by Edeet Ravel
Novelist55:
It’s the reason I could never write science fic-
tion. I’d have to figure out a way not to spend
the entire novel explaining.
Nissim73:
I like that. Kibbutz as scifi.
Novelist55:
You know that guy who sued his kibbutz for
traumatizing him?
Nissim73:
That’s sort of a cliché by now, don’t you think?
I know that guy by the way.
Novelist55:
It’s a cliché in Israel. But not in the rest of the
world.
Novelist55:
Besides, I hate that trivializing. It’s very Israeli—I
mean not only Israeli but it’s something you
see a lot in Israel. Everyone always saying azov
[let it rest] and shtuyot [nonsense]. Especially
shtuyot.
Nissim73:
You’re sentimental.
Novelist55:
That’s it—it’s supposedly the fear of being
sentimental but it’s really just the ordinary
fear of feeling.
Nissim73:
Well if we felt everything here, the streets
would empty out, we’d all be locked up in
psychiatric wards. Apart from Baruch Marzel,
he’s indestructible.
Novelist55:
Trauma as a way of life?
Nissim73:
Exactly. I don’t mean victim trauma. I mean
watching the country fall apart trauma. Listen,
don’t worry about including everything.
Novelist55:
It’s not that I’m worried. It’s that I have so
much I want to say but at the same time I like
to be spare. I like to leave rabbit holes for the
reader to fall into. By the way, thanks for pick-
ing up the permission slip from Maariv.
Nissim73:
You’re welcome.
Novelist55:
You know one book club I went to, there was
this Jewish woman there, around my age or a
bit older
Novelist55:
and she was so upset that in my first novel
there are negative references to the kibbutz.
Novelist55:
I mean, she really has this vision, even though
it goes against all logic and reason, of the
barefoot soldier dancing in the sand with her
braid flying
Novelist55:
of a perfect place with perfect people
Novelist55:
a kind of paradise, or even if people aren’t
perfect, they’re all noble and moral and one
must think well of them
Novelist55:
even though life must have taught her that
humans are the same everywhere, that the
entire species is fucked up. But not on Eldar …
Nissim73:
I think you still believe that yourself. You’re still
a Zionist.
Novelist55:
Well even Chomsky is a Zionist if you define
the word properly. To quote him.
Nissim73:
Here’s what I think
Nissim73:
politically, Jabotinsky won
Nissim73:
politically, Jabotinsky was a pacifist next to
today’s lot. But
Nissim73:
on the non-political level that whole dichot-
omy, left and right, it’s not relevant.
Novelist55:
It is relevant. It’s everything.
Nissim73:
Listen
Novelist55:
yes
Nissim73:
You don’t want to tell me what you’re wearing?
Nissim73:
apart from your jeans, that is …
Novelist55:
I meant to ask you, can I include our conversa-
tions in my novel?
Nissim73:
If you want.
Novelist55:
Do you know the book Nissim and Niflaot?
Nissim73:
no.
Novelist55:
How is that possible? Lea Goldberg … about a
boy and his monkey. The boy is called Nissim
and the monkey is called Niflaot. Miracles and
Wonders.
Nissim73:
Right now the miracle I’m waiting for is for my
air-conditioning to start working again. Guess
I’ll go to sleep, I’ve had a long day.
Novelist55:
Don’t forget to keep the light on.
Nissim73:
If the world ends, at least I’ll be able to see it.
Novelist55:
leila tov matok
Nissim73:
leila tov metuka
56. Literally, a piece of something; commonly used in Modern Hebrew to refer to the segment of a citrus fruit.
57. Tarzan and the Amazons, with Johnny Weissmuller (1945); available on YouTube. For the sweeping boy, see part one at 3 minutes, 20 seconds.
58. Credentials were easy to fabricate in the early days of the State, especially in professions where genuine qualifications were in short supply.
59. Snarey, 1982/83.
60. The Hebrew zefet means “tar” or “pitch” (see Exodus 2:3— ”And when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes and covered it with wet earth and pitch”). The Arabic cognate is zift and means both “tar” and “trash”; the latter is used as an interjection expressing cursory dismissal or disapproval. Modern Hebrew borrowed both senses of zift but also retained the Hebrew zefet, hence Dori’s confusion.
61.
A Herd of 120 Goats Was Returned Yesterday to Lebanon
The goats were led by two shepherds from Lebanon who entered Israel a few days ago, north-west of Eldar. Border Guards came across the shepherds and the goats and took the goats into custody. The shepherds succeeded in fleeing.
—Davar, 7 April, 1960
Lebanese Shepherd Arrested, His Friend Manages to Escape
Border Guards arrested yesterday at 10:00 A.M. a shepherd from Lebanon near Kibbutz Eldar when he crossed the border into Israel with his friend and shepherded his goats. The two came across the patrolling Border Guard who ordered them to stop. They did not obey and began to run towards Lebanon. One managed to return to Lebanon with the goats but his friend, age 16, was arrested 400 metres from the border.
—Davar, 27 November, 1960
62. In 1951, anthropologists Melford and Audrey Spiro spent a year observing children at Beit Alpha, the oldest Young Guard kibbutz (founded 1922). Members of the kibbutz they studied were reportedly shocked and dismayed when the book based on these observations came out.
Melford, who by his own account had been warmly welcomed during his stay, was now accused of distortion, exaggeration, errors, and incomprehension. Members were stunned when Melford reported that, between the ages of one and five, more than half of all observed interaction between the children consisted of acts of physical aggression e.g. hitting, slamming others with an object, kicking, biting, jostling, jumping on, throwing objects at, scratching with fingernails, pulling hair, destroying a toy or game another child was playing with, smearing with food, choking, threatening to cut with a knife, eye-gouging, hair-cutting and penis-pulling.
Melford himself claimed to be the constant target of what he felt was unprovoked aggression, and though he was aware that his work would be compromised if he departed from the observer’s stance, he and Audrey sometimes had to intervene, he said, to save a child from being seriously injured when the Minder left the room and asked one of them to keep an eye on things.
No one could explain Melford’s “ludicrous” comment that in th
e past children were not prevented from playing with their faeces; members felt he had misunderstood what he was being told, given the fact that virtually all kibbutzim are obsessed with cleanliness and health.
Most wounding, however, were descriptions of the neglect of infants, whom Melford said could not be cared for properly by one worker, even with the best of intentions.
—Selina R. Korenberg, Under a Microscope: The Kibbutz as a Subject of Study (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis)
“At least the Melfords understood basic Hebrew, unlike Bruno [Bettelheim], who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew and only spent a few weeks on the kibbutz, mostly writing in his room and asking for favours. He never looked in on the children for more than a few minutes at a time.”
—Rafael Avidor, Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan
63. I tried to send you this letter yesterday but I was having trouble with the computer. I think it’s working now. I’ll do my best to answer your questions, if I can.
— I asked my friends in Canada to send me magazines with pictures so the kids in my class could make collages and posters. We did art, theatre, games—for every topic I taught, I invented a game.
— We made up our own rules regarding babies. Edna was fantastic. We once had a so-called expert from the Federation visit us. I remember Edna was so nervous she broke two bottles. The expert rearranged all the clothes and furniture in the Infants’ House and told us we spoil our babies. She felt we picked them up too much and held them too much, and she suggested that Edna should go and observe the European kibbutzim for a month. She also said Spock exaggerated the importance of milk in children’s diet. After she left we put all the clothes back in place, picked up the babies, and prepared the milk bottles. Edna was so exhausted she fell asleep in her chair.
— All the outside children had a situation. One came from the Holocaust as a baby with his mother, then the father left. Another boy, the father died and the mother was sick, he was very sweet.
— We had one gay man and one lesbian. Both were very open about it and it wasn’t an issue. But they left because they couldn’t find partners at Eldar.
— Yes, Tzvi Lipkin had a PhD in nuclear physics. The government took him out of Eldar in 1952, they needed him. I think he was one of the only people in Israel with that background. We see him often when we visit Israel, he’s a wonderful person, his wife too. Witty, kind, soft-spoken. I think your politics are the same.
— Yes, we had one evil person on Eldar that I know of and today I wouldn’t let him near my baby with a ten foot pole but we were young and trusting. Most of the best people I’ve known in my life are from Eldar, whether they left or stayed.
I think that covers it. I just came across some anecdotes I wrote down at the time, I think for a magazine. Dori is one year old. Last week, the mother of a baby in her group took him to visit an aunt in the city. Dori continually patted his bed, sought out his favourite toy, and seemed to look for him in every corner. Upon his return, she literally jumped for joy. She hugged the little boy and tried to say, “I’m so glad you’re home.”
I also wrote down your first four words: this, thank-you, abba [daddy], eema [mummy].
Have to run, our friends are at the door, we’re going out to eat and see a performance.
Eema
64. In the diary I kept when I was twelve, I recall Hannah’s stay at Eldar:
There were seven of us—four boys and three girls—before Hannah came and she wasn’t with us very long anyway so I suppose that Shoshana, who looked after us, remembers us as seven. If she remembers us at all, which I really doubt.
I wonder now whether Hannah was really sad to leave us or whether she was overjoyed. Probably the latter; we gave her a most miserable time. Her parents were from Poland and when they came to Israel her father, a dentist, was sent to our Kibbutz for a short while to be our dentist.
Hannah was a very tall and very thin girl, with long yellow hair that was cut short after she came and small blue eyes.
When she first drew a picture was when we started admiring her. On a large sheet of paper, she drew a thin green line at the bottom and the same in blue at the top. Then she drew a few tiny flowers, hardly visible, and one little tree, and filled the rest of the space with light blue. It was very bare, but we all looked up to it. I remember it distinctly because for the whole week when it was hanging up I stared at it, trying in vain to copy her.
But it was no use. My flowers came out big and sloppy and my tree smudged. So after a while I gave up.
But it still remained the thing we looked up to—that is until she mentioned God. Then everything was lost—like a very high building a child makes out of blocks and you put the last block on top—and flop! the whole thing comes crashing down.
I don’t remember how it started—maybe someone said my picture is ruined or I didn’t sleep well and she answered God has punished you. Then maybe the person burst out laughing and left her wondering what she had said that was so funny. But soon she learned that she was facing a whole lot of children—a whole kibbutz for that matter—that would laugh at her when she mentioned God. And when we teased her she always cried God will punish you—God will punish you.
She left soon after that.
65.
Above, the only photo of that event. Varda and Naftali were already under a cloud, having informed the kibbutz of their decision to leave for good. Only their closest friends bade them goodbye.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the many people who allowed me to weave real-life fragments into the fictional loop:
Excerpts from Our First Year are from The Launching: Sasa’s First Year (1951), in theory written collectively but mostly, it seems, the work of one member. Some names and a few dates have been changed. Many thanks to Keren Hayesod–United Israel Appeal for allowing me to resurrect this archival document.
Excerpts from Between the Motion and the Act are from an autobiographical novel written by my late father, Nahum Ravel. The novel was translated into Hebrew and published under the title Second Thoughts; it was the sequel to an earlier work, Falls the Shadow, which my father wrote during his leave from Kibbutz Sasa (1959–1961). Falls the Shadow was handsomely produced by Vantage Editions.
The Baby Diary passages were written in touching, second-language Hebrew by my mother, Aviva Ravel, when I was born. I have reproduced the entries in the order in which they appear and without any omissions or redaction; only the names have been changed.
Excerpts from Thy Neck with Chains of Gold are from a play written by my mother in 1967. The suicide at the end of the play does not appear in the copy held by the Toronto Research Library, but was included in a 1969 performance in Montreal.
Comments on the article about the kibbutz boys were found on the internet.
John Snarey and Indiana University Press kindly allowed me to quote from Snarey’s study of Kibbutz Sasa.
Articles attributed to the trade union newspaper Davar (now defunct) are authentic, as is the letter to the editor; translations are mine. Terrorists were commonly referred to at that time as “infiltrators.” In the letter to the editor, only the title of the novel in question has been changed. I am grateful to the Lavon Institute of the New Histadrut for permission to reproduce these texts.
Naftali’s unpublished war memoir was written by my father.
Professor Yuval Dror has generously allowed me to quote from his informative book, The History of Kibbutz Education.
Many thanks to Givat Haviva Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace for sending me Kibbutz Sasa’s first Hagadda and allowing me to quote from it.
I am grateful to Maariv Newspapers for permission to reproduce Dimitri Berman’s recollections of his trip to Petra.
I came across excerpts from Takh.i’s diary in One Palestine, United, Tom Segev’s wonderful book about British-mandated Palestine (1923–1948). The diary was published in its entirety by Am Oved and edited by Yehuda Erez. I have fused and rearranged some of the entries.
The Israeli writer Rakefet Zohar graciously responded to my queries about the kibbutz siḥa, and allowed me to include her letter in my notes. I hope her important novel about teenagers on a kibbutz will be translated into English.
Stuart Davis’s Landscape with Garage Lights (1931–1932) was copied by my father, upon my request, over a period of many days. As he had no tracing paper, he used a ruler to determine proportions. I was six at the time, and I watched his progress with awe and delight. I assumed the drawing was irretrievably lost until my mother, searching for her Baby Diary so that I could include it in this novel, came across the yellowed sheet of paper and mailed it to me. I am grateful to VAGA, New York, NY, and the Estate of Stuart Davis for permission to reproduce the derived image.
Warm thanks to Semitic scholar Mark Marshall for his translation of the archival Jish report card.