Wednesday, November 08, 2006

On Pluralist British youth movements

Pluralist youth movements - their only raison d'etre is to make young Jews meet young Jews but its not a stated aim.
Religiously, politically and socially they are lacking - certain British youth movements cannot now state unequivocally that all its members are actually Jewish and yet parents send their kids on it to meet other Jewish kids.

The problem arrives when you remove the religion from the people - trying to get people involved in Israeli cultural stuff is all very well but I know some staunch zionists that don't happen to like Israeli culture at all (do we have to like Dana International, frequent Tel Aviv cafes or be secular to experience 'culture'?) and yet are religiously motivated to make aliyah.

Simply comparing aliyah rates between religious zionist movements such as B'nei Akiva (about 10 ex-members make aliyah a year) with FZY (1-2?). Its simply very difficult to want to make aliyah to a country that you simply don't have strong links with - and the links are religious - not cultural. There is no one 'culture' in Israel and thats maybe one of the reasons why people find it hard to fit in and settle there.

Anyway, how can a movement call itself 'pluralist' anyway? Example 1. Most evening meetings start with an activity that prevents anyone who is shomre negiya from taking part - holding hands in a circle, 'huggy bears' etc etc. Example 2. Camp where every meal is followed by benching, whether or not bread was involved at the meal, causing upwards on 100 kids to break the commandment of saying G-d's name needlessly - a bracha levatalah.

There are so many more examples and so much more to say, I'll probably revisit this topic again and again.....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Use duti, not Frum. Hebrew is important, Yiddish is not
What is a kiruv

chardalmum said...

Dati? Chardal - noted and changed.
Kiruv means bringing Jews back to Hashem by increasing their Torah observance.