Thursday, March 5, 2009
what now?
what am i doing? when i was traveling in israel i had all these thoughts and experiences i wanted to share with other people via my blog, and i had it in my head that when i had some time i'd do it. but it is difficult to write about the doves that live on the western wall or the man that shouted at us for meditating there, however recently it may indeed have occured, when i woke up this morning and cross country skiied through a new england wood. its hard to live in the present and write about the past, and truly, living in the present is what i want to do. i have started a new job, i am a person with a past who is the flower grower and events planner at a farm in granby, ma. i have a tomato festival to schedule for august and i have to learn which shed holds which tools and where the ladle lives in this new kitchen i now share with some wonderful folks. but what of the untold stories? the materialistic young urban professionals who were the participants on the birthright trip and how i covered myself with mud immediately after we all exposed our bikinied bodies at the dead sea because i felt embarassed about my hairy legs for the first time in YEARS. the moment of silence i held at the end of our five hour tour of Israel's holocaust museum (Yad Vashem) in which i asked people to empathize, not blame or analyze but to try to empathize, with the people suffering in gaza just a few kilometers from this memorial where we had just empathized with the victims of the shoah. the wild dancing i couldn't help but let loose in that kibbutz bomb shelter that night. the play i went to see in hebrew about a conversation among a group of turn of the century european jewish immigrants to palestine who were trying to figure out how to relate to one another as a commune and how it along with the commune i was staying in at the time inspired me to be conscious and intentional about relationships. the retail tycoon and birthright philanthropist, bernie marcus founder and owner of home depot, who uglied any sense of jewish identity i had while i sat through his bullshit speech with broiling blood and watery eyes at independence hall (the bomb shelter room in which ben gurion declared the state of israel in 1948) while all the young urban professional participants applauded home depot and israeli nationalism and laughed at his jokes about greedy jews. david grossman's eulogy for his sone, uri grossman. what about all these untold stories that i meant to tell?
Sunday, March 1, 2009
kibbutz gonen
The first night of our Israel tour was spent in the hotel of Kibbutz Gonen in the north. Having spent a total of two years on three different Kibbutzim a decade ago, my eyelids fluttered with a sappy nostalgia as we entered the familar Kibbutz style gate.
Scruffy dogs sauntered freely through a maze of small tan buildings with red rooves. Brown drip irrigation lines snaked through well manicured gardens. Soapy water was being squeegeed out the front door of the flat roofed dining hall. Children climbed confidently over truck tire playgrounds. It was all familiar and I felt cozy.
I had spent 11th grade as a member of a program for American Jewish High School students on Kibbutz Beit Hashita. We lived in dorms, took classes in English at the Israeli school, worked one day a week on the Kibbutz, drank copious amounts of alchohol, had confused sexual experiences, smoked pack after pack of cigarettes, and engaged in dramatic teenage social relationships.
Living on a Kibbutz when I was 16 revealed to me an alternative to the suburban reality I had despised in Rockville Maryland. On the Kibbutz, there were no fences around the yards and the dogs weren't overweight. Working there I discovered that I could do manual labor, and that if I did, I would be able to create things with my bare hands.
I, the only small scale organic farmer and ex-Kibbutz resident of the birthright group, was quite a bit more enthusiastic about our tour of Kibbutz Gonen than the others. I wanted to chat with the Kibbutz member giving us the tour all day.
Is there any communal element left to Kibbutz life now that salaries are stratified, everyone owns their own stuff, and more than half of the Kibbutz members are over the age of sixty five? How did Kibbutzim come to the decision to hire Thai workers and pay them poorly rather than do the work themselves?
Why are the cucumbers in Israel sooooo amazing? And why are the tomatoes pale and flavorless?
Do you feel like a human shield here in the Golan Heights? Do you like it? What was the damage to the Kibbutz during the second Lebanon War in '06? How many weeks were you in the bomb shelter? Do you ever have the desire to invite your Lebanese neighbors from ten miles away over an invisible border to your house for coffee? Do you ever picture yourself in a cuddle puddle with them?
Do you miss communal life? I miss it for you.
During the bus ride from Kibbutz Gonen to Manara Cliff (an outlook from which the view of Israel's Syrian and Lebanese borders are visible) I gave a talk about my experiences on Kibbutzim. I also talked about how, while rural kibbutzim have fallen apart and all but ceased to be either communal or agricultural, there is a new movement of urban Kibbutzim dedicated to educating toward a socialist revolution in Israel. More on that to come...
Scruffy dogs sauntered freely through a maze of small tan buildings with red rooves. Brown drip irrigation lines snaked through well manicured gardens. Soapy water was being squeegeed out the front door of the flat roofed dining hall. Children climbed confidently over truck tire playgrounds. It was all familiar and I felt cozy.
I had spent 11th grade as a member of a program for American Jewish High School students on Kibbutz Beit Hashita. We lived in dorms, took classes in English at the Israeli school, worked one day a week on the Kibbutz, drank copious amounts of alchohol, had confused sexual experiences, smoked pack after pack of cigarettes, and engaged in dramatic teenage social relationships.
Living on a Kibbutz when I was 16 revealed to me an alternative to the suburban reality I had despised in Rockville Maryland. On the Kibbutz, there were no fences around the yards and the dogs weren't overweight. Working there I discovered that I could do manual labor, and that if I did, I would be able to create things with my bare hands.
I, the only small scale organic farmer and ex-Kibbutz resident of the birthright group, was quite a bit more enthusiastic about our tour of Kibbutz Gonen than the others. I wanted to chat with the Kibbutz member giving us the tour all day.
Is there any communal element left to Kibbutz life now that salaries are stratified, everyone owns their own stuff, and more than half of the Kibbutz members are over the age of sixty five? How did Kibbutzim come to the decision to hire Thai workers and pay them poorly rather than do the work themselves?
Why are the cucumbers in Israel sooooo amazing? And why are the tomatoes pale and flavorless?
Do you feel like a human shield here in the Golan Heights? Do you like it? What was the damage to the Kibbutz during the second Lebanon War in '06? How many weeks were you in the bomb shelter? Do you ever have the desire to invite your Lebanese neighbors from ten miles away over an invisible border to your house for coffee? Do you ever picture yourself in a cuddle puddle with them?
Do you miss communal life? I miss it for you.
During the bus ride from Kibbutz Gonen to Manara Cliff (an outlook from which the view of Israel's Syrian and Lebanese borders are visible) I gave a talk about my experiences on Kibbutzim. I also talked about how, while rural kibbutzim have fallen apart and all but ceased to be either communal or agricultural, there is a new movement of urban Kibbutzim dedicated to educating toward a socialist revolution in Israel. More on that to come...
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