80th Anniversary of Betar

Chaverim and honoured guests¸ Tel Chai !

It’s been a long time since I’ve used that greeting.

Just saying it transports me back to a past of twice daily Misdarim, daily drills, army style uniforms with insignia and lanyards and ranks and saluting and parades and raising and lowering of flags, Hatikvah , Hymn Betar etc, etc. We were proud of being what my father used to call “Jabotinsky’s soldiers”

But whilst this was the structure of the youth movement which transformed our lives it was not really the substance of it. What really transformed us into self confident and mature individuals was the humanity, the dignity, the respect for individualism, the valuing of each and everyone of our fellow chaverim and what they had to contribute to the good of the whole organization. A job for everyone and everyone had a job. The values of Yosef Trumpeldor translated into the belief that every single person had something special to contribute to the rebuilding of Eretz Israel

In the 1950’s when I joined the movement, I was enthralled by the personalities that dominated the organization. First and fore most was the figure of Yosef Steiner all six foot of him who both physically and figuratively did indeed “cast a giant shadow” (to allude to a movie of the time). Then there was the charming, charismatic and utterly brilliant personality who was our very first shaliach, Gad Pedhazur. In those days Gad did wonders for our public relations. His rational intellectual approach overcame the terrorist image of Betar and the legacy of the Revolt and transformed the perception of our movement into what we considered was a view of us as a positive and creative intellectual elite.

In those days Betar was a small organization in comparison to the “mass movements” that were Habonim and Bnei Akiva. After all, only a small organization would exercise itself with the philosophical discussions about the “quality” of its members over “quantity”. We did believe that even though we were small we were the elite movement, far superior to the mass movements that the others were. Gad in his quiet, academic and erudite manner able to influence many talented people who were able to carry the ideal onto future generations.

As an educational psychologist, I can only look back and marvel at the ground breaking participative educational strategies that we were taught to use. These are techniques that are used in the corporate world to this day to engender team building and leadership potential in corporation members. I know because I have participated in and organized such activities myself whilst working in the Education Department. I often used my own early experiences in the movement.

Who can forget night maneuvers, rope walking across a gorge, ten mile hikes, 3 day hikes, campfire games and story telling, charades, organizing and running camps and outings, organizing sport days and inter group competitions, to say nothing of concerts and gala performances showcasing ours elves before the whole Jewish community . We edited magazines and wrote speeches and developed our communication skills and became mature and confident adults.

When I speak about the camps we participated in and helped to organize, I am not talking about living in air conditioned huts with bunks and bedding as is the practice today, I am talking about living in discarded 8 man 2cnd world war army tents and sleeping on old army stretchers. I am talking about our young leaders having to go on working parties to dig latrines and dig trenches around those tents, with their own hands. I am talking about cooking for ourselves over open campfires or wood fired ovens.

I remember making potato lutkes from a bucket of grated potato over an open fire and opening the tins of boring kosher meat from Melbourne trying to make them more palatable. Then there was the time I spilt kerosene into the tomato soup when I was trying to get the fire going and having to throw out the whole lot, just as the parents arrived for visitor’s day. Many times meals ended up being bread and whatever we could muster because of some incident. Late meals became excuses for a sing along or impromptu concert, Dinner usually began with singing s clapping and clattering our dishes for rhythm. We let nothing phase us, not even bushfires.

What parent today would tolerate their child going to the toilet that was a latrine or in other words a box covered with a toilet seat over a hole in the ground surrounded by sackcloth. At my first camp I would organize the whole tent of girls that I was in charge of to make the toilet an excursion, singing as we went. It was seen as part of the spirit of camp, in reality it was a means of overcoming the reluctance we all initially felt to using that particular convenience.

We learnt to use our imagination, creative substitution, taking responsibility, organizing, planning and following through. When exhausted and barely able to keep awake, we made ourselves go just that extra mile to keep up ours and everyone else’s spirits and to make sure that we could fulfill the commitments we had made. We would come home exhausted but proud and fulfilled that yet another camp had been great OF COURSE . We would then spend the rest of the school holidays in organizing the camp reunions that helped to reinforce in our minds the myths and legends the stories and jokes that go with our history and have become part of our personal folklore. Just ask our long suffering spouses!!