Bnei Akiva

He and the rest of the people I'm about to name deserve their own episodes, not a cameo.

Like Rabbi Chaim Druckman, who built much of the Bnei Akiva in Mizrahi world that raised generations of religious Zionists, including me, I guess.

Or Zevulun Hammer, or Nechama Leibowitz, or Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, or Rabbi Eliezer Melamed.

These are all important figures in the history and, and present of religious Zionist thinking, and they sadly don't get airtime here.

She's soft-spoken but firm, open-minded but opinionated.

Chana is a classic product of the old-school Bnei Akiva youth movement.

Modern Orthodox, liberal, an example of the kind of progressive yet observant, strong feminists that you can still find in certain corners of Jerusalem.

She has four kids and four grandkids, though you'd never guess it if you saw her.

Religious Zionism.

And I grew up there, you know, Bnei Akiva.

I've been also...

Really, at the beginning of the Eli, Mechinat Eli, I was really one of the...

We were kind of a paramilitary-minded organization, and the-- and almost all the other Zionist movements were left.

Uh, even Bnei Akiva, the religious Zionist movement, which today is quite right-wing, was a socialist-

Yeah

...

It's so strange to think.

Strange put it that way.

And if you look at the Bnei Akiva emblem, I don't know what-- whether it's still true today, but the emblem was the Ten Commandments and a sheaf of wheat, and the sheaf of wheat was borrowed as well from the socialist-

Mm

Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq sent trained armies against a militia that had spent the previous decades smuggling rifles in crates of oranges." And by the way, uh, I must add, I remember, uh, I was living in Phil- Philadelphia then.

I was a kid and, and it was a, a friend of ours, the head of the Bnei Akiva, the, uh, youth organization.

In his home, we packed, uh, packages to send to Israel, primarily clothing, but stuffed away in that clothing were arms, especially small arms, rifles that we snuck to Israel.

That's how Israel got many of its weapons.

And let me tell you more about our fighting that we've never had it like this before.

I had a shaliach when I was in Bnei Akiva.

He was a shaliach in Manchester at the time.

We became very, very close.

They couldn't go to regular schools.

If you're a member of the Irgun... and you were part of Jabotinsky's people and Begin's people, you couldn't get into a regular school in Israel.

You had to go to a Bnei Akiva school because Ben-Gurion stopped them.

We never had it before.

And she sent the kids originally to Haredi institutions, eight children, and then her oldest boy said to her, Ima, I want to serve in the army.

Send me to a Bnei Akiva high school.

And all the children moved to Upanath and high schools sanctioned and run by B'nai Akiva.

And this lady, she wears a sheytel.

And I grew up with a lot of love for Hashem, so even though we didn't know the, the Halachas, um, my parents made it very, um, you know, very, very important for us to know our Jewish identity and, um, we're only allowed to marry Jewish, and there were certain values that, um, were very, very strong.

Um, and also we- she always sent us to, like, Jewish, um, you know, youth groups and we went to Bnei Akiva and, um, so always to make sure that we are connected to our heritage, especially living and growing up in Austria.

I went to public school, so I experienced firsthand antisemitism.

And, um, you know, it's interesting when people don't...

You'll see I'm featured in it.

One of the few people alive that can tell you I was at Koldovidofek in person, 1956, with my girlfriend from Bnei Akiva, Malinka Grun.

Okay.

We're in the audience.