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Full Line of all Pet Supplies including many hard to find items!
Erez and Oren Brandvain at the organic garden
they started at Camp Tavor
EST.
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Survey shows Habonim/Camp Tavor
alums rank high in social activism,
Israel engagement.
Michael Appel
Special to the Jewish News
I
often credit Habonim Dror, and Camp
Tavor in particular, with shaping my
values and my career:' says Cheryl
Cook, COO at New York-based Hazon, a
national Jewish organization whose inno-
vative programs bring together Jewish
tradition, environmental outreach and a
commitment to sus-
tainable communities.
"At camp, I truly lived
a Jewish life that was
special, and I've trans-
lated much of that into
my life today"
Cook's path from
the Detroit Jewish
Cheryl Cook
community, through
Tavor and Habonim, and on to a leader-
ship position in a progressive, innovative
Jewish organization illustrates one of a
number of findings from a recent study of
alumni of Habonim Dror North America
(HDNA). Founded in 1935, HDNA is
the North American arm of the global
Habonim Dror progressive Zionist youth
movement.
The study — conducted by Steven M.
Cohen, research professor of Jewish social
policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, and Steven Fink, a
survey and evaluation specialist and a
sociology teacher at Montgomery College
in Maryland — found that HDNA,
with seven youth camps in the U.S. and
Canada, develops progressive Zionists
who are deeply committed to Israel and
to social justice.
The camps — notable for nurturing
youth leadership — also foster lifelong
friendships, the study found. In the
Midwest, Habonim Dror Camp Tavor
in Three Rivers, south of Kalamazoo,
attracts campers from Detroit, Ann
Arbor, Chicago and throughout the
region.
The study, commissioned by the
Habonim Dror Camp Association, was
based on nearly 2,000 responses to an
email survey. With more than 40,000 liv-
ing alumni, the researchers reached out
to 5,000 in the organization's database,
psoest
ugh,
20131
RI DE19011 JEWISH NEWS
receiving responses from 1,994 people
ranging in age from 18-83.
■
Case In Point
Rachel Subrin Jensen and her family
exemplify another of the study's findings
—the impact participation in HDNA can
have over the years. Rachel attended and
then worked at Tavor in the 1960s and
'70s. All three of her children attended
and then worked at Tavor and also par-
ticipated in Habonim Dror's Workshop
program, the longest-
running Israel gap year
program for North
American high school
graduates, where her
youngest son, Eli, is this
year.
Rachel volunteers on
the Camp Committee
Rachel Subrin
that supports the camp
Jensen
and its activities. In
explaining her desire to help maintain the
Tavor experience for the next generation,
Rachel says of her children: "I know that
their strength of identity, leadership, com-
munity values and creativity are buoyed
and secured through their experiences in
Habonim."
In the Brandvain family from
Farmington Hills, brothers Yaniv, Ilan,
Oren and Erez exemplify how Habonim
pairs progressive values with a commit-
ment to Israel. They all share a fascina-
tion with natural systems that has taken
them in different directions professionally
— biology, landscape architecture and
sustainable agriculture.
One of their legacies at Tavor is the
large organic garden, tended by the
campers, that provides significant
amounts of food for the camp each sum-
mer, as well as a timely and progressive
focus on organic food, local food systems
and a connection with the land and its
produce that grows naturally from the
Labor Zionist tradition.
Ilan, who moved to Israel seven years
ago, is studying to be a tour guide, a rigor-
ous course of study that requires knowl-
edge of history, nature and geography.
Legacy on page 128
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