Honest Conversations in Difficult Time
Dear Habonim Dror Alumni and Friends,
These first days of the New Year have been turbulent for the Jewish world and for the peoples of Israel. We watch with alarm as the war in Gaza continues, with its horrible humanitarian toll on Israeli and Palestinian lives. The anniversary of October 7 re-opened psychological and existential wounds that have not yet healed. There is increased fear for the safety of the remaining hostages. And now the war has widened substantially in Lebanon and the future is very uncertain.
Jewish students have returned to their college campuses with trepidation, hoping that the charged atmosphere of the past year will not be repeated. They, like many others, are trying to sort out the vexing issues of free speech and protest, public criticism of Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric and blatant antisemitism. All this is exacerbated by the weaponization of this conversation in the current election campaign. In many of our own families these topics are in the category of “untouchable.”
Yet all six of our Habonim Dror camps approached these topics with openness and sensitivity this past summer. The Youth Movement prepared its camp leadership with resources to help them confront these issues with integrity. In the best Habonim Dror tradition, they honored the different ways that love and concern for Israel can find expression. And many of our machanot included the voices of Israeli campers and madrichim who brought their perspective to their North American counterparts.
I ask you to join me in supporting Habonim Dror, so it can continue to be articulate a strong, honest and forward-looking progressive Zionist vision in the North American conversation.
Please contribute today!
Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Tom Gutherz
Chairperson, Habonim Dror Foundation
Hope In Difficult Times
Dear Friends of Habonim Dror:
I know you share the feeling, in this week of Pesach, that these are difficult times. The families of the hostages face the impossible prospect of celebrating the “feast of freedom” when there will be empty chairs at the Seder table; Israel has just emerged from a terrifying missile attack from Iran; the war continues in Gaza, with little sense of how it will end; and the diaspora Jewish community is shaken by sobering changes in the social and political landscape in which we live. As we sit around the seder table, we will hold our movement graduates in Israel and our larger Israeli family close in our hearts.
Habonim Dror Israel programs foster future Jewish leaders.
Despite all this, we hope each of you will be strengthened by the trajectory of our people’s story—the journey, not once but “in every generation,” from oppression to freedom,
and towards a world of justice and peace.
I wish you and the entire Habonim Dror family a zissen pesach, a sweet Passover season
Tom Gutherz
Chair, Habonim Dror Foundation
Habonim Dror: More Important Than Ever
Dear Friends,
Like you, the Habonim Dror Foundation and the entire Habonim Dror family has been devastated since October 7 as we live through these unprecedented times. We grieve for the loss of life and pray for the safe return of hostages. And we know that many of you are supporting good causes 
that are seeking to ameliorate the trauma of these past weeks.
We also feel in our bones that October 7 has been a turning point for the American Jewish community. We may not yet understand the parameters of that changed landscape, but there is one thing we do know for sure. And that is that the Jewish youth will need places to go, now more than ever, where it is normal to be both a progressive as well as a Zionist, places where they can develop a deep love of Israel together with an honest understanding of its challenges.
Habonim Dror is such a place. Through our machanot (camps) and our national and Israel programs, the next generation of Jews will be educated for leadership in confronting the challenges facing Jewish students on our college campuses and in the wider community. A safe space that is committed both to Jewish peoplehood and to social justice for all.
In these troubled times, your contribution to the Habonim Dror Foundation [click here] is perhaps more important than it ever was. I hope you will help us guarantee the future for progressive Zionism in our communities.
Habonim Dror Israel programs foster future Jewish leaders.
And one more request: Please forward this e-mail to at least one friend from Habonim Dror who may not be on our mailing list but who you think might also want to support our mission.
Thanking you in advance,
Rabbi Tom Gutherz
Chairperson, Habonim Dror Foundation
Fighting for the Soul of Israel
Dear friends:
Every year at Passover, Jewish families gather around the table to remember the epic story of the downfall of tyrants and the struggle for freedom that gave birth to our people. Every year as we sit around our tables, we are urged to ask again what freedom means in our own generation.
Habonim Dror Alumni at protest in Israel
This year, all our minds and hearts are on the struggles in Israel, where our people and its dreams for a just, progressive and forward-looking future are facing what is
rightly called an existential threat. I imagine many of us will be having difficult and even heated discussions. Many of us will be asking more than just the four questions in the Haggadah; questions like “What if?” and “What’s next?”
Habonim Dror members protesting in New York
But we will not have to ask: “Where is Habonim Dror? “ Because we know that those who have been raised with progressive Zionist and Jewish values in our machanot and on our Israel programs, and those who have made the commitment to live in Israel, are part of this struggle. They are and will continue to be on the streets and engaged in the activism that will chart the future of the vision we share.
In the words of Erica Kushner, mazkirol (secretary-general) of our movement in North America: We have a long history of holding the vision and the reality of Israel side by side. And we will not let the current government stop us from making our demand for an Israel that is democratic, Jewish and just—a place to build the dream into a reality.”
I am making a generous contribution today to the Habonim-Dror Foundation, whose exclusive purpose is to support the work of Habonim-Dror and to ensure its future.
I hope you will join me.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Tom Gutherz
Chairperson, Habonim Dror Foundation
Canadians can now donate and deduct!
Canadians can donate to the Habonim Dror Foundation Canada Fund.
Please help us reach our 2022 Annual Fundraising Goal!
Dear Habonim Alumni and Friends,
On a recent trip to Israel, I spent time with Habonim Dror olim at their urban kibbutzim in struggling neighborhoods.
In Petach Tikvah, a city in central Israel, the local “kibbutz” has established a weekly food bank for people, including foreign workers, who suffer from food insecurity in town. Building relationships with local produce merchants, they distribute fresh fruits and vegetables every week to those in need. The personal connections generated by this small initiative are only a piece of a larger network of relationships they have made in the process of living and working in the town, which allows them to be an effective agent for social change.
These Habonim Dror alumni – like so many of their chevrei throughout Israel, the US, and Canada – are leading lives guided by the core values- the pillars – that they first learned at Habonim Dror camps and movement activities.
Will you donate to make sure these values continue to inspire young Jews today and tomorrow?
Habonim Dror North America Alumni Neshef -Watch it Now!
Join us as we celebrate a movement that has given so much to so many through musical performance and give back to help sustain the movement during the COVID-19 Crisis. Proceeds will benefit Habonim Dror North America via the Habonim Dror Foundation.
Connecting Charlottesville with the Leaders of Habonim Dror
Dear chaverot and chaverim:
In August of 2017, I saw with my own eyes the hate marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, where I am a rabbi. I saw the faces and heard the chants of “Jews will not replace us.”
Since that time, it has become clear to anyone who is paying attention that antisemitism is indeed increasing, both in terms of actual incidents as well as in a resurgence of classic anti-Semitic tropes in the political discourse. Jewish conspiracy theories that all of us thought had been consigned to the dust-bin of history have risen, zombie-like, to find new audiences among people who are too young to remember the consequences of such propaganda. And the inability of some sectors of the anti-racism movements on the left to fully recognize the vulnerability many Jewish Americans feel is troubling.
Rabbi Tom Gutherz
Congregation Beth Israel, Charlottesville VA
Member Board of Trustees
Habonim Dror Foundation
Even in the aftermath of synagogue shootings, some cannot shake the long-standing conviction that Jews are a a community of privilege that “can take care of themselves.”
The Jewish community will be struggling to find the right response to the growing antisemitism on both the left and the right. Israel’s continuing drift towards the right gives more fodder to our genuine enemies on the left, and creates alienation with those who legitimately seek to end the injustice of the occupation. A savvy dark web stokes the alienation and rage of “white ethnocentrics” who are given cover by a public agenda that cynically promotes fear-mongering towards those who are not “true Americans.“
It is our young people who find themselves at the front line of these battles on college campuses, and who will emerge as the next generation of leadership in the American Jewish community. Those of us who grew up in Habonim Dror can appreciate the importance of the voice that we bring to these conversations: a progressive Zionist voice that acts in solidarity with struggles for justice in this country that is also able to articulate and to work for a different vision for Israel’s future.
When I meet and speak with the bogrimot of our movement, I am reminded again of how important it is to support this voice. Through its movement activities and machanot, Habonim Dror continues to nurture a different voice which will become ever more important in the struggle for the soul of the next generation of American Jews. I am giving them my support. I hope you will do the same.
Please make a generous donation today!!
Rabbi Tom Gutherz
Why I Made Aliyah as a 24-Year-Old American
By Anya Friedman-Hutter May 2018
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Jewish camps urge Trump to preserve visa program for Israeli counselors
September 10, 2017, 10:00 pm
WASHINGTON — A number of Jewish camping organizations wrote to US President Donald Trump urging him to keep in place a program that grants visas to foreigners who work in summer camps. Read full story