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The corbie and the fox In Austria there is a quite known fable, that I first heard when I was pretty young. However, it stayed in my mind, so I would like to share it here, because there is a connection between the Hashomer Hatzair and the fable, but I will come to that later. Once upon a time there was a corbie. This corbie had stolen himself a nice piece of cheese, that looked really delicious. Happy about this snack, he flew to a tree in order to enjoy the precious meal. Due to the smell of the cheese a fox came by and sat down directly under the tree. “Wow, what a pleasure to meet you corbie. I heard that you are the best singer all over the forest. There are rumours that even the evil wolf would get sentimental if he heard your stunning voice. Is that true, do you have such a beautiful voice and if so, would you let me hear it?”, said the fox. The corbie, still with the cheese in his mouth, was very flattered by those words. So he started immediately to “sing”. By doing that, the cheese fell out of his mouth and landed on the ground. In fact, it landed directly in front of the fox’s feet. The fox, happy about the easy- earned meal, took the cheese and shouted to the corbie:” Lucky for me, that you are so naive. That’s the reason I got this delicious-looking cheese. By the way, I don’ care about your singing.” Then he walked away. So what does that story have to do with a Jewish youth movement? It is obviously not the cheese; No it is the way the corbie should act and how he would act if he was a Shomernik. I am talking about the 8th Dibra of the Hashomer Hatziar, that says that we should always think critical and question what we notice. I think that it is our obligation to always get to the bottom of something. I actually don’t want to rank the Dibrot, but I think that this one is the most important. Every change and every progress starts with a question. So I think that it is fundamental to teach our chanichim to question what they witness. When we make the chanichim question, what we teach them, what we show them and what we do with them, then we reach a great goal. I don’t want to drift in philosophy, but René Descartes said that doubting and questioning is what makes us human – “Dubito ergo sum”. To get back to the fable; the corbie just saw some lovely compliments and overlooked the fact that the fox was only interested in the cheese. I know that the fable is very primitive and simple but it states out the importance of questioning. The opposite of questioning is naivety and a balance of both is found in trust. And trust is in principle what the Hashomer Hatzair relies on. The trust among the members, the parents who trust us with their kids and we all, who we trust ourselves to be part of this movement. I thank you for reading this text and hope that you question it.
Nitay Maile Ken Tel Amal, Vienna 29.03.2020