Archival Treasures – Ultra-Orthodox Life in the Holyland

Hakhshara Group (Agricultural Training Program) of Agudat Yisrael in Sobków, Poland

4 Minutes, 1935
Genre:
Moment

  • Rate
Directed by: Unknown
Language: No Dialogs
| Subtitles not available

An excerpt from a film shot in the mid 1930’s, which offers a rare documentation of a Hakhshara Group (agricultural training group) of Agudat Yisrael in Sobków, a village in Poland. The clip depicts a group of young men undergoing agricultural training and learning relevant vocational skills, as part of a training program on behalf of Agudat Yisrael. The young men learn to plant and weed, collect potatoes, learn blacksmithing, stack piles of hay and engage in threshing when horses step on the wheat and move in circles. The participants are also seen dancing, performing the Jewish religious ritual of washing hands in the Nida river, and praying together. On the stone building next to which three blacksmiths-trainees engage in forging, several inscriptions in Hebrew are visible on the stone pillar on the right side of the frame, from which the inscription “Kibbutz Hakhshara Sobków” can be detected. This Hakhshara Group took place in an old Polish castle, which in the 1930’s belonged to the Jewish Kaminer family, and its ruins stand to this day in Sobków. Hakhshara training groups of various organizations operated throughout Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and Agudat Yisrael movement operated such agricultural training groups as well. Agudat Yisrael received a quota of certificates from the Jewish Agency, which it could offer to its young members, who upon completion of the agricultural training, could immigrate to Mandatory Palestine and integrate into agricultural work in settlements.
The archive team wishes to thank Dr. Chaim Shalem, Dr. Yochanan Ben Yaacov, Rabbi Jacob Shlomo Levi, and Prof. Aviva Halamish, for the scientific consultation of this footage.

Locations:
Unknown

You may also be interested in ...

Subscribe to our mailing list and stay up to date
הירשמו לרשימת התפוצה שלנו והישארו מעודכנים

This will close in 0 seconds