Mitla Pass (30 page)

“I promise you that it is not going to be easy here either, but turning a spade in our own soil is a lot different from breaking rocks for a British road. We have made a tremendous start for the future. In five years this place will be like Degania.”

Ami Dan painted an upbeat picture. The Syrians in the villages in the foothills had been unable to dislodge them. Marauding, a way of life among the Bedouin, had almost been curbed. Jewish settlers would soon be returning to Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi, so they would again have close neighbors.

Kibbutz life? It was simple and hard but no one left the table hungry. The hours were long, but never a night ended without singing and dancing and debates and storytelling. Most of all, their efforts had been blessed by the six infants in the nursery, and another three were on the way.

Nathan’s mind flashed back to his Uncle Bernie’s cinema in Minsk. He remembered what a great favorite the American cowboy films had been. The covered wagons, the Indian attacks, the privation. At the time he couldn’t possibly have equated Americans crossing the prairie with Zionism, but now there seemed to be amazing similarities between Kansas and the northern Galilee, except that the earth of Kansas showed more promise. The rest of it—the constant peril, the isolation, and the enemies—was the same. Only here there would be no U.S. Cavalry to save them.

“I should like a job,” Nathan said, “to do clerical work at which I have had considerable experience.”

“That’s not how we operate,” Ami Dan answered. “Unless you come in with a special skill like a carpenter or a blacksmith, we all rotate positions. In that way each of us learns every job on the kibbutz. After a year, when you are voted in as a full member, you can petition for a semi-permanent position.”

The rest of it was a portrait of spartan life and nearly total communal existence. Clothing, time off, a few pounds a year spending money, medical care—all necessities came out of a common pool. All decisions were made collectively.

N
ATHAN’S FIRST
assignment was as assistant custodian of the barn, which housed a small dairy herd and the workhorses and mules. It was the simplest of jobs, however unpleasant. Nathan likened it to the coalyard in Mariupol, with manure replacing coal as the object of his loathing. Manure, he learned, was a useful commodity to nourish the orchards.

The rest of the work was simple. Mending harnesses and other leather work he had learned from his father. Shoveling hay into stalls, pumping bellows for the farrier, and whitewashing did not require a higher education. Nor did watchtower duty, a nightly obligation. The future held little promise.

Nathan could not understand the mentality of Comrade Amos, who was in charge of the barn and herd and spent his days singing and extolling the glories of Zionism. It seemed that Comrade Amos got a spiritual uplift out of merely smelling manure.

Once he had mastered milking the cows, Nathan felt he would be able to petition to move on to more promising work. The cows proved uncooperative. “Kicking the bucket” took on new meaning. Nathan did not listen too well to Comrade Amos’s instructions and it took him a week to realize that the cows expected to be milked from the right side instead of the left. Nathan was kicked repeatedly, stomped on, developed milker’s elbow, and wore his hands raw.

On the other hand, Comrade Amos loved the cows. And they loved him. On those icy mornings when Comrade Amos laid his head against the cow for warmth, the animal responded. Nathan realized they talked to each other. Comrade Amos and the cows actually held discussions.

Nathan struggled on with swollen hands, overturned pails, barked shins, as he learned deft moves to get out of their way. The most unpleasant part of it was when the cow did a large wet flop that streaked down its tail, then swished it quickly, banging it into the side of Nathan’s face. The milk production fell so low that the children were going without. Comrade Amos finally asked that Nathan be assigned elsewhere.

E
ACH MORNING
at five o’clock, when the kibbutz came to life in earnest, Nathan wondered if this was truly where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

Many things came to Nathan’s attention that bordered on the shocking. Since his arrival in Palestine, he had become hardened to the fact that the women did not practice traditional modesty. One could certainly overlook short sleeves and no head kerchief because of the type of work, although his mother always wore long sleeves, even during heat waves. He had seen a number of women expose their legs, wearing brief pants that were rolled up to
there,
since his arrival in Palestine. He had never before seen a female in public exposed up to
there.
At Kibbutz Hermon all of them, married or single, dressed immodestly.

This lack of demureness, an affront to Jewish life, carried over to other things in daily kibbutz life. Nathan had a problem with the showers. In Wolkowysk there were no showers. A tub in the yard had greeted him at the end of the day, the water heated to a pleasant warmth. Here the showers were icy, particularly at five o’clock in the morning.

The men’s and women’s showers were separated by a flimsy partition that was partly open. If one wanted to catch a glimpse, it was no problem.

The worst of it was that this perpetual condition of nakedness didn’t seem to annoy anyone but him. After all, these were all
shtetl
-born people, traditionally observant Jews who were cautioned about such exposures. He began seriously to ponder to what extent Zionism itself might be the corrupting influence.

Moreover, Nathan wondered, what kind of a Jewish farm was it without a proper synagogue? Also, the kibbutz raised hogs in secret. Furthermore, it was known that when the girls went to the Arab market in the villages, they would barter the kibbutz produce for camel meat, another forbidden food.

There was a building on the kibbutz that no one spoke of. Misha, who had had a year of military training, went into it immediately. When Misha told him casually that they were manufacturing guns and bombs, Nathan almost choked. There were constant comings and goings of groups of young people from settlements farther south. He learned they were members of the newly formed Jewish Defense Force, the Haganah, and Kibbutz Hermon was a training base for them.

Such disillusionments continued to pile up.

NATHAN BLUSHED
when he was assigned to Malka, a very plump girl who likewise wore her shorts up to
there,
for rifle training. He had never held a gun before, and the very concept of it staggered his imagination. Guns were for
goyim.
His hands sweated whenever he touched a weapon. For three days Malka taught him to take the rifle apart, clean it, put it together, and squeeze the trigger without ammunition.

To conclude the instruction, he had to shoot ten rounds of live ammunition which was manufactured at the kibbutz. As he sighted in on the target, Malka stood over him with her big bare legs and he got so flustered he forgot his instructions. He jerked the trigger instead of giving it a slow clean pull, and he also forgot to keep his thumb tucked down. The rifle butt slammed into his shoulder, causing him to see stars, and at the same instant he jammed his thumb into his eye. He missed the target.

T
HE WEEKLY
kibbutz meeting took place on Wednesday after dinner.

“Do we have any new business?” Ami Dan asked.

Nathan popped up.

“I have a matter which I would like to present for serious consideration,” he said.

“It is not customary for a comrade to participate if he is not a full member of the kibbutz, but we will make an exception. What is on your mind, Nathan?”

Nathan paced, stared like a righteous rabbi to set the frame of mind, then shook his index finger at them.

“I am thinking, comrades, what is the big
megillah
about the name Hermon? Why does such a mountain, belonging almost entirely to Arabs, have the distinction of having a kibbutz named after it?”

Most of the members gaped in disbelief. “The mountain has great biblical significance,” Ami Dan answered. “And it also happens to be where we are located.”

“Just how many Hermons will be enough?” Nathan went on without listening to Ami Dan. “What is it? A sacred mountain? Does God send down special blessings from Hermon?”

“Speak in Hebrew,” Ami Dan said testily; “it is a kibbutz rule.”

Nathan continued his harangue against the mountain in Yiddish.

“Would you kindly get to the point, Comrade Zadok.”

“I am thinking and with deep feelings, with which I am certain the comrades will be in agreement, that a kibbutz, to properly commemorate, should be named, instead, for a real person. I have in mind a martyr of Zionism. I am proposing that we change the name of the kibbutz to Kfar Gittleman, in memory of one who sacrificed her life to reach Eretz Israel. ...”

“You are out of order, Comrade Zadok.”

“What could be a more magnificent name and so simple a gesture? Kfar Gittleman,” Nathan continued. ...

“You are out of order.”

A
FTER ROTATING
Nathan to a dozen different jobs, none of which he performed successfully, Ami Dan realized it would only be a matter of time until Nathan would leave, voluntarily or otherwise. The members were growing impatient with him, even Bertha and Misha. Nathan was not a communal being. Some people simply weren’t cut out for kibbutz life, but no one ever showed less of a capacity to accept instruction or acknowledge criticism.

Ami Dan decided to press the issue by assigning Nathan to the most dangerous job on the kibbutz, and ordered him a month’s duty as a perimeter guard. They went out in two-man teams, leaving the stockade after sunset, sleeping in the field, and roving the outer boundaries on watch against Bedouin marauders.

Ami Dan had made a serious mistake. On the fourth night there were some stirrings near Nathan’s position. His partner, a lad named Levi, went out to investigate. Alone and terrified, Nathan forgot the password and just about everything else and shot at Levi as he returned. Fortunately, Nathan’s aim was not a thing of beauty and Levi escaped unscathed.

“D
O WE HAVE
any new business?” Ami Dan asked.

Nathan popped up.

“I have a matter which I would like to present for serious consideration,” he said.

“You are out of order,” Ami Dan snapped and his sentiment was echoed about the room.

“I am certain, when the comrades hear what I have to propose, they will find me very much in order.”

“Very well, Comrade Zadok, but make it brief.”

“Today I again visited the library, as I often do, for I read several languages and have a background in literature. I find to my dismay that there are books in English, in Hebrew, in German, and in French, but not so much as a single volume in Yiddish. I cannot alone reverse the mentality in Palestine that says the tongue of Eretz Israel must be Hebrew—a language, as you all know, reserved exclusively for prayer. So, I accept what I cannot do nothing about. However, it is a disgraceful criminal matter that Yiddish has been abandoned. And I tell you that in the end, the Jewish community in Palestine will return to Yiddish, because Hebrew is not usable as a modern language.”

Ami Dan quickly quieted the members down. “You are way out of line, Zadok!” he retorted angrily. “We did not come to Palestine to transpose the
shtetl
but to build a new country. Spanish-born Jews do not speak Yiddish. American-born Jews do not speak Yiddish. African-born Jews do not speak Yiddish, nor do they speak it in any of the Moslem countries, where half the entire world’s Jewish population lives.

Yiddish is not the universal language of the Jews. It is the language of the
shtetl
and the ghetto!”

Nathan ignored the applause at the end of Ami Dan’s words.

“I propose the following,” Nathan continued. “Each of us should write home and have Yiddish books sent to our library. I, personally, will take the responsibility of teaching Yiddish to the children of the kibbutz, who should not forget they are Jews.”

“W
HAT DO WE
do with Nathan?” a frustrated Ami Dan asked Misha and Bertha.

“I know I made a terrible mistake by vouching for him,” Bertha said, “but I still don’t want to see him have to undergo the humiliation of being voted out of the kibbutz.”

Misha fingered his accordion. “He sits alone at night and reads. He never bothers to come and join us. I’ve never seen him sing or dance.”

“I didn’t tell you the story of when we met in Poland,” Ami Dan said. “I should have. This place is not for him. He’s driving everybody crazy.”

“I’d talk to him,” Misha said, “but he has no listening apparatus.”

“So what do we do?” Bertha said, repealing Ami Dan’s frustrated question.

“I have an idea,” Ami Dan said suddenly. “It’s a bit of dirty business, but it could work. The land fund has assigned us two thousand dunams of new land on the Huleh Lake.”

“But it’s all swamp,” Misha said.

“Exactly,” Ami Dan answered.

T
HE PLAN
to develop Huleh Lake was a joint venture with Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi. An expert from the Far East had been sent to Palestine to study the feasibility of building ponds to seed, grow, and harvest fresh-water fish. It was the dicey business of rebalancing nature.

First a portion of the swamp had to be drained. No human physical labor matched it for filth, sweat, and danger. Six volunteers and Nathan were sent down as part of the team from Kibbutz Hermon.

All told, twenty men and four girls from the three settlements went at the swamp. They were short on machinery, but long on spirit. They hacked away with machetes at the papyrus reeds that hovered high over their heads, working in waist-high muck, and hand-dug a labyrinth of channels to drain off the waters. Every slimy creature and every biting insect in Palestine had relatives in the Huleh swamp.

Over a period of years, most of the pioneers had developed a measure of immunity to malaria. Newer members hit for the first time often went down hard. Nathan lasted for three weeks in the swamp and was on the verge of quitting and running away when the decision was made for him by an unfriendly mosquito.