The Rise & Fall of The Zig

The following is reprinted from "Habonim 65th Anniversary 1929-1994.

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"The Secret History of Habonim; The Rise and Fall of the Zig" by N. Applebaum (no re­lation). Vol. 1. The Rise; Vol. 2. The Decline and Fall. Published by: Zigger and Warburg. (Each Volume £59.99 or £/19.95}or the two)

 With this brilliant first book Israeli historian, N. Applebaum, has leapt into the front rank of revisionist historians who in the recent past, have exposed so many of the popular myths of the Zionist movement and rewritten Zionist history as it really was.

 Applebaum's target is one of Zionism's most important and seemingly unassailable myths: that Habonim was a Zionist Socialist movement educating towards Aliya and Kibbutz.  

In this extraordinary challenge to popu­lar belief Applebaum claims that in fact Habo­nim's Socialist Zionism was merely a front to ex­tract funds from the Anglo-Jewish community and the Jewish Agency and that the aim and rai­son d'etre of the Movement was the cult of the Zig - the writing, rehearsing and performance of which took up most of the time and energies of the Movement's activists and was the main event at all Habonim functions.

Applebaum has done his homework. The thesis that Habonim was not a Zionist movement but a “Zigonist” movement is convincingly built up. Has another of Zionism's great myths been debunked?  Has delegitimization of the Zionist Movement been taken yet one step further?

Aca­demics and scholars will be arguing over this rev­olutionary new thesis for years to come, but this review is not the place for such esoteric matters. The book contains much to interest the ordinary Habonim man or woman in the Moadon.

Apple­baum's research shows that at its inception in 1929 Habonim was a movement which look it­self very seriously and had no time for frivolities. It took several years for this to change.

As the late Prophet Jeremiah foretold, "Out of the North evil shall break forth". It was apparently in Manchester in 1936 or 1937 that short humorous skits first became a regular feature at more important Habonim meetings, and it was in Manchester that the word ZIG was first coined. 

No one knows who first thought it up. Apple­baum travelled half way across the world to inter­view the one person rumoured to have authored the word but his journey was wasted: the man denied ever having been in Manchester Habonim, claiming to have heard the word ZIG only when he went on Hachshara to the David Eder farm.

 
"I arrived at the farm, late in the afternoon and went into the chader ochel for a cup of tea. A short while later chaverim began coming in from work, and I couldn't believe my eyes at what went on.

There was a picture of Stalin hanging on the wall and as the chaverim came in each one would go through the most extraordinary motions of worship and self-abasement in front of it.

Some one told me they were just Zigging and that was the first time I heard the word. From that mo­ment my life was never the same.
Things like that went on all the time at the Chava. It was like liv­ing in a permanent Marx Brothers' film."

So we shall never know who invented the word ZIG, but it was an invention of genius. It was short and to the point. It sounded funny and it was catchy and it was flexible - a Zig, to Zig, Zigger, Zigging.

 

It was exactly the right word in the right place and it rapidly caught on as the code-word for any skit, or short comic entertainment put on in Manchester Peleg. In 1937 or 1938 Manchester took the word Zig to camp and from there it spread to the whole Movement.

The Zig really took off as an art form in the Hachsharot of the early '40's in particular Gor­sey Leaze and the David Eder farm (the Chava). 

 

Two different types of Zig emerged. At the Cha­va nearly everything performed was spontaneous. Zigging was a daily routine and when acting be­fore an audience was required, a general theme was churned over, a few ideas thrown out, an out­line emerged and that was it. Nothing was written and rehearsals were a rarity.

 

At Gorsey the ten­dency was for Zigs to be written, rehearsed and generally more ambitious. More use was made of songs and dance routine, Gilbert and Sullivan music and plays by Shakespeare and Shaw.

It was this period of 1942-45 which saw the Zig emerge as a central element of Habonim cul­ture. By the time the Movement's great expan­sion began in 1945 the Zig was an essential part of any Habonim function.

 

In this period, too, the special characteristics of the Zig were estab­lished, its aims, methods, and targets.

 

The special character of the Zig lay in the heady enthusiasm with which it was undertaken. The aims were simple: make people laugh and have a good time doing so.

 

The Zig meant laughter, high spirits, za­ny humour, originality and the unexpected. Any theatrical form was permitted - drama, song, dance, mime, slapstick, old jokes, corn - were all quite acceptable if properly presented.

 

The Zig poked fun at those in authority. It could be politi­cal and satirical about great matters of state or petty movement affairs.

There was complete rap­port between performers and audience and the latter were nearly always involved with the sub­ject being played out. There were, of course, also mediocre and lousy Zigs which were total fail­ures, but by and large, there was always enough talent to ensure a high percentage of success and a demand to keep the system going as a unique expression of the Habonim spirit

An interesting point made by Applebaum is that the Zig only flourished in Habonim. It played no part in Hashomer Hatzair or Bachad (Bnei Akivah). The old-timers he questioned about this had no doubt at all as to why this was so. The members of Hashomer Hatzair and Bachad were almost all continentals - refugees and foreigners!

 

Habonim was BRITISH and very conscious of the fact. One of the earliest Gorsey Leaze zigs, based on "The Merchant of Venice" is all about this difference. In it a Shomernik is trying to explain to a group from Habonirn that they are all the same. He plunges into Shylock's speech:

"Hath not a Shomernik eyes? Hath he no feel­ings? etc. etc ... .If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?"

 

"NO" roared all the Habonim group.

Shlichim from Palestine were another group who were fazed by the Zig - not comfortable with the hilarity over serious subjects and the laughter at sacred cows.

One Shaliach earned long-lasting fame by sitting stolidly through an uproarious show and,on being asked whether he enjoyed it, replied, "Ken, ken. Aval zeh haya bli tochen". Naturally this became a catch phrase for years afterwards, every time a joke was told or a Zig rehearsed or performed.

In England the impetus attained by the Zig in the forties enabled it to carry on in similar forms and spirit for nearly four decades, though with gradually diminishing importance. Political satire went out in the sixties and Zigs became en­tirely movement centred - perhaps because at that time political and social satire became a regular feature of stage, radio and T.V. shows.

 

From the early eighties the Zig seems to have gone rapidly down hill. As one interviewee from that period says -

“The majority of Zigs were simply not funny and people were not laughing at their content but at the ineptness and mistakes of their performers" and another: "During the time I was in Habonim the Zig lost its appeal, and though there were one or two talented Ziggers around,  Zigs weren’t very good and did not add to one's prestige".

As for quotes from the nine­ties this reviewer came very close to tears as he read- "The Zig is a nonsensical skit lasting one or two minutes at the most - a shaggy dog story joke acted out on the stage", "The Zig has lost its glamour and meaning. It is mainly an end-of-camp activity", "The Zig, today means any of stage presentation. So a short serious sketch or play on, say, Ethiopian Jewry at the end of Seminar on the subject is also called a Zig".

If you ask a fourteen year old in the Movement today what a Zig is, he probably won't know. Well as they used to say in the Old Chava, "Sic transit gloria mundi".

In a highly controversial final chapter Applebaum ­contends that "with the demise of the Zig, Habonim's Socialist-Zionist ideology has become superfluous" and he predicts that in a very short time this too will disappear.
 

Chavrei Habonim who went on Aliyah to the kibbutz brought the Zig with them. In Kfar Amiad, Mevo Hama they were a small minority. Zigs were performed at weddings, Purim and other chagim, but they made no impact on the majority who saw them merely as an An­glo-Saxon eccentricity, worth perhaps a condescend­ing smile, but no more. As the Anglo-Saxon element faded so did the Zig.

 

In Bet Ha'emek zigs were performed two or three times a year until ten years ago, since when they have be­come a rarity, occasionally being put on by a group of bnei meshek who have inherited an English ­sense of humour. 

 

Kfar Hanassi was almost entirely a kibbutz of English Habonim, and many of the most creative and talented Ziggers went there and stayed. The result was a flourishing Zig tradition which took Israel and Kfar Hanassi as subject of its humour and just carried on from were they had left off in England.

 

The Zigs changed somewhat over the years and fewer are performed nowadays. But Kfar Hanassi is still a place were the Zig is taken seriously, performed with old fashioned enthusiasm and gusto and, no less important, has an audience of experienced Connoisseurs who understand and appreciate to the full what it's all about.

 

So the Zig still lives on, but only in the home of those who were its originators, finest and most inventive exponents.

 

Applebaum's book contains scores of examples of Zig humour spanning over 50 years in England,Wales,Northern Ireland,Eire and Israel

Here I have room for just two extracts.

 

A sample of what old-fashioned spontaneous dialogue was like appears in a Zig given in Kfar Hanassi a few years ago to a visiting J.L.A. delegation from the U.K.

It centres on a couple from England visiting the Kibbutz.

As they sit down for a meal in the chadar ochel, the husband lifts his spoon to start his soup, the wife snaps - "Hy­mie, you're in Israel now. Make a motzie before you start eating".

 

Later on, the husband, overcome by what he's seen bursts into an emotional fare­well to his hosts. "If I was ten years younger I'd be here with you people! Everyone of you de­serves a V.C. You're all wonderful!! You are wonderful people! When I get back to Stanmore I'm going to tell everybody about you!! "

 

Finally my own favourite, a North West Lon­don Chanukah Zig, 1947 or '48; Subject: The Xmas Story (what else?).

 

A very Jewish Joseph and Mary sit in the grotto with little J bemoaning their fate.

 

In walk three gloriously attired Kings.

 

"Holy Mary" proclaims the first, "We are three Kings of the Orient bearing gifts and I have brought thee some gold ".

 

The second King steps forward "Gracious Virgin, I have brought thee some silver"

 

"And I” proclaims the third King, "I have brought thee some myrrh".

 

"Oh really?" says Mary, in a thick East End Jewish accent: "Some myrrh gold or some myrrh silver?"

Norman Appelton

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Comments

[David Harold Chester]

The following explanation is from:
Adrian Andrusier
Zigmund Kvetch was one of the founder members of Habonim.He lived with his parents and 10 brothers in a one room flat in the Mile End Road. They had their own football team ..The Kvetch Eleven famed for beating Arsenal 15-nil in a 1931 friendly at the Balls Pond Road ground. Ziggy scored 10 of the goals dressed as a chassid and waving a rubber chicken.Always joking around Zigmund was the life and soul of the family.Every Friday night as the 13 of them gathered around the shabbes table Ziggy would chant the prayers in different accents and play tricks with the lokshen soup.He was a God send to the Fournier Street Habonim gedud at the Machzikei Adass shul ..interrupting the Talmud sessions with wit and charm including some very rude jokes. He became a legend at the camps in Epping Forest and Springfield Park Stamford Hill.Others began to copy him and called their sketches 'Zigs' to honour the founder of the immensely popular last evening of camp fun. Sadly Ziggy is no longer with us but his spirit lives on. RIP Kvetch the sketch !!