This article is reprinted from the April 1998 edition of Kol Vatikei Habonim. It was written by Asher Benson (z"l").
As a chaver of the Dublin Peleg in the period 1948-51, I am taking the liberty of filling in some of the blanks in Asher's story. It will be in a future posting to follow shortly.
In particular I want to recall the names of those very special people who are not mentioned. They were the madrichim and shichvat vatikim who were the heart of Habonim in those exciting days when Israel was reborn. On a personal note they helped lay the foundation for my own personal "Ahavat Zion"
Comments from other Irish Chevra would be most welcome
Lepracohens
|
The first Irish Jew I recall meeting was Yaac6v Morris, who married Sadie Cohen of West London; because of his broad Belfast accent, we cockneys could not understand what he said, but the delivery was fascinating. Of course, anybody from Dublin will tell you that Yaacov was not really Irish, at all\: - he was a Belfast "Prod" whose family came over to Ulster with the Protestant Plantationists. My initial contact with a group of truly Irish (and of course, Catholic) Jews was in 1939, when about a dozen members of Dublin Habonim came to camp in Bedford, among whom was Ida Silverman, whom I married some seven years later. This was after I had repulsed (friends say repulsion is my great quality) the Japanese from the gates of India , somewhat assisted by a secondhand respirator, battered steel helmet, and screen~star Errol Flynn.
Some time in the 40s it appears that during one bleak Shabbat day,in the course of a typical Irish summer, when camping on the Dublin mountains, a fire was lit; thereby the Irish Habonim Movement went up in flames. It was not a case of the Jewish Kehilla being of Orthodox conviction, but like the majority Catholic community, it paid lip-service to convention. A caucus of what Cork-born Larry Elyan, later of Kol Zion Lagolah fame, described as "Irishmen of the Polish Jewish persuasion" seized the occasion of the "skandal" to establish a branch of Bnei Akiva. In a country where at that time parish priests demanded the separation of men and women sitting in cinemas, it seemed logical for little boys and girls not to touch each other as they danced the horah - surely the first rung of the descending ladder of mortal sin. The "socia1ist", "free-thinking" Habonim group had burned itself out. |
In 1948, a number of former chaverim approached me with the suggestion that we start again. Gedud Palmach came into existence - about a dozen maniacal 10-13 year old boys, but no girls, who met in my house on Monday nights, threw one another over our recently acquired couch, and raided the fridge for ice-cubes.
Numbers grew until I was faced with either buying a new house, or getting some form of community accommodation for the Gedud.
With the aid of people like Asher Green, Sylvia and Fizz Morris, Sophie Smullen, and the new generation Michael Abels, the Brown girls, and the Glass boys, the Movement soon mustered 120.
But there was some resistance from the Jewish community, who believed we were taking their children from the family home, and despatching them willy-nilly to Israel . The Irish Chief Rabbi, Immanuel (now Lord) Jakobovits summoned me to his home and said he would not countenance "soul-snatching" (presumably from Bnei Akiva). Nevertheless the Movement made rapid progress and benefited from visitors from the London HQ panel of madrichim.
An "international" camp was held in the mud of County Wicklow, graphically described in a recent edition of this magazine. Various weekend and longer camps also took place in Shankill, near Dublin , and campfires remained carefully unlit on Shabbat.
On one hilarious occasion, Michael Abels seemed to be missing. I went out looking for him; he came back, saw I was not there. A typically Irish situation developed - we were all lost, and all night at that, as we fruitlessly stumbled into stinging yellow gorse bushes without finding each other. It was time for me to move on, to form a parents' committee.
Our first "permanent" Movement worker came from Leeds in the shape of a large smouldering pipe and waving hands, occasionally clutching a barmitzvah brief-case. Who else but Alec Collins could fit this description?
His remit included the purchase of a bayit, in cooperation with the Vaad Lemaan, but some of the buildings he suggested as suitable would have been palatial enough for Henry VIII if married to all his six wives simultaneously, and each demanding a suite of her own. Eventually we settled for 77, Terenure Rd North, a small hall fronted by a little house.
It is interesting to note that there was even a market-garden hachsharah in the suburb of Terenure, some of whose many affluent Jewish residents were aghast at the prospect. A number of these chaverim made aliya to Amiad, Kfar Hanassi, and Beth Haemek; I particularly recall Stan and Channah Hyman, and "Scotch Markey" an exhibition of whose paintings was hung in the prestigious Brown Thomas store in the centre of Dublin .
The steep numerical decline of the Irish Jewish community because of its low birth, marriage and intake, and high death and emigration rates, has led to the decimation of its Youth Movements, and Habonim has not been around for over twenty years. The last government census, in 1991, showed the community with just 1581 souls.
A few documents and photographs are all that remain, mounted in the Irish Jewish Museum, apart of course from the fond memories that linger on.
The bayit is now the home of the Machzikei Hadass Synagogue, where the women are concealed behind an opaque curtain.
Oh yes, Lest I forget, on the right-hand gatepost, as you enter the building, and for all to see, is imprinted "Habonim" in Hebrew lettering, which after all these years has not been obliterated by the painter's brush. Was he perhaps a member of Gedud Palmach?
More likely, in this land of the Little People, it could be a Lepracohen, who sits sadly in a neighbouring tree, and whose divine intervention has preserved this touching memorial.
|
Comments