Wellesley Aron

Early years

Born in London on 18 June 1901, he was the only child of a German Jewish mother but the fifth child of a German Jewish father. His half-siblings were all raised in their mother's Christian faith. Jewish religious observance was almost non-existent in his mother's home according to Wellesley.

During World War I the family lived for a time in Germany before moving to Switzerland. His half-brother and a cousin died during the war, which he believed led to his father's death shortly after. At the end of the war, Wellesley and his mother returned to London.

In 1919 Wellesley enrolled at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied ancient and modern French history. However, at his mother's insistence he returned to London and became involved in the business world.

It was at this time, in 1921, at the suggestion of Basil Henriques, that Wellesley became involved with disadvantaged youth from the East End of London. Having been an active Boy Scout during his school years, he saw scouting as the solution to giving the young people a sense of purpose. He founded the 36th Stepney Jewish Scout Troop which would become known in London for its scouting prowess. This first encounter with poor Jews was to have a profound influence for the rest of his life – "the two years I spent with these responsive young scouts left a real and lasting satisfaction such as I have never experienced".

He returned to Cambridge over his mother's objections. Forced to support himself, he took the post of assistant housemaster at Hillel House.

At this period Wellesley had his first personal encounter with antisemitism. He spent vacation time with his Christian half-sister in Devon. There he met and fell in love with a young woman. They wanted to marry her but her father refused to allow it because Aron was Jewish.

Zionism

Returning to Cambridge he was in total shock over this rejection based simply on the fact that he was a Jew, and spent much time soul searching. For the first time he was forced to ask himself, what, if anything, it meant to be a Jew. Eventually he came to the conclusion that he had to go to Palestine.

Always a person of action he actively prepared for his emigration to Palestine. Already speaking three languages he now studied Hebrew. At the same time, he became active in the student Zionist club. It was here that he first met Dr.Chaim Weizmann, the chemist and Zionist leader who later became Israel's first President.

At the same time, he faced another inconsistency – the ambivalence displayed by English Jews to the Zionist aim of reestablishing a sovereign Jewish community in Palestine. Basil Henriques, who had often charged him with being "un-Jewish" for not including Jewish content into his Scouting activities, now saw it as a "tragedy" that Aron had decided to go to Palestine.

Wellesley recalled that it was this period that forced him to reject the conventional religious approach of Orthodox Judaism and look instead "to the renaissance of the Jewish People as a political entity in its own homeland".

After graduating Cambridge in 1926, he moved to what was then Palestine. He spent the next years in Haifa and Tel Aviv teaching sports and English – first at Reali and then at the famous Herzliya Gymnasia. In the meantime, he began to familiarise himself with Zionism. He met and married his wife Rose and they had their first child, a girl.

Habonim

Before his return to London, Wellesley was asked by Weizmann for a second time in 1927 to assist with the political wing of the Zionist Office in London. Due to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which "His Majesty's Government viewed with favour the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine", the centre of political Zionism had moved to London.) Wellesley returned a year later with his young family and started to work at the Zionist Federation Offices at 77 Great Russell Street. His overseer there, Leonard Stein did not share his work burden easily, and Wellesley found himself with relatively little to do. He therefore decided to see for himself the extent to which Jewish history was being taught in the Stepney Jewish youth clubs in London's poverty-struck East End, which, at that time, were being run by his friend Basil Henriques. He found that the clubs were Jewish only because of their membership and nothing about Jewish history or about Palestine was being taught.

Wellesley's solution was to found a new non-Zionist "Jewish cultural youth movement", which would combine the principles of Baden Powell's scouting with a love of Jewish heritage, and taught not only Jewish history but also Modern Hebrew and songs and dances, in addition to camping craft and other outdoor activities, like the Scouting Movement. Wellesley produced a handbook with instructions on how to run groups of teenagers, using elements of Jewish history and symbolism, tests and ceremonies not dissimilar to those customary in scouting.

To build the content around Jewish civilisation, Wellesley authored a history of the Jewish people in "a thousand words ...that a child could read". His prior attempts to get this written by various authoritative Jewish sources had failed to achieve suitable results, and he was thus constrained to undertake the task on his own.

Aron's efforts to obtain funding to move forward the establishment of Habonim also saw him become one of the founders of the Bar-Kochba Jewish sports organisation in England. "It was easier to get moneys for sports than Jewish culture" he later recalled. Bar-Kochba in turn led to the founding of the English Maccabi sports movement.

In 1931, on the termination of his position under Weizmann, Wellesley returned to Palestine. Habonim, which began as "a Jewish Cultural Youth Movement" subsequently developed into a Zionist Youth Movement that has had enormous impact in both Israel and Jewish communities worldwide. Habonim flourished and has become worldwide in its activities. It has since linked up with