Ofek: My Exploration of Labor Zionism

From December 6th to December 17, my kvutza, along with the Brits, was split up into three groups. Each of us was asked to choose from three activities: a tiyul in the Negev, Binah (study at a secular Yeshiva in Tel Aviv), and working on the mata'im (plantations) at Kibbutz Ravid. I chose the last option. Thirteen of us arrived on Ravid on Saturday night, the sixth. Itamar, a man in his early thirties and actively involved in Hanoar Ha'Oved, gave us a tour of the kibbutz and then told us to go to bed because we would be expected to be ready the next morning by 6:15. 

We awoke Sunday morning at 5:45, grabbed a small bowl of cereal, packed a hearty breakfast, and met Itamar outside to get a ride to the mango mata'im. Upon arrival we were given a short tutorial on how to chop and prune the mango trees so that they would provide a plentiful harvest next summer. Our first task was to make a "door" so that we could enter the tree. This usually involved sawing off one large branch at about chest height. Then, we were to climb up into the tree and make "windows". To do this we would look at the bushing around the tree and if no sunlight reached the center of the tree we would take off a couple branches. The final step was to climb down out of the tree and go around it, sawing off branches that were too close to the ground and using clippers to get rid of any "porcupines" (branches from which more than three or four other branches split off) and heavily bushy areas. 

We had three madrichim in the mata'im: Itamar, Ret, and Choul. Ret and Choul were Sudanese refugees. About seven years ago, they had fled Sudan and traveled through Egypt into Israel. However, as soon as they entered Israel, they were put in a detainment center in southern Israel. Luckily, Ret and Choul were still minors at the time (fourteen and sixteen) and so Hanoar Ha'Oved (our sister youth movement) was able to gain custody over them and brought them to live on Kibbutz Ravid (a movement owned kibbutz by the Kinneret) with a couple of families living on the kibbutz. The Israeli government, however, has not given Ret and Choul citizenship nor refugee status which means that if they leave Kibbutz Ravid and travel to Tel Aviv, for example, they risk being arrested and detained yet again. 

Anyway, for the entire week we worked in the mango mata'im. Our goal each day was to cut approximately twenty trees. The last three days that we worked in the mata'im were different though. We were given the opportunity to harvest the clementina (clementines) instead of pruning and cutting the mango trees. This avodah (work) required quite different work. Instead of climbing the trees, we were instructed to pick three baskets of large, very orange, ripe fruit from each tree, and then pick all the fruit on the tree that was below our knees. Our goal for each day was to pick three dolavs (huge crates) for every three people. Each day, no matter whether we were working in the mango or clementina mata'im, at about 9:30 am, we would break for our breakfast and enjoy the company of each other and our madrichim. By 10, we were back at work until 1 or 2 pm. The hardest time of the day was during the 11 am to 12 pm time period. We had already been working for hours and if was very difficult to keep ourselves motivated at this time. During the first half of the day before breakfast, I usually was quiet and used the time for personal reflection, whereas by 11 am, I needed to be interacting with someone. I learned quite a few new songs and I had some very interesting conversations with my fellow workers about life. 

After we finished in the fields for the day, three people would make lunch (based on rotation) and then we would just hangout with each other or nap for a couple of hours. Everyone got really into playing Set and Resistance while we were there. Following nap time, we usually had a peulah. We talked heavily about labor Zionism and read many texts from early labor Zionists. The one I found most fascinating was a woman recounting the discrimination she faced working the land because of her womanhood. She explained how she felt like she constantly had to prove herself to the men. A partner and I discussed the reading and asked ourselves if we felt that we had ever experienced discrimination based on our gender within Habonim settings, and, unfortunately, we both had at some points. We spoke about ideas we had to lessen the discrimination and most of our thoughts came back to education. We still have a lot of thoughts on the topic that we need to work out, but I hope to engage with these thoughts more in the near future.

On one of the days, Phia ran a peulah for us on blessings and thankfulness. We read an English translation of a poem by an early labor Zionist, Chaim Nachman Bialik. The poem follows:

 

Who saves us from hunger? Who gives us bread? And who gives us milk?

Whom do we thank?

Whom do we bless?

Work and skill!

 

Who covers us in the cold? Who turns the dark to light? Who hauls water from the well?

Whom do we thank?

Whom do we bless?

Work and skill!

 

Who plants trees for fruit and shad in the orchard, with a spade? Who sows grain across the fields?

​Whom do we thank?

​Whom do we bless?

Work and skill!

 

Who builds a roof to keep us dry, fences the garden and the vine? Who takes the trouble, every time for the Sabbath and festive days?

​Whom do we thank?

​Whom do we bless?

Work and skill!

 

And all week long we work, and so we toil. The yoke is hard, the yoke is sweet! And when we stop, we sing out loud

​Songs of thanks

​Songs of praise

To work and skill!

 

The first stanza of this poem is said (in Hebrew) before every meal at Tavor and has become a very meaningful blessing to me and my life. One aspect about this poem that I really appreciate is the fact that it can be interpreted that the whole human race comes together to be a "we". "We work" and "we toil", and so we thank each other and ourselves. 

Although I struggled (and am still struggling) with questions about the use of pesticides in the mata'im and the significance of labor Zionism in regard to Israel today, all in all my time spent on Ravid has been a very special part of my Workshop experience thus far.

Catching Up: Part 2

The day after the Rabin Rally we had a guest speaker, Yisrael, a Jewish settler from Shiloh. We had been learning about settlers in our Israeli Society course and separated them into three different groups: Ideological, "Quality-of-life", and Ultra-orthodox. 

A brief overview of each type of settler through our texts

"Ideological settlers: mainly use religious and nationalist arguments to justify the settlements' existence and their own presence in the West Bank, and who generally live deep in the heart of the a West Bank.

'Quality-of-life settlers': motivated to move to the West Bank primarily for economic reasons and who generally live in settlements located closer to the Green Line (border between Israel and the West Bank).

Ultra-Orthodox settlers: subset of quality-of-life settlers in that their presence in the West Bank is a function, almost exclusively, of the construction of cheap, segregated (i.e. Ultra-Orthodox housing inside Israel is expensive and overcrowded."

Yisrael had been living in Shiloh for over twenty years and had immigrated there from New York City. Yisrael is an ideological settler, and our discussion with him got fairly heated. Yisrael explained to us that the Jews were the chosen people and thus had been promised this land by God; not to mention the Jews had been in this land far longer than the Arabs or Palestinians. He also explained that Jews had been exiled from their land many times. One of my kvutza mates, Mia, made a comparison for Yisrael. She said that by his logic, he must believe that the Native Americans should be allowed to reclaim their land since they had been in America much before any Anglos arrived, and had been "exiled", so to speak, from their lands as well. Yisrael completely shut this argument down saying that they were very different situations and that America is a country founded on diversity and immigration. A slightly strange come back most of us thought. All in all our conversation with him exposed us to reality, and made us very aware that there is no logical way to combat an argument based on religion.

The following day we traveled to Tel Aviv. Our morning stop was the Trumpeldor cemetery. Buried there are the city's founders, early residents, and a number of the city's leaders. The second Prime Minister, and one of only a few Prime Ministers not to be buried at Har Herzl, Moshe Sharett, has his grave in the Trumpeldor cemetery.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Palmach Museum for a guided audio tour. The Palmach was the precursor to the IDF and was the fighting unit of the Haganah (Underground Jewish Parliamentary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920-1948). The museum was quite well done, recounting the early history of the state of Israel with holograms and very real-seeming scenery.  But, the museum was also extremely eye-opening for us as we realized how the Government wants Israelis and tourists to view the Palmach. It was pretty aggravating to see just how one-sided the museum presented the story of that time to be.

Later that week, we learned about Operation Entebbe. "A counter-terrorist hostage-rescue mission carried out by commandos of the IDF at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on July 4, 1976. A week earlier, June 27, an Air France plane with about 250 passengers was hijacked by hijackers of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations." The next day we met with a woman, Janet, who had been on the hijacked plane. She and her new Israeli husband had been on their way to visit Janet's parents who lived in Madison, WI. It was a very traumatic experience for her, but she praised the Israeli soldiers who had rescued her and the other captive Israelis. She also told us about how the Kibbutz Ein Dor responded when she and her husband finally made it home. She got out a humungous photo-album/scrapbook and showed us newspaper clippings and pictures of decorated Ein Dor. As soon as Janet and her husband entered Ein Dor upon their return, there were people who lined the road with flowers from the gates to the chadar ochel. The welcome showed just how strong the kibbutz community was and how much support there was for each other. 

That week our Siyur was in Haifa where we were to learn about Haifa as a mixed city (Arabs and Jews). This was by far my favorite Siyur yet. Haifa originally in the 1920s was a "small fishing town [that] was turning quickly into a city, a center of government, and a magnet for Arab migrants from surrounding villages and for Jews from Europe." Haifas population was growing rapidly, but was still majority Arab. A separate Jewish neighborhood, Hadar HaCarmel, formed so that Jews could "live apart from the clamor of the Arab city." On the Siyur, we drove up the mountain, got out near the Baha'i Gardens, and looked down on the current Hadar HaCarmel which is located just near the Technion (the technical college in partnership with Jerusalem's Hebrew University).

The part of the Siyur that I found most fascinating was learning about the history of leadership and government in Haifa. In the 1920s a prominent Arab leader arose. Starting as a preacher in a Mosque, al-Qassam became very popular very fast. He urged his followers to engage in terrorist activities against the British and Jews, and they did, equipping themselves with firearms and bombs so as to attack Zionist targets. Arabs feared the Judaization of the country and tried again and again to halt Zionist immigration, meanwhile the Zionists continued to push for immigration and Jewish statehood. Like so many western thinkers, David Ben-Gurion saw the Arabs as being impoverished and needing of help, Ben-Gurion believed more Jews would bring about a better life for Arabs, too. Musa al-'Alami, a moderate Palestinian leader said, "I would prefer that the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years, until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own." (A quote that I find very powerful!) However, the fighting only got worse and more violent. The British involved themselves and the two parties began to negotiate and discuss the surrender and ceasefire terms. 

Prior to and during the revolt, Arab leader and mayor of Haifa, Hassan Shukri, founded the Muslim National Associates, an organization that supported the Zionist cause as well as Arabs. Many Arabs did not like Shukri. Shabbetai Levi was vice-mayor in Haifa during Shukri's term, but when Shukri died, Levi took over and became the first Jewish mayor in Haifa. During the War of Independence, Levi tried very hard to use his influence to prevent the expulsion and leaving of the Arabs from the city. To me, Haifa's history is very significant, and I really appreciated the visiting different sights in the city to better understand it.

Soon enough it was almost Thanksgiving. I, and three others, ventured into Afula to do some major food shopping. It was quite a task to find so many American ingredients in an Israeli grocery store, but we tried and did pretty well, with a few substitutions of course. We made it back to Ein Dor, each of us loaded up with grocery bags, each of which were loaded up with all sorts of treats. As a kvutza, we had decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday evening instead of Thursday due to the issue of having one tiny stove and programming until four pm on Thursday. So, Thursday night I got to work in the kitchen. My contribution to the meal was pecan pies and sweet-potato-marshmallow casserole. Friday evening everyone got dressed up and including the Brits, who we had asked to join us for their first Thanksgiving meal. A couple of toasts of thanks and appreciation were made, before we began our feast. We had turkey (which the kibbutz had so generously allowed us to cook in their oven), stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, rosemary rolls, challah, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, apple pie, whipped cream, the list continues on. It was quite a night to remember. After some cleaning, Shoshana, Maya, and I decided to die the tips of our hair pink. It came out much more red than pink, but we had fun, and it was all in all a wonderful night. 

Saturday was a busy day as well, as we spent the day filming our first kvutza music video to the song "Come on Eileen." We spent a lot of time running around the kibbutz in clothes that made us look like we were from the 80's. It was definitely a highlight of my Boneh weekend experiences. 

The following week was our last week on kibbutz, a very bitter-sweet time. We started the week off by traveling to Jerusalem. On the way, we stopped in a small Arab village, Abbu Ghosh, where we were treated to delicious hummus. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, we went to Har Herzl to learn more about Herzl, Rabin, and many others buried there. There was a very interesting memorial known as "The Last of Kin" which is symbolically house shaped. The memorial was erected for Holocaust survivors who had made Aliyah following the Holocaust and were then killed, fighting in the War of Independence. I also really appreciated visiting the grave of Hannah Senesh, who made Aliyah in her teenage years and then volunteered to parachute into Yugoslavia to save many Hungarian Jews from deportation to German death camps. However, at the Hungarian border, she was captured and tortured and, since she refused to admit any details to her mission, eventually killed. Senesh was also a wonderful poet so as we stood by her grave, we sang her poem, "Eli, Eli" ("My God, My God.") 

Very close by to Har Herzl is the headquarters of the World Zionist Organization where we had been invited for a talk that day. The article we read was entitled, "The 29th or November: 2084 New Israel and Palestine." Pretty much the article talks about Israelis resettling in Australia because the violence between the Muslim countries and Israel in the Middle East had gone too far and was highly impoverished. The article talks about how, when the Israelis immigrate to Australia (the New Zionist Homeland), they start to build up the countryside and forget about the Aboriginal Australian people and so the Aboriginal Liberation Organization (A.L.O.) is born. While the conversation and text were interesting, it just seemed like an excuse for the way the Palestinians have been affected by Israel. As in, wherever Israel would have been, it would have looked the same, and that Israeli Jews aren't racist against Palestinians because the same development would have occurred anywhere. To me it honestly just seemed like a lot of BS.  

The peulot we had during the final week were some of the most thought provoking peulot I've ever had and I went through a brief period (about three weeks) of freaking out about my college choice. Although I am very excited to go to Macalester, we had just had a peulah run for us on what it meant to be the hardcore of the movement and specifically what it means to be the hardcore in the years immediately following Workshop. All in all it came down to living in a Habo community so that you can help run a ken and work on outreach in the local Jewish communities. At Macalester, I will be alone (in terms of Habos) and while yes, I can make an effort to do out reach, the closest Machaneh to Minneapolis-St.Paul is about at the minimum a twelve hour drive meaning that it's going to be a lot harder to push for families to send their kids to Tavor compared to the Jewish camps in Wisconsin that are only about four hours away. But I've realized that it's okay if we don't get more kids to sign up because there are other ways to reach out to the community and strive to educate on socialism, social justice, and Israel. 

That was my conclusion to Boneh, then I hopped on a bus to Kibbutz Ravid, with eleven others in my kvutza and one Brit, and was off to explore labor Zionism in actualization.