OCTOBER 7. 1960
THE   CANADIAN   JEWISH   REVIEW
From The Pisgah Of Forty Years Of Histadrut
IV   IAMI   MCOt  J.   WIIMSTIIH,   NATIONAL   CHAIRMAN  Of   TMI   NATIONAL   COMMITTII   POt LABOt IttAIL) LIADEK OP KJLM. 1IMMI, Of CHICACO, ILLINOIS
It is the special genius of the Jewish New Year that it induces even the average citizen to become philosophical and introspective, not only about himself but about his causes. The fortieth anniversary of Histadrut offers a very special incentive for both an inner and an outer look, Forty is a favorite number in our tradition. Forty is the number of days and nights of the Flood; forty the days of Elijah in the desert before the inward revelation of the "still, small voice"; and forty were the years in which the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt were drained of the hunger for the fleshpots and made ready for the responsibilities of freedom and self-government.
So, too, have the four decades, in which Histadrut has grown from a small band of visionaries to the most effective instrument of social democracy in the Middle East, been years of cleansing and vital growth. In these years the multi-faceted Histadrut has sweated out of its pores unassimilable material, whether it be the incandescent philosophical anarchism of an A. D. Gordon, or the too-tightly structured equalitarianism of a Borochov. It was the period in which the members of Histadrut learned that reality bends all ideology to its necessities.
In the course of learning this sometimes bitter truth, the pioneers gave up some of their inherited attitudes toward bourgeois fetishes as administrative order, planned production, individual incentive, and military defense. It was a period in which some of the frozen gestures inherited from the "Kulturkampf" of the Pale of Settlement had to thaw out and give way to a toleration for those who needed the assurances of eternity to keep them loyal to the cause of improving life on earth, And in the last decade, the men and women of Histadrut have faced a new challenge: the giddy provocation of success and the corruptive temptation of power.
Moses found it necessary to let the generation born in Egyptian slavery die out before he could create a nation of free men from its children. We witness the miracle, almost as incredible as that of the splitting of the Red Sea, of a people always in the marginal position of an idealistic minority moving into the central position of power and yet holding fast to the core of its idealism. The concessions which Histadrut now makes to private /enterprise on the one hand and to the more all-embracing collectivism on the other are concessions made out of strength and certainty; the strength and the certainty of a labor movement which has assumed a task unprecedented for a labor movement: the national rehabilitation of a people and the revival of a long neglected land.
Nowhere in the tortured history of western man's attempt to achieve a workable balance between the one and the many; freedom and order; personal liberty and social security; have we seen so many creative syntheses as are now in practical effect in Israel. We had thought that all these social mutations had been played out on the stage of history, with the mir and the guild, the innumerable idealistic sodalities, the Christian Socialist movement, the Scandinavian Cooperatives, the Rochdale system, and the vark>us improvisations of the Social Welfare State.
But a study of Israeli cooperatives, in the framework of ft Social Democratic state and a labor move-
ment that has predominant political power and a sizeable economic investment in the basic industry of the land, reveals new, emergent, creative solutions to many problems which have often been considered insoluble. Students of collective bargaining have already noticed the constructive gains inherent in a situation where the negotiators on both sides of the table have had actual experience both in the field of management and of labor, since it is quite common for a member of Histadrut to represent labor at one time and then later be transferred to a managerial position in one of the Histadrut enterprises.
Still, life only begins at forty! Histadrut faces its fifth decade fully conscious that the military defense of Israel is still a prior obligation and the expansion of its economy equally urgent. It is as strongly committed as ever to make the Negev blossom as a rose and to ring the border areas with
strong fortresses of working settlements. While the idealism of the early decades has taken on some of the ineluctable sobriety of age, there still remain great reservoirs of noble enthusiasm in the youth of Histadrut. Where once they considered the military hero as the paragon of virtue, they have now transferred a large part of their adoration to the soil chemist, the researcher in solar energy and the desalination of water.
In a land where Moses was in full vigor at 120, forty is the age of youth and the time when one mitzvah compounds another. And so Histadrut has recently assumed another heroic role. It may prove to be the most seminal of all its roles. It has undertaken to share its know-how with the young, nascent nations of Asia and Africa. The success of the Afro-Asian Seminar, under the brilliant direction of Reuven Barkatt, Encouraged Histadrut to suggest to the AFL-CIO a partnership in the
sponsoring of a more permanent Institute for the training of labor leaders and cooperative administrators in Tel Aviv. The American trade union movement, mindful of a long and pleasant history of cooperation with Histadrut, generously agreed to this partnership and now the Afro-Asian Institute for labor studies and cooperation, under the joint chairmanship of George Meany and Eliahu Elath, is a reality.
Hundreds of young Asians and Africans will be taught the precious knowledge which Histadrut has gained in the sweat and blood of these forty years. They will see with their own eyes that a western people can develop the resources of a backward area without imposing economic bondage or political tyranny on the natives. They will observe a western people which has become color blind by the good fortune of an historic
at the
SHIR ATOM MT. ROYAL
Montreal
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