rocks in them. We, too, were celebrating—we were happy to accept the free Israeli flags and chocolate bars! But we also wanted to bring a deeper conversation to the space: a conversation about the initial hope for two states that was inherent to the partition plan and about renewing once-dreamed-of commitments to freedom, justice, and peace. Not everyone was happy that we were trying to bring those conversations: one man walked by our group of young people, mostly women, scoffed, and said “You should go to Gaza and see how they treat you there. That will show you.” It was hard for me to hear how much vitriol this man had towards a group of young people who had a vision for a better Israel. But ultimately, his ignorance and hate confirmed for me the importance of our showing up to that event and sending a strong message that the work of establishing Israel—in the spirit of its founding documents, as a just state, at peace with its neighbors—is by no means done.
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