My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

by Ari Shavit

  But in Ein Harod the sense of orphanhood is even deeper. It occupies the hearts and dreams of every pioneer. “When immigrating to this land,” writes one of the youngsters,

  we were on our own. We left the past behind. We have cut ourselves off from all we were. We have distanced ourselves from our previous identity and from those dearest to us. Overnight we were uprooted from the rich soil of our parents’ culture that was enriched with thousands of years of history. Then, after being uprooted we were thrown forcefully by a supreme hand onto this barren land. In parched, sun-struck fields we are now faced with naked rocks, exposed to the fire above. Face to face with the elements, face to face with brutal existence, no protection at all. And here, in this desolate valley, we must sculpt our lives. From these rocks we must carve our new foundation. In the Ein Harod valley we must dig, dig deep, to find the hidden spring that will nourish—and inspire—our new lives.

  Yet orphanhood does not weaken the orphans. On the contrary. What’s extraordinary about Ein Harod is that it transforms its comrades’ loneliness and despair into a unique generator of remarkable energy. As there is no father, there is no boundary and no restraint. As there is no mother, there is no ease and no comfort. As there is no God, there is no mercy. No second chance. No hope of a miracle.

  From the very outset Ein Harod is brutally realistic. The exhausted pioneers now sleeping in their white tents know that there is no shelter for them. No shade to rest under, no tree to hide behind. All is exposed to an extremely cruel history. And the test ahead is an ultimate one. Life or death. All depends on these weary boys and girls. Are they up to the task? Do they have the necessary stamina and persistence?

  As Jewish Europe has no more hope, Jewish youth is all there is. It is the Jewish people’s last resort. And this specific avant-garde of Jewish youth is at history’s forefront. There is hardly any time left. In only twenty years, European Jewry will be wiped out. That’s why the Ein Harod imperative is absolute. There is no compassion in this just-born kibbutz. There is no indulgence, no tolerance, no self-pity. There is no place for individual rights and individual needs and individual wants. Every single person is on trial. And although remote and desolate, this valley will witness the events that determine whether the Jews can establish a new secular civilization in their ancient homeland. Here it will be revealed whether the ambitious avant-garde is indeed leading its impoverished people to a promised land and a new horizon, or whether this encampment is just another hopeless bridgehead with no masses and no reserves to reinforce it, a bridgehead to yet another valley of death.

  As the sun rises, the sight is breathtaking. Row after row of white tents dot the dramatic mountain ridge. One of the awakening pioneers describes the tents as a flock of birds from a distant land that came down to rest and restore their powers on the rocky slopes of a remote island.

  The pioneers themselves can hardly believe the audacity of what they are doing. It is as if a new Old Testament is being written. But there is no time for contemplation. Three obsolete American tractors arrive, sent from Tel Aviv by the Labor Movement. A dozen strong, pedigreed Hungarian horses arrive—bought from somewhere in the Galilee. So now the youngsters can begin their work. First, they clear the fields of boulders and rocks. Then they plant the first forests (eucalyptus, pine). Then they lay a gravel path connecting the kibbutz with the local railway station. The girls plant a small vegetable garden. In the abandoned stone buildings of Ein Jaloud, the boys set up a carpentry shop, a shoe-making shop, a welding shop, and a tannery. A clinic is erected for the first victims of malaria. A communal dining hall is built that will serve all. A village bakery and a provisional library are constructed. From somewhere, somehow, a piano appears.

  A few weeks later the day arrives that everyone has been waiting for. At first light there is a commotion at the new dining hall. The early risers gather, drinking hot chocolate and eating thick slices of bread spread with olive oil or jam. Once breakfast is over, the men march into the fields. They march in military rhythm, in one line, singing.

  The fields have already been cleared of rocks, wild bushes, and thorny native plants, and now the grand spectacle begins. Two pairs of Hungarian horses, harnessed to a modern iron plow, lead the procession. Behind them follow four pairs of Arab mules harnessed to local plows. As the convoy slowly advances into the fields, the iron blades pierce the ground and create furrow after furrow. The blades of the sun catch the blades of the plows as they turn the valley’s soil, penetrating the crust of the ancient valley’s deep earth. And as the plows begin to do their work, the Jews return to history and regain their masculinity: as they take on the physical labor of tilling the earth, they transform themselves from object to subject, from passive to active, from victims to sovereigns.

  A few days later it’s time to sow. There is great excitement among the youth. Half-sacks full of seeds are hoisted up on the shoulders of a half dozen sowers who spread out through the field. They take a step, slip a large hand into the sack, bring forth a fistful of seed, and in a wide arc scatter the seed over the tilled field. Step after step, they sow wheat and barley, and when they return to the encampment at the end of the day, everyone gathers around them in glee. After eighteen hundred years, the Jews have returned to sow the valley. In the communal dining hall, they sing joyfully. They dance through the night, into the light of dawn.

  Progress is fast. Within a few months the Ein Harod pioneers plow 1,900 dunams and sow 900 dunams of land. They clear more and more fields. They blast open a mountain quarry. There are milking cows in their dairy and egg-laying hens in their coops. The number of comrades in the six-month-old kibbutz keeps rising: 180, 200, 220. But what is even more striking is that these comrades now wear kibbutz-made shoes and enjoy kibbutz-baked bread and drink rich kibbutz milk and eat kibbutz-laid eggs. They celebrate the very first kibbutz tomatoes.

  As one of the leaders looks around him, he is astonished at what is being achieved. He feels that his comrades resemble Robinson Crusoe, who was swept ashore after his boat was lost. He feels that like Crusoe, he and his comrades never wept, never lamented their wretched fate. Like Crusoe, they looked around their desolate island and wondered what could be done. Like Crusoe, they made the most of whatever they found. They were practical, imaginative, and innovative. They were brave. And like Crusoe, they created a surreal, man-made miracle.

  The winter of 1921 is vicious. The valley winds whip through the encampment and sow destruction. The mountain rain falls down the slopes in cascades. The white tents are thrown to the ground time after time. There is no refuge in this improvised refugee camp, no sense of home for the homeless.

  Tragedy strikes, too. Only five months after Ein Harod is founded, one of its founders cannot take it anymore. He is twenty-four when he takes his life with a shotgun. A month later the morning quiet is torn once again by the hollow sound of three more shots. A blond twenty-year-old beauty is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Lying by her side is her handsome twenty-five-year-old lifeless lover. Lust, despair, and jealousy are all at work in the camp. As conditions are extreme, so are emotions.

  One of the more introspective pioneers tries to define the problem. “We stand naked in the universe,” he writes.

  We are totally exposed. And within this explosive situation, we try to shape a new way of life. But our life, too, is exposed and harsh. We don’t have the subtleness of previous generations. We don’t have the merciful ambiguity of dusk. It’s either day or night here. Hard labor at the noon of day and ideological debates into the night. A loving family, the soft caress of a mother’s hand, the stern but encouraging look of a loving father—all the things that make life bearable—are not here. Even the intimate touch between a young man and a young woman is there for all to see, matter-of-fact, obvious, almost gruff. And so we must face ourselves revealed and exposed. Naked. Totally naked. Every spark of light we must instill in our hearts. Every drop of life we must imbibe from the wellspring of our own souls. And w
here shall we find the strength? How will we be able to go on, to conquer each day? Where shall we find power? Where?

  Yet the kibbutz does not disintegrate. Even as rain falls and storms strike, the camp is in high spirits. Suicide and murder cast their shadow for a while, but they are overcome, denied, and almost forgotten. Loneliness bites hard, but it only forces the frontier community to close ranks and hold on to its fragile solidarity. In the long winter nights there is more singing than dancing—folk songs, revolutionary songs, Hasidic songs. There is mischief: hoaxes, practical jokes, satirical sketches. A first play is produced, more and more books are read in the library (Marx, Dostoyevsky, Kropotkin, Hamsun). Love affairs flourish, babies are born. And while they ponder their future and make love in their tents, the young pioneers of Ein Harod listen to the lonely violin of a tall, lanky violinist who plays in his tent after each long day in the quarry. By the light of a kerosene lamp, he sounds the strains of throat-choking solitude.

  When Yitzhak Tabenkin joins Ein Harod in the winter of December 1921, many of the Labor Brigade comrades are taken aback. Tabenkin is older than they are—nearly thirty-four. And he already has a family—a wife and two sons. While most comrades are the anonymous rank-and-file soldiers of the Zionist revolution, Tabenkin is something of a celebrity. In the ten years since he emigrated from Poland to Palestine, he has emerged as one of the prominent leaders of the Labor Movement. While his friend and rival David Ben Gurion decides to run socialist politics from Tel Aviv, Tabenkin chooses to join the new kibbutz that is already captivating the hearts of the Jewish masses. Although he will always remain something of an outsider, by his very presence, he turns Ein Harod into the Mecca of the kibbutz movement.

  Tabenkin was born in Belorussia in 1888 and was raised in Warsaw. His father turned his back on religion as a young man and embraced radical politics, and his mother was active in Poland’s revolutionary intelligentsia. After doing time as a political prisoner, his father died, and his mother dedicated herself to her promising son. By the age of eighteen Tabenkin was a well-known figure in socialist Zionist circles. At the age of twenty-four he arrived at the port of Haifa, passed through the valley, and settled in Tel Aviv. Although he believed in labor and preached labor, the young Tabenkin was not very good at labor. He liked to talk more than he liked to plow. His inability to practice what he preached tormented him and often drove him to depression. At times he considered suicide.

  Joining the valley’s first kibbutz is something of a remedy for Tabenkin. At last he is with real workers doing real work. At last he is at the forefront of the great Zionist revolution. Although he is not analytical, eloquent, or brilliant, Tabenkin has charisma. The young, enthusiastic comrades look up to him as something of a father figure or teacher. Within a short time Tabenkin will be the kibbutz’s guru, the secular rabbi of Ein Harod.

  Both by temperament and conviction, Tabenkin is very much an anarchist. Deeply influenced by Kropotkin and Bakunin, he is averse to the state, detests all establishments, and is suspicious of military structures, hierarchies, and uniforms. Yet Tabenkin is no liberal or pacifist. He acknowledges the need to use force. His leadership is Bolshevik in style and his political outlook is combative. Tabenkin has no respect for the individual whatsoever. For him, every person is simply raw material for the Cause. As far as he is concerned, every member of Ein Harod must recast himself as a pioneer by foregoing all individual traits that might jeopardize the fulfillment of the socialist-Zionist vision.

  And what is that vision? What is Ein Harod’s dream? It is quite clear: to be a large, ever-growing kibbutz. Tabenkin and his lot reject Herzl’s political Zionism. They don’t want a Jewish state and they don’t believe in diplomacy. Their approach is socialist, practical, and down-to-earth. They have no expectations of the Great Powers. They despise both Bentwich’s Victorianism and Herzl’s haut-bourgeois elitism. They want communism to colonize Palestine. If possible, they want to turn the entire country into one Zionist working-class commune.

  The way to that goal begins with Ein Harod. Let Ein Harod grow as fast as it can. Let it take more and more fields, capture more and more of the valley. Allow it to diversify into the profitable areas of crafts, light industry, and heavy industry. Let it conquer every patch of land in sight, conquer every field of human activity. Subjugate the valley to an alternative socioeconomic regime, self-reliant and self-possessed and able to fulfill the needs and realize the dreams of Jewish socialism in the Land of Israel.

  When spring arrives, the Ein Harod pioneers begin to drain the valleys. One evening, a quiet and earnest engineer arrives in the young kibbutz. Wearing a gray suit, he stands before the bewildered pioneers and explains what is about to be done. He shows them a map of the valley: the thick blue lines are major canals, the thin ones are minor canals. The minor canals lead to the major canals, whose purpose is to drain the bad waters out of the valley. The network of thin and thick lines is laid out across the valley like a fisherman’s net. It will drain the thousand-year-old marshes and muck and malarial scourge and clear the valley for progress.

  Some days later, strange men appear. Wearing khaki shorts and bizarre-looking high rubber Wellingtons, the surveyors look like prehistoric amphibious creatures. And yet these human frogs manage to walk about the cursed swamps. They hammer pegs and tie ropes along which the major canals and the minor canals will be dug. After they are done, Wellingtons, ropes, and shovels of all sorts arrive in camp. By sunrise the Labor Brigade pioneers take off into the valley’s marshes. The heat is unbearable but the mosquitoes are worse. Buzzing about the ears, eyes, and private parts, they suck fresh blood from the strong young bodies. The stench of the swamp is overpowering. The tall reeds are infested with snakes. Yet the canals must be dug.

  The boys work in teams of five. Each team digs one layer of mud and then moves on so that the next team will dig deeper. Standing in a two-yard-wide ditch, each bare-chested pioneer has to stick his shovel between the dripping walls of the canal and lift the filth above him. Once the hard soil, hidden under the marsh for a millennium, is finally exposed, there is a fury of festive shouting. Now the girls walk in, bearing baskets filled with white gravel that, since morning, they have been producing with their small, efficient chisels. Only now, when the girls’ gravel lines the boys’ canal, may lunch be served. Canned beef and loaves of bread sate their hunger.

  Only a few months ago the draining project seemed unreal—as ambitious as the Suez Canal project, as dangerous as the Panama Canal. But now, day by day, the swamps retreat. Clay pipes laid in the newly dug, well-lined canals absorb the deadly subterranean waters. The July sun does the rest. Acre after acre, the marshes give way to fertile fields. Zionist planning, Zionist know-how, and Zionist labor push back the swamps that have cursed the valley for centuries. Malaria is on a dramatic decline. Even the remaining Arab neighbors benefit from the miraculous project. The desolate Valley of Harod is gradually turning green.

  In years to come, historians will try to determine which is the more dominant feature of the endeavor, socialism or nationalism. Some will argue that choosing socialism at this critical stage is Zionism’s cunning way of conquering the land. Socialism gives this belated colonizing project a sense of justice and an aura of legitimacy. As the colonizers of the Valley of Harod don’t resemble at all the French masters of Algeria or the British plantation owners of Rhodesia, they are in the clear. By working the land with their bare hands and by living in poverty and undertaking a daring, unprecedented social experiment, they refute any charge that they are about to seize a land that is not theirs. Yet all this idealistic socialism is just subterfuge, future critics will claim. It is the moral camouflage of an aggressive national movement whose purpose is to obscure its colonialist, expansionist nature.

  True and not true. Just before May Day 1922, a young poet living in Ein Harod translates the international socialist anthem into Hebrew. The Hebrew version gives a poignant subtext to the original words that refer to the uni
versal working class. Now the text is not only about the world’s poor, it is also about the world’s most oppressed people. It is about the mission Ein Harod took upon itself: to destroy an old world and build another, to unload the heavy burden from a broken back. As there is no God, no king, and no hero, we shall break through toward the light all by ourselves. We shall win the last battle of an eternal war. Yesterday, nothing; tomorrow, everything.

  Tabenkin is the very incarnation of this Zionist-socialist symbiosis. In his mid-thirties, he is still an attractive man, with sensual lips and a high forehead. He is not a profound intellectual, but he has historical pathos and conviction. He doesn’t write much, but he speaks passionately and at great length. There is something truly Soviet about him. Had he not been Jewish he could have stood now by Lenin or Stalin in some remote kolkhoz or at a mass gathering of the Novosiberian proletariat.

  But Tabenkin is Jewish. And he believes that in the twentieth century the Jewish people are heading for disaster. Twenty years before the Holocaust he feels and breathes the Holocaust daily. That’s why he is impossible to be with and impossible to live with. He believes that in Jewish youth lies the only remedy, that only Jewish youth can save the Jewish people from the approaching catastrophe. But he knows there is no time. And he feels that all that is being done is not enough. Palestine might not be ready in time. The valley might not be ours in time. That’s why Tabenkin is so demanding. He is as cruel to himself as he is to others. He is preachy, stringent, chastising. He says over and over again that socialist Zionism must do more, much more. He preaches over and over again that every young pioneer must achieve more, much more. The avant-garde of Ein Harod must stretch itself beyond its capabilities. Ein Harod must accomplish its mission impossible. Tabenkin is not much of a theoretician. Unlike other revolutionaries, he does not have an overall, systematic ideology. But the Ein Harod rabbi has a powerful concept: activism.