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Volunteer or Change-maker? Some conceptual and
existential dimensions and their current and
future implications Machon LMadrichei Hutz
LAretz Wednesday, 19th September, 2007 Yonatan
Glaser Director, BTzedek
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Transformation
Diaspora
Action
Education
Israel
Identity
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• Should a youth movement be
• An informal educational organization designed
  to transmit Jewish identity for the sake of
  Jewish survival.
• OR
• A counter-cultural movement of cultural,
  social, political and educational activists
  passionate about and working to transform
  themselves and the world around them in order to
  bring about Tikkun Olam.

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• An informal educational organization, or
• a counter-cultural movement?
• When is a youth movement really the
• first but pretending to be the second?
• Do Youth Movements self-identify as the first?
• Why pretend to be the second?
• Why not really embrace the second?
• How can we tell the difference between the
  two?

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• How can we tell between the two?
• Declared goals the gap/dissonance between them
  reality
• What really motivates key leadership?
• What is the content of our leadership training
  programs?
• Is educational programming driven by our vision
  or by Jewish literacy/identity/relevance?
• Whats on our calendar? What do we discuss in
  meetings?
• What language do we use?
• What disciplines and professional practices do
  we draw on?
• What relationships do we have (with which)
  organizations?
• What projects have we taken on are they
  add-ons or central to who we are?
• Who do we bring in as speakers and role models?
• We could go on

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• The adult-youth dimension to this
• Taming the revolution blue-weiss, hacshara
  and hagshama now adult-led youth organizations
• Concept of Moratorium
• Rosh HaShana story of Milchemet HaShichrur
• And how could we miss The Little Prince..

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The Little prince - Antoine de Saint
Exupéry  Once when I was six years old I saw a
magnificent picture in a book, called True
Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.
It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act
of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the
drawing. In the book it said "Boa
constrictors swallow their prey whole, without
chewing it. After that they are not able to move,
and they sleep through the six months that they
need for digestion." I pondered deeply, then,
over the adventures of the jungle. And after some
work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making
my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It
looked something like this
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I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and
asked them whether the drawing frightened
them. But they answered "Frighten? Why should
any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was
not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa
constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the
grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made
another drawing I drew the inside of a boa
constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it
clearly. They always need to have things
explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like
this The grown-ups' response, this time, was
to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa
constrictors, whether from the inside or the
outside, and devote myself instead to geography,
history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at
the age of six, I gave up what might have been a
magnificent career as a painter. I had been
disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number
One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never
understand anything by themselves, and it is
tiresome for children to be always and forever
explaining things to them.
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But is the difference important? Does it matter
to me? Am I overwhelmed even thinking about it?
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• Why 1 The world today
• (when did you last Google/read a book about
  these?)
• Economic injustice within and between
  countries
• Environmental sustainability and global
  warming
• Discrimination by gender, race, ethnic group,
  religion, sexual orientation, mind/body special
  needs, and more
• Migrant workers, internally displaced peoples
  and refugees
• Trafficking on women, slave trade
• Religious fundamentalism and capitalist
  nihilism
• Globalization, post-modernity and sustainable
  cultural communities
• Political systems under threat and doubt
• Peace and war, nuclear threat
• Add your own

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• Why 1 The person today
• Alienation and the need for a community of
  intimacy (psychology)
• Passivity and the need for a community of
  involvement (sociology)
• Dependency and the need for a community of
  authority (epistemology)
• Purposelessness and the need for a community
  of intention (teleology)

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• What do we teach?
• Semantic field of terms
• Jewish education, character education, identity,
  values clarification
• Or
• volunteering, community involvement, leadership,
  civic participation, active citizenship, social
  entrepreneur, advocacy, activism

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Individual Organizations Whose
problem? Whose power? Business Government
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• What do we teach?
• Professor Joel Westheimers model
• The following is excerpted from What Kind of
  Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy
  American Educational Research Journal. Volume 41
  No. 2, Summer 2004, 237-269. Joel Westheimer,
  University of Ottawa. Joseph Kahne, Mills College

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Kinds of Citizens The Politics of Educating for
Democracy
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• What do we teach?
• Based on notion of multiple intelligences by
• Professor Howard Gardener
• Psycho-social intelligence
• Or
• Psycho-social-organizational-political-
• ideological intelligence

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• Dissonance between
• declaration and reality
• Do Something community involvement. Prof
  Westheimers research
• Our Education massive sign-up campaign by
  youth for national education
• Aherai Israeli preparation for Army and High
  School grades
• and its Character Education Agenda
• Tzeva Israeli orgn to attend to widening
  gaps in Israeli society
• do they achieve their goals? Can they
  without addressing questions of social policy?

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Judaism and Zionism Martin Buber . . . While
love can be embodied only in the life of
individuals, justice cannot be embodied except in
the life of a nation and in the lives of nations.
. . . It is only a nation which is able to
establish justice both amongst its various
partsindividuals and groupsand in its relations
with other nations, for the sake of its own
salvation and the salvation of humanity in the
making. For this purpose, a nation requires
independence and self-determination. Martin
Buber, "The Holy Way," in On Judaism, New York,
Schocken Books, 1975, p. 112
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• Back to Youth Movements
• Do we have the intellectual discernment?
• Do we have the core concepts?
• Do we have the emotional bravery?
• Do we have each other?

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Youth Movement Hagshama Shlichut
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Go to it