Kibbutz Life

I'm in another world now. It's called Kibbutz Neot Semadar (sometimes spelled "Smadar"). Since I've been here, I've spent my time washing dishes, cleaning, and working in a factory that makes organic juices and candies. And when I haven't been doing that, I've been reading, writing (in my pocket-sized journal), slowly but not too enthusiastically thinking about what else I'm going to do on this trip and in the rest of my life, and occasionally hanging out with other volunteers and kibbutzniks, but many people here keep to themselves when they're relaxing.
The kibbutznik who was assigned to explain the place to me called it a place for people who think about themselves. So far, that's been true.
He also described it as a place where people do not do drugs. So far, that has not been true.
I recently witnessed a group of middle-aged kibbutznik men playing guitars and singing "Let My People Go" in English and in Hebrew. They were practicing it before singing it at the Seder (which is tonight). He told a story to introduce it (which I have translated, probably inaccurately): "When the blacks were slaves in America, they sang this song. They were working so hard, and suffering, and they prayed for a Moses to save them. Today, we pray for a Moses to come to us... But where is this Moses? He is inside all of us."
The kibbutz is visually pretty amazing and beautiful. It's built in an Oasis in the Arava desert. The Arava is a mountainous section of the Negev which resembles the Southwestern US, but minus the cacti. It's not as intimidatingly stark as the Sinai or as awesome as Wadi Rum (where I still haven't been yet) but it's still a very cool landscape to see.
This desert landscape surrounds an oasis full of date palms, colorful flowers (mostly magenta and red), trees with light gray trunks and thin green leaves, and a big lake. The ground throughout is covered in black irrigation pipes and is a shade lighter than Jerusalem stone. Most buildings here are short and rectangular- regular Israeli architecture. But two tall fairy castles stand out from the rest: the "Arts Center" is a pink and blue building with wavy walls, a small courtyard, and a central tower, and the children's school is landmarked by a yellow and blue upside down triangle on a pole that is the size of a water tower.
The kibbutz is very large and I explored it on the first few days, blown away by the cool-ness of the place. But its original effect wore off, as I imagine the effect of living near any visually awesome place would. I imagine that if I lived next to the pyramids of Giza, I would become genuinely bored of them. I'm not bored with this place, but I found that, after day 3, I stopped wandering around and stuck to the path between my house and the dining hall.
I started reading Justine by Lawrence Durrell. It's about Alexandria, which is why I picked it up. It's written in a very flowery, late modernist style. It was written in the late '50s. It's part of a quartet of four novels, and the next two are the same story as Justine, but from different perspectives. I decided to read just the beginning and the end. I may read the whole thing some day, but the beginning and the end were good for now. He refers to the chamsa as a "child hand print" and he refers to a kibbutz as a "work camp in Palestine." In the end of the book, Justine's kibbutz has turned her into a "peasant."
I put down Justine and started reading The Beach by Alex Garland. It's an easy and quick read. It has no amazingly written sentences, but it's just insightful enough to keep me thinking. It's an action book, but it's not The DaVinci Code. Books like The DaVinci Code are actually almost impossible for me to read, not because I think I'm too good to read them (I like Harry Potter) but because they're so action-oriented, they make me wish I were watching a movie instead.
The Beach is strangely like this kibbutz. It's a place cut off from the rest of the world, where people do simple jobs to sustain themselves. People aren't as fantical about protecting it from outsiders, but this place does do a sufficient job of preventing itself from being discovered. If it were a member of the Kibbutz Program Center, and were a kibbutz to which foreign volunteers could be assigned at random, I think it actually might get ruined.
I found Neot Semadar on the WWOOF website. They clearly want to attract the "organic farm" crowd and they do a good job of it.
Isaac, the kibbutznik in charge of "orienting" me told me, "You can stay for Passover, but our Passover here is special." I said, "OK." Since then, I've told others that I was staying and they've said, "Oh. Do you know that Passover is special here?"
As far as I know, special just means that they have meetings and do some folk dances, and the kibbutzniks don't do the same jobs as usual (of course, for a volunteer, that won't make a difference, really). But they seem almost protective of the "special-ness." After celebrating Passover at the Seders, I might go to Jerusalem for the rest of the holiday.
I'll try to make small updates from here on... I hope to keep them all interesting as well as travel-related, without too much excessive rambling.