Saturday Nov 15

Initiation of O.S.Z. members
at "Yavne" Camp
Bensonhurst

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"O.S.Z." stands for Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B'nai Zion) the oft-mentioned Zionist fraternal order to which Papa belonged, and the "'Yavne' Camp Bensonhurst" is one of its Brooklyn chapters.

As we've seen, B'nai Zion chapters often nicknamed themselves after legendary Jewish heroes and ancient landmarks in Palestine (like the Bar Cochba Camp and Kinereth Camp previously mentioned in Papa's diary). The city of "Yavne" appears in the Bible and, it seems, also became a seat of rabbinical scholarship and a holy place after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. (Nowadays its a modern city in Israel.)

Papa was Master of Ceremonies of his own Judaically-nicknamed camp, "The Maccabean," and in that capacity often participated in initiation ceremonies for other camps. I'm not yet sure where "Yavne" met, but I'll add the Bensonhurst neighborhood to the map of Where Papa's Been.

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References for this post:

• Yavne at Wikipedia