Manuals for Life and Death

An instruction manual issued in 1947 by the Jewish National Fund to mentors of youngsters intending to ‘make Aliyah’ features several hearty songs, including one with lyrics from a poem by Saul Tschernichovsky, ‘Tsedaktem, Habonim Ha-Tse-irim’ the translated version of which is given as:
“You were right, young builders.
Whoever enters, joins youth!
So long as eyes have lustre,
They absorb in holiness and purity
The red of the Sh’phela,
The Negev
And the expanse of blue skies;
The ridges of the Tabor and Carmel
And the vastness of the redeemed soil.”

Other songs, with titles like “A knapsack on my back”, “Left-Right” and “Rejoice”, convey the spirit of undimmed vigour when faced with obstacles, both man-made and natural. The booklet contains lists of Hebrew words for commands, sport terms and camping terms as well as names of trees, flowers and animals indigenous to Palestine (as it then still was). There is even a short list of types of knot.

There is only a hint of the existence of hostile forces, for example that conveyed in the instructions given in one of the suggested ‘Camp Games’ titled “Bringing Water to the Negev”. Participants are invited to form two teams, one comprised of ‘’guards’, the other of ‘bandits’, assigned respectively to the tasks of securing a pipeline by fastening it with ropes and damaging it by cutting the ropes. Points are awarded and the team with the highest score wins.

There is no mention anywhere of the words ‘Arab’ or ‘Palestinian’ in its current context. A few pages are devoted to the design of emblems and flags but most of the emphasis is on cultivating the soil and protecting new settlements.

The booklet brought back memories of my own short-lived experience of Jewish Youth Movements in South Africa. In Bnei Zion (an offshoot of Habonim) we built migdalim (watchtowers) and piled into madrichim pretending to be Arabs, with the aim of bringing them to the ground. I also attended a Bnei Akiva camp near Muizenberg, in order to be with friends who were staunch members, where I was inducted into religious observance on a grand scale. Before the camp had run its course, I was pleading with my parents, like Alan Sherman in the song, “Hullo mudder, hullo fader” to “Take me home”.

Years later, my attempt at Aliyah turned into a Yeridah after only a few months. However, my loyalty to Israel has endured to the present time, thanks to my family and the culture of Zionism in which we were steeped.

The aforementioned booklet now reads like a manual for entering Paradise, and I can only admire those of my family and friends who swallowed the pill and are now braving life in a modern, highly evolved but militarised and traumatised society while continuing to ward off murderous attacks by those who follow a different manual, one preaching death, not life, as the be-all and end-all of existence.