This past weekend, maapilimot from shkavot 68 through 64, from all six of our machanot, gathered at Machaneh Galil in Ottsville, PA for Maapilimot Seminar 2019. The five-day seminar was packed with peulot, decision-making, bonding, and fun! Maap Sem was planned by a vaad of dedicated maapilimot representing all the shkavot and machanot.
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Summer camp follows Moshava’s lead on inclusion
This coming summer, a California camp is taking the lead from Habonim Dror Camp Moshava by adding all-gender housing for campers. Mosh has offered such housing since 2017, two summers ago.
“While the move is pioneering, it isn’t precedent setting: According to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Habonim Dror’s Camp Moshava in Maryland has offered all-gender cabins since 2017, and the foundation itself offered the option to camp counselors attending its Cornerstone Seminar last year.”
Habonim Dror participates in Hakhel conference
HDNA members from our communities in Philadelphia, Manhattan, and Brooklyn gathered with other Jews creating intentional communities at the annual Hakhel conference — including many of our Habo friends from Australia and New Zealand, and our partners from Hashomer Hatzair!
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
Jewish Teens Learn Lessons of Zionism
MAY 4, 2016
By: Liz Spikol | JE Staff
“If you will it, it is no dream,” Zionist leader Theodor Herzl wrote in 1902.
More than a century later, Herzl’s words — translated into Hebrew — served as the inspiration for an auspicious gathering of educators and Jewish teens called Ein Zo Agada (“It Is No Dream”), which took place on a recent Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia.
The event was conceived by leaders of two Zionist youth movements — Habonim Dror and B’nei Akiva — and motivated by a single question: “What are the needs of Jewish teens?” (Article no longer in archive)
An evolving experience
Friday 22nd, January 2016 Written by Mira Sucharov
On a little corner of Gabriola Island lies an enclave of old-style Jewish utopianism. Modeled after a kibbutz, campers (chanichim) and counselors (madrichim) talk about heady topics like radical justice, equal worth, unionization, socialism and Labor Zionism.
They learn Hebrew, engage in physical labor and debate topics like whether O Canada adequately addresses the reality of First Nations, the fate of the Palestinians, and how to make a radically inclusive society within Israel. It’s Camp Miriam, part of the network of Habonim-Dror camps across North America. Among the founders of the camp was my grandmother, Marian Margolis, and I spent one memorable summer there as a counselor in 1990. Read more …
Hike, swim, fix the world: Kids mix it up at Gilboa camp
Summer camp for Eliza Smith includes more than the typical swimming and s’mores around a campfire. It also includes discussion of Middle East peace and cleanup duty in the bathrooms.
That’s how they roll at Camp Gilboa, a Jewish summer camp in Southern California to which the 15-year old Berkeley High School junior has returned every year since she was 8.
Located in the San Bernardino Mountains, Gilboa encompasses 40 forested acres where campers age 8 to 17 — many from the Bay Area — can hike, make artsy crafts and engage in other typical summer camp activities. Read more ….
Mentoring and Grants Helps Camp Gesher Thrive
Lila Sarick, Staff Reporter, Wednesday, June 10, 2015
JCamp180, a philanthropic organization based in Massachusetts, is the reason why Ontario’s Camp Gesher has brand-new cabins and a much more sophisticated board of directors. Read more ….
Jacques Wagner named Brazilian minister of defense
December 26, 2014 11:32am
(JTA) — Jacques Wagner, the governor of the Brazilian state of Bahia, was named the federal government’s next minister of defense.
President Dilma Rousseff tapped Wagner, 63, and 12 other new cabinet ministers on Tuesday following her re-election in October.
Born in Rio de Janeiro to Jewish immigrants from Poland, Wagner, a former activist with the Zionist Habonim Dror movement, was elected governor in 2007. He had previously served as minister of labor under former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Read more …
Habonim Dror Hosts Rabin Exhibit
By: Amishai Gottlieb, © 2014 Jewish Exponent
Anyone who happened to pass by the library at the Jewish Community Services Building in Center City on Nov. 13-14 was virtually transported to Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.
In memory of the anniversary of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s murder on Nov. 4, 1995 by a right-wing Jewish activist, three Habonim Dror youth movement counselors — all college-aged — set up an exhibit in honor of the late leader. Article no longer in archive.
ABOVE Dan Shahar (right) does a trial lecture for fellow exhibit leaders (from left) Adi Goldberg, Hila Huber and Ross Weisman. Photo by Amishai Gottlieb.