Hashomer Hatzair Club

1934 - 1936
4283 St-Laurent

The height of Montreal’s Zionist youth activity occurred between the 1920s and 1940s as the community organized to establish a Jewish State. Alongside the mainstream Young Judaea and the Labour Zionist Habonim, the group Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard) was Montreal’s most Left-leaning and often its most popular Zionist youth group – its connections to labour politics making it attractive to immigrant families. Hashomer focused on Hebrew language and culture, and prepared its members to make aliyah (immigration to Israel) and to work on kibbutzim.

Hashomer Hatzair was created in 1916 when Hashomer, a British scouting program, joined the Galician Ze’irei Zion (Youth of Zion) nationalist cultural group. By the 1930s, the radical socialist movement had become the strongest Zionist youth group in Eastern Europe. Its members were at the forefront of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, including the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, led by Mordechai Anielewicz.

European members brought Hashomer Hatzair to North America in the 1920s, founding the Montreal ken (nest) in 1923. By the 1940s, it boasted 400 members, making it the largest ken in North America. At the ken, shomrim wore scouting-inspired shirts and triangular ties. Their meetings, conducted in Hebrew and Yiddish, emphasized Jewish culture and prepared members for life in Israel. Shomrim met outdoors or in private homes before renting a space at 5250 St. Urbain in the 1940s. A social gathering place, the ken also hosted Israeli shlichim (emissaries) as well as Zionist leaders such as Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, and Chaim Weizmann.

Hashomer life continued each summer at camps at three locations in the Laurentians, the first opening in 1929, the last, Camp Shomria, opening in the 1950s. From the movement’s onset, hechalutz (pioneering) or hachshara (training) farms were established, including one built near Prescott, Ontario, in 1944, where members prepared for kibbutz life. Another hachshara farm in Smithville, Ontario, was run jointly with Habonim from 1946 to 1951. In 1947, it was replicated by yet another hachshara farm in Sainte-Julie-de-Verchères, just east of Montreal.

As in Eastern Europe, where membership in the Hebrew-speaking group symbolized rebellion against Yiddish-speaking parents, Montreal shomrim demonstrated audacity even within their movement. While their American achim (“brothers”) debated the logistics of aliyah, the ideal was quickly transformed into action in Montreal. The first North American member to go to Palestine was from Montreal. In 1931, five Montreal shomrim made aliyah, and were the first from the North American movement to help establish Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in 1937.

The Second World War led to a temporary decline of the movement, as leaders were drafted into the army, Palestine was declared “closed” to immigration, and concerns rose about Hashomer’s socialist ideology. The war years allowed the North American chapters to debate their ideology and programs at national conferences, including in 1949 at Montreal’s Monument National Theatre. The subsequent founding of Montreal’s “Kibbutz Aliyah Vav” (a special group that made a new push to prepare members for aliyah), helped reassert the movement’s vitality.

But with the establishment of Israel in 1948, many Zionist youth groups shifted their focus to general outreach. When the Jewish community migrated west in the 1950s and 1960s, the Hashomer ken moved to Snowdon where it remained a popular centre. Montreal’s ken declined in the 1970s with the exodus of many English-speaking Jews, making the Toronto ken the only Canadian branch. Camp Shomria near Perth, Ontario, still features the experience of “living on a kibbutz.” Hashomer Hatzair remains active in Israel, as the youth division of the left-wing Meretz Party.

Compiled by Marian Pinsky.

Liens

Canadian Jewish News
Canadian Young Judea
Habonim Dror North America
Hashomer Hatzair - Camp Shomria

Sources

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*Images are courtesy of Hashomer Hatzair Archives Yad Yaari, Givat Haviva.