Something about Ha-shomer ha-Za'ir and its "nest" in Novi Sad

Abstract

Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir (A Young Guardian) is a Jewish youth organization created after the First World War in Poland which later gradually included the Jewish youth in a number of countries. In Yugoslavia it appeared in the thirties and sun we found it in Novi Sad. The main goal of the Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir was to educate, to prepare Jewish youth for the hard, pioneering work of building a Jewish state in Palestine, a bi-national homeland of the Jews and Palestinian Arabs. This work. as seen by the Ha-shomer ha-Za'ir could be carried out only in a collective, in the kibbutzim - the most convenient form of life for farmers, the people which were the most needed in the country - where there was no private property but everybody would be given a chance to engage in the activity chosen as the most suitable in respect of possibilities and requirements of the kibbutz. In consideration with expected future life in the kibbutz, the work in the Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir was more or less permanently connected to a ken (”nest” or home), to the premises representing a centre of the Ha-shomer ha-Za’ir life in each place where the movement existed. The volume of work and living in the ken was extremely rich.