Youth culture

In Jewish communities around the world, learning from elders and studying old Jewish texts were always a central way of renewing meaning and finding guidance. In the interwar period in Europe, Jewish youth were exposed to many new ideas that seemed to translate into new options in life. Combining old and new, the adult Jewish world was blossoming with an array of political options. For the youth it meant exposure to a new variety of schools for Jewish children and later on, a new array of activities that no other youth had before. A new world seemed to opening up. Young people began to feel empowered: dreaming of big possibilities and working towards those dreams that seemed most possible.

Kinderlakh: Children

A mol, a mol, a mol, iz geven...'

'A mol, a mol, a mol, iz geven…' - 'Once upon a time…' (in Yiddish)

Some things about childhood never seem to change. Children growing up in the USSR, Poland and Lithuania between the world wars did not have electronic games, skateboards or cell phones, but they found many ways to have fun. Whether they lived in a town (shtetl) or a big city (shtot) like Lublin, they played games and sports like soccer or ping-pong, visited grandma's home for Shabes, told stories, and walked in the woods or the park. For Purim some children might dress up as kings or queens or watch a Purim play (Purim shpil); many loved to follow klezmer musicians when they played for a wedding or other celebration. They rode in bicycle races, went swimming in the summer and sledding or ice-skating in the winter, sliding on their shoes if they did not own proper skates. In the summer, some went to a Jewish camp for a few weeks, where they sang songs around a bonfire, played sports, put on plays from Bible stories and drew pictures; others joined organized sports clubs like the Maccabi (Zionist) or Morgnshtern (Socialist Bund).

Children and young people did not have as many toys as they do today: their toys were often handmade from wood or cloth, but each toy was treasured. Children played together with their siblings, cousins, neighbors, and in school. During Shabes in shul, as the Sabbath prayers were chanted in the synagogue, it was a wonderful day to escape from adults and play while working up an appetite to return to a wonderful tsholent (Sabbath stew) that was most often picked up from a local bakery oven where it was left in a designated household pot on Friday evening (erev Shabes).

From kheder to school: from melamed to teacher.

When you examine a class picture of boys or girls from the 1920s or 1930s, you might find that the hairstyles and clothes seem a bit strange. But, if you look closely at these photographs perhaps you will see the same personalities you might meet in a class today: the quiet one, the troublemaker, the dreamer, the eager student. Around this time, the question of what all these Jewish children should learn began to be answered in new and differing ways. In response to the many social changes of the 1920s, a variety of private school systems were established with the intention of shaping children in new ways. A town that in the past would have had only one school now boasted four or five school options, each with a different political and social outlook. Parents paid fees to send their children to schools that matched their ideas, which would then in turn influence the future political outlook of these children.

Many students started school at the age of 3 to 5 years old in the old-fashioned one-room schoolhouses known as khadorim. Although some basic alphabet might have been taught at home, the kheyder, with its melamed (instructor) was the place for early child education. Often, songs were used to teach: "komets alef O…!" is the famous song used to teach the Yiddish alphabet to these students. Poorer children were sent on to Talmud Torah (Talmud Toyres in Yiddish), community sponsored schools. A large proportion of all older children, perhaps 60%, went on to free state schools, where classes were taught in Polish. These schools, known as Szabasowka schools, were especially for Jews, with no classes held on Saturday. Still Yiddish was often forbidden, and students had to make the great effort to learn Polish.

The diversity of private Jewish day schools found in Polish cities in the 1920s and 1930s cannot be matched today, even in cities like New York and Montreal with large concentrations of Jews. Yiddish day schools, which once thrived in these cities, as well as in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, are no longer common. Poland was home to several different types of school networks which these American experiments used as models: Tarbut , TsIShO (sometimes known as CYSHO), Yavneh and Agudas Israel--Isroel-Yisroel. The Tarbut (Hebrew for "culture") schools taught in Hebrew and emphasized Zionism, while the TsIShO (Central Jewish School Organization) schools organized by Jewish-Socialist "Bund" party, were taught in Yiddish and emphasized local Jewish culture. The Yavneh school system was a more traditionally religious option, but with Zionist leanings. Parents also sent children to the Agudas Israel--Isroel-Yisroel schools, Khoyrev for boys and the Beys Yankev for girls. This was one of the most popular Orthodox Jewish educational options for young children before they went on to the Yeshive. After school, there was a variety of afternoon activities, from violin and piano to language lessons, which were offered to middle class students whose parents could afford the tutors. Many male adults attended afternoon or evening study groups, and some children would also be sent to study additional Torah and commentary with a private Rabbi.

For most, the age of 13 brought with it a lot of new responsibilities. In the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, celebrated in the synagogue, a boy becomes an adult in the community by being called to read from the Torah for the first time. But, because many boys learned Torah and Hebrew from a very early age, these ceremonies did not require the kind of preparation that we are familiar with today. Neither were they celebrated as they are today: most Jewish families could not pay for extraordinary parties. It was a rite of passage, and many of the sons of working class parents - the vast majority - started to work after their bar mitzvah to help supplement the family income. [Girls were not called to the Torah for a bas mitzvah then as they are in many congregations today. In fact the ceremony did not exist in pre-World War II Europe. The first bas mitzvah was celebrated in the United States in 1923, when Judith Kaplan, the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, was called to the Torah at age 12.]

Grade 7 marked the end of compulsory education for children in Polish cities. Many children had to quit school to be apprenticed in a trade such as sewing or carpentry, to help support their families and later on, themselves. Some children learned a trade in special Jewish vocational schools where they were taught skills such as carpentry, textile design and other trades. Gaining admittance into college preparatory "Gymnasium" (high school) was very difficult, since there were often quotas for how many Jews could enroll. Admittance to college from the Gymnasium was even more difficult and restricted for Jewish students.

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Whether teens worked or continued their studies at a gymnasium or yeshive, broad changes were coming to expand their worldview through which they would strive to transform their society for the better. As they were reading new literature, and hearing the discussions of their parents or elders about the world, youth groups organized, energizing a movement that gathered strength in Eastern Europe and Germany throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Just as there were many different school systems, there were almost a hundred separate Jewish youth movements operating in Eastern Europe at that time, each with its own organizational beliefs and goals. The incredible diversity of ideas, which young people were learning about and adopting as their own, reflected and magnified the great social dreams of the time.

It is hard to overstate the impact of these youth movements on history, and on Jewish society as a whole. They prepared thousands of young people to make aliya (go to what was then Palestine) and helped found the State of Israel. They trained fighters who formed resistance and rescue movements during World War II. And these youth movements were the starting ground for leaders who remained important in diaspora Jewish life well into the 20th and 21st centuries.

Youth groups represented the entire political spectrum, according to their attitudes toward the most central questions facing the Jewish community: influential ideas and philosophies such as Socialism, Zionism, and Traditionalism shaped the platforms of all Jewish political parties. Jews selected and blended creatively from these fundamental elements. Socialism and Zionism combined to form several left-wing Zionist youth groups, which called for the creation of a Socialist-Jewish homeland. Zionism and Traditionalism combined to form the Mizrachi party, whose members dreamed of a Jewish homeland that would protect and nurture the right to observe Halakhah (Jewish religious law). Socialist ideas blended with cultural nationalism to produce the Bundist platform. This fluidity, ingenuity and adaptability helped propel politics to the forefront of daily life. No matter what its basic creed, each political platform shared a concern for the future of the Jewish people, and existed at a time of political engagement and diversity unlike any other in Jewish history.

From these paths youth groups arose: on the left, Tsukunft (Future), the youth group of the Bund, was a Socialist, non-Zionist group. Morgnshtern was the Bundist sports group for children as well as young teenagers; the Bund also had another children's group, known as SKIF (Socialist Children's Union). HeHalutz (The Pioneer) and Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Scout) were the largest Zionist socialist groups. But Zionist variations were many: Gordonia, Dror, and others were some of those early examples. Some Zionist groups were less inclined to incorporate socialist ideals; some embraced more issues of culture rather than political goals. Most had a basis in scouting and pioneering and embraced physical labor as a reconnection to the earth and to more natural, land rooted forms of living. Betar (Joseph Trumpledor Association) was a right-wing Zionist, anti-Marxist group. HaNoar HaIvri Akiba (Hebrew Akiva Youth) was the Zionist-religious-socialist option. In the center, Tzofim (Scouts) was a nonpolitical, scouting group, while the Maccabi was founded as a nonpolitical sporting group.

Think about the expectations placed on a 16-year-old today. Most of these are individual goals: to do well in school, get into a good college, stay away from alcohol, drugs, and to avoid any other destructive behavior, staying out of trouble. But young Jews between the wars were not just thinking about individual success: they had goals for the Jewish people as a whole. They were not just preparing to go off to college: those that felt an urge to help the Zionist dream were often preparing to leave everything familiar to them, to travel to a new, as-yet-unfounded country, to forge a new way of Jewish life. Others exposed themselves and their families to government reprisals as they challenged local forms of discrimination with their work in trade unions. The sense of shared mission helped to build strong bonds within the groups. For the adolescent, there was no dramatic division between the different local leaders and the followers: they were all working together , pursuing change.

"I…began to think seriously about two issues: what to do with myself, and what political organization to join," wrote 20-year-old Ludwik about his moment of decision in 1930s Poland. Joining a particular movement was often the first independent decision a young person made, and it often turned out to be even more important then they had imagined. The choice of parents to send children to a Tarbut, TsIShO or Beys Yankev school was likely to influence their choice of a youth movement. Sometimes entire Tarbut high school classes, for example, would form a chapter of Hashomer Hatzair. It is true, that some of the choices were made to satisfy individual needs: a girl or boy might join Betar or Hashomer Hatzair because a favorite older cousin was a member, or to get access to the group's library, or to go on camping trips and be close to the friends she liked. But regardless of the many ways groups drew members, more often than not they deeply changed lives.

The Zionist groups taught Hebrew and sponsored hakhsharah (vocational training), for youth working on farms and factories they owned all over rural Poland and Germany. On hakhsharah, the city-bred students and factory workers lived communally on Kibbutzim throughout the Polish countryside, sharing all their possessions. They sang pioneer songs and worked from dawn to dusk for summers or even a few years, preparing for life on the kibbutzim their movements were establishing in Palestine. Their slogans were proud: "Hebrew pioneering is brutal in its reality and wonderful in its essence," "We have nothing here; we need no one," and the members were said to live on "Luft un Libe" (air and love).

Each youth movement encompassed a vital world of change and construction. Whether it was concerned with local Jewish political prisoners, with improving salaries and education, with Hebrew or Yiddish adult education, and more, these groups infused new energy into the Jewish communities. When people speak of a Jewish youth group today in America, they probably think of a group that has social get-togethers, does a little community service, and maybe has a summer camp or runs summertime trips to Israel for teenagers. The Jewish youth movements of the pre-World War II era had all these activities, and much, much more. The members learned practical life skills that helped them become leaders as they organized and planned a wealth of activities. These activities included publishing newsletters, opening lending libraries, sponsoring educational activities like lectures and night schools, organizing sports clubs and cultural activities like symphonies, choruses and drama groups, parties and outings, fundraising for charitable Jewish organizations and their own activities, and attending political talks and activist demonstrations.

But choosing to participate in all these new activities might mean clashes and intense consciousness raising: families were fatefully divided by the diversity of ideas surrounding them and the need to choose between them. Around a family's dinner table, one might find an older brother who studied at Yeshive, a younger brother who spoke of immediate action who as a member of the Zionist Revisionist organization Betar trained for "Hebrew self-defense," a sister who had spent the summer working on a Zionist HeHalutz farm and preparing for aliya to Palestine, and another member of the family who belonged to the Bundist Tsukunft, and marched with striking needleworkers.

Look at this family portrait. The grandparents older traditonal attire reveals their traditional commitments and the younger mixed generation that followed represent a variety of paths. Yet the entire family existed in a vibrant Jewish context, hearing kiddush (kidesh in Yiddish) Friday night, and one way or another spending the time together at a Shabes table. The diverse Jewish expressions of that time and place-social, political, cultural, and religious-were preserved in the institutions and the work of thinkers who make up much of the landscape of modern Jewish life. Parts of that history come alive today at the many and diverse Jewish summer camps, in the Yiddish theater we still can see in New York, and on the few Israeli kibbutzim that remain.

When people are growing up, they dream of the future, of making a difference. For the youth movement members in Eastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the future they faced was different from anything they could have imagined. Most of that youthful generation, often resisting the Nazis heroically in their daily lives and some through armed resistance efforts, would be lost in the Holocaust. But those who survived lived on to build the Jewish world we live in today while maintaining many of their old ideals.