Socialist roots (update)

This certainly has been a year of reunions of one kind or another. Mostly it has been meeting up with old friends of decades ago found through the Internet one way or another. In November last year I flew to Hawaii to see a friend, who contacted me after 35 years. Although nowadays he is a well established psychiatrist in his fifties, whenever I looked at him I could still see his sixteen year old soul twinkling in his eyes.

At the end of this month I will be traveling to Israel to my first real reunion. Most of the attendants I know will be people I have not seen since my late teens and early twenties. Yes indeed, 35 years or so. I imagine that I will look at them and think, "My how they have aged," and will realize immediately that they will be thinking the same of me. I know this because it has happened to me a lot lately.

Talking of critical moments lately, I realized yesterday while working in my garden, that two critical influences in my late teens formed my socialist ideology. An additional understanding came to me in the form of a revelation: the ideologies I learned then have remained constant.

The first influence was through my friend Jan and her family. I write about that extensively in my book, so I will not go into it here.

The second is directly related to the reunion I will be attending at the end of June.  When I joined Habonim at age 15 I felt at once, probably for the first time, a sense of belonging. It was a youth movement whose ideology was Zionist Socialist. Of course it was exciting to be part of an organization that connected me with a Jewish homeland even though my religious upbringing was strictly secular/atheist. Growing up Jewish in Zimbabwe (then white, racist Rhodesia), and attending an all white public school, I had faced my share of anti-semitism - including one day discovering a swastika engraved in my desk. [Just to digress a moment: the beauty of that incident was the fact that the two Venzo brothers, Roger and Adrian, Catholic Italians, came to my aid with support and concern the likes of which I will never forget! I wonder where they are now?]

In Habonim it was a relief to feel like it wasn't abnormal or wrong to be Jewish. There was a framework where I could fit in, and, more importantly, be accepted. This was my first real, social, education experience about the abuse of exclusion and discrimination, as well as acceptance of minorities. Even as I was teased for joining the movement, I realize now that I was strong in my resolve to reach for something that I intuitively felt was good for me.

More than that, though, much more than that, was the socialist ideology of the organization. In fact, the socialist component was the part that I immediately identified with. Although the philosophy was discussed and taught in an intellectual format, socialism could be realized and put into practice by living the ideology itself on a kibbutz (community settlement) in Israel. Each year, Habonim hopefully sent out a group of its members to one or another of their adopted kibbutzim (plural for kibbutz). It was, in fact, one of the goals of the movement. Not only to emigrate to Israel but more importantly, live, participate and contribute to life on a kibbutz. The idea that people would share possessions and monies felt to me as if I was being bathed in a warm, golden light of hope and enlightenment. I especially appreciated the idea that a person's position in society was functional instead of higher or lower than another. In other words, whether you were president or farmer, as well as receiving equal pay for whatever you did, you were expected to take part in cleaning toilets or doing kitchen duty for the community on a regular rotation basis as well.

For me the dream of a utopia, and Gandhi's saying, "May I live simply so that others may simply live," became a reality. I was inspired! During those formative teenage years from age 15 to 19 I passionately participated in the activities and running of Rhodesian Habonim until I was able to emigrate to Israel. For almost a year I lived on Kibbutz Yizra'el (place of the reunion this month) in the Jezreel Valley, lower Galilee.

Fifty five years later after I have traveled to many countries and participated in different communities and organizations, and after all my life experiences, I still believe that we need to share our wealth and all people's work is equally functional and important to the community. Interdependence is the key! Yes, I did leave the kibbutz for many reasons that could probably fill a hundred different posts, and I often wonder what course my life would have taken had I remained. However, I still hold dear the very same values, ideals and beliefs I learned thanks to the intellectual thinkers and creative leaders of the movement when I was a young member.

Habonim changed my life and planted in me a socialist seed whose roots have grown long and deep forever.

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I guess this post got Pax Nortona "tapping" into his! Here is some of what he says:

There is no justice, no compassion, no morals without dedication to a society founded upon the greatest good for the greatest number and protection of minority rights without allowing domination of the whole by any part. Go deep within me and that is what you will find. A rebel, an experimentor, a striver after the truth, a kind man, and a socialist. I hold no shame for being what I am.

Comments

[david]

Tamar: Your posts are so rich -- they're helping me skip dessert!

My middle daughter goes to a Habonim camp and will be in Israel this summer -- maybe when you are?!

[Tamar]

David, if she is in Israel for a Habonim function during June 30 she might very well attend the reunion. They are bringing groups of young Habonim people too - it is why they organized it in summer. Keep me posted if so. I'll e-mail you my dates!

[Leanne]

Am curious whether you read Paulo Freire, an educator and a Marxist, who advocated that humanization is the transformation process for the oppressed to break the oppressor-oppressed relationship.

Am interested whether your socialist perspective also influences your views on education, like Paulo Freire did.

[Joel]

I avoid reunions precisely because I don't want to see how people have aged. And I don't want them to know how I turned out, either. It is just too shameful, too hard for me to explain how a disease completely overwhelmed whatever potential I had and put me a good twenty to thirty years behind my peers.

It's strange where we get our socialist roots. I would say that it all started in Catholic grade school where I listened to what the nuns were teaching and made an effort to apply it. How much easier it was not to rage and compete for every prize, how dull and akward ceremonies of prowess could be.

I set my mind on doing the best I could, on creating beauty and on seeking real justice for everyone. I am by many measures a failure, but I persevere.

[Jean]

Joel, I felt so upset reading your assessment of yourself as a failure and 'behind' your peers, so completely reinforced in my own socialism - which means precisely not evaluating ourselves or others in that way, as I'm sure yours does. The trouble is it's hardest of all to apply it to ourselves, isn't it? even though, in my view, that is where you *have* to start (I'd say the failure to date of 'real socialism' is pretty much down to people not starting with themselves). Reading your comment made me realise why other people get so upset when *I* make comments like that about myself! I didn't know your blog until Tamar quoted you the other day - and I think I've read your comments on Blaugustine, haven't I? - but will be coming over to have a look, and no doubt get even more indignant that you could say such a thing!

[Tamar]

Leanne: Yes, I have read Paulo Freire and agree so much with what he talks about - because I believe we have to work within ourselves to become free at the same time, as we actively and *participatorily* seek to change the system with others.

Jean: Thanks for being there and for what you say to Joel! I'll get to that next. I so agree with this statement of yours: "I'd say the failure to date of 'real socialism' is pretty much down to people not starting with themselves." Thank you for saying it so clearly on my blog. I felt a huge YES! surge out of me when I read it.

Joel: I know what you mean about reunions and I have avoided them too in one way or another. It is hard to face "measuring up" with others especially when the standards and the system are so unkind and inhuman. I have a small saying by Harry Emerson Fosdick which I prefer to use as my measuring stick. I will post that next as a gift for you. Your blog is so well written, thoughtful and inspiring. Am thrilled that I "found you" through Blaugustine! I empathize with you about how it feels when you say that stuff about being a failure. That's why my blog is called "In and Out of Confidence." Let's just all muddle through together - trying to change how we were taught to feel about ourselves to seeing who we really are, eh? Thanks so much for stopping by my site.

[Ella]

I think it's lovely to read about socialists and solidarity when it sometimes feels that these words are seen as pathetic and almost silly in this country these days. Good.

My teenage time when I was involved in political activities has given me so much, and I would probably not be the same person without this experience.

[Tamar]

Yes, Ella I know what you mean. Sometimes it feels as if all those ideals you and I were taught have disappeared into some dark hole. It's a challenge holding onto them, isn't it?