Scouts nearly shut down during COVID-19 crisis

The Hebrew Scouts movement will end nearly all activities on Monday after the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved the organization from being under the Education Ministry to the Higher Education Ministry, under Ze’ev Elkin, since it is included in “complementary education.”

The change in status had been coupled with news that the scouts face a budget cut of NIS 8 million-NIS 10m. The change was announced after the pandemic led to the scouts nixing summer trips and youth delegations to Europe and the US, paid activities that normally contribute to their budget.

From the 900 people usually employed by the scouts, 540 have been placed on unpaid leave. Bnei Akiva placed a third of its workers on unpaid leave and reduced the pay of those working by 20%, Haaretz reported in April.

The recent news is “unthinkable,” former education minister Limor Livnat tweeted on Saturday.

“I spent the best part of my youth in the scouts,” she wrote, “I now hear that there is a danger that this wonderful youth movement will no longer exist because of budget cuts: at a time like this???”

Livnat called on the government to “wake up now.”

Yossi Garr, rosh shevet (tribe elder) of the Dror Modi’in Religious Hebrew Scouts tribe, with 600 scouts under his care, told The Jerusalem Post he is a volunteer, as are many others in the scouts.

“We held activities in small groups limited to 15 members, what they call “capsules,” all in the open air and with masks: All of that is over as of today,” he told the Post on Sunday.

“We pitched various creative alternatives to keep summer camps going and everything was nixed, including training our youth leaders [madrichim],” Garr said. “This was done in a very random-seeming manner which we do not understand.”

A scout since he was in the fourth grade, Garr’s three children are also in the scout movement. He said the youth movement had given them priceless experiences and skills. “The love of hiking in this country, or to be engaged in educational activities, these things are fantastic,” Garr said.

A common Israeli joke has it that the best-liked youth movement of our times is switching on the phone with the flick of one’s thumb. But for Garr, this is nonsense – and the 3,000 youth in the Modi’in scouts community would likely agree.

Ariella Yantin, a London-born Israeli scout who arrived in the country eight year ago, shared with the Post how much value she and her entire family sees in the youth movement. “The Scouts movement is my entire world,” she said. “Before COVID19, I was there all the time.”

Scouts participate in activities twice a week: Tuesday and Saturday evening for religious scouts, and Tuesday and Friday evening for secular scouts. When she first heard the news, Yantin was “in shock; my friends and I did not know why we were being told there won’t be any activity soon.”

She is adamant that she and her entire family will protest this decision. “My father was in the Hebrew scouts in London,” she said. “My four brothers are scouts here; this really matters to us.”

Elkin did not respond to requests for comment from the Post.