Last night, I said goodbye to everyone at Neot Semadar separately and then spent some time outside after everyone was asleep. I ran into Asaf, a cool guy who was only at the kibbutz the first few days and last few days I was there. He's writing a children's album about a machine that makes you fly when it hears good music and he likes Spinal Tap. Needless to say, our conversations are good.
We went to the dining room because he wanted a midnight snack. In the dining room, we discovered the electronic keyboard that they use to accompany the songs on Fridays. I turned on the organ sound and played "Organ Woman." He liked it. He gave me a pencil wrapped in paper tape that said "Keep on rocking, Asaf, Israel, 2008."
We weren't high, and, in fact, Asaf doesn't like drugs at all.
Hanging out with him was a good transition between the comfortable, insulated world of Neot Semadar and the rest of the world, I think. In Neot Semadar, I hang out with people for days and don't say much to them, and I play the upright piano alone in the practice room/library on the kibbutz. In the rest of the world, I talk for hours about Spinal Tap with people I've just met all the time, and play them organ songs as well.
I didn't get the sense that I was going back to the real me, or the world where I belong, or anything so dramatic as that- no, it was just a good transition.
I got on a bus to Eilat this morning, and it was full of Israeli kids going to school. They were watching a computer-generated kids show with a fat ogre, a slick-haired vampire/'50s bad-ass, and a red-haired princess with a light blue dress. It was my first contact with the world outside of Neot Semadar- the world where you pay people to take you far away and mass culture is a regular thing to encounter. It was sufficiently far out. I soon stopped thinking about how sad it was to leave the place. I also was happy not to have a camera with me. I noticed times when I would have attempted to get the perfect picture, and felt relieved that I didn't have to.
In Eilat, I've still enjoyed not having that extra burden of pulling a camera out of my pocket, but I've seen several camera stores and been tempted to buy a new one.
The thing that tempted me the most was this: a McDavid's and a Chief Sandwich next to each other. Two hilariously pseudo-American Israeli fast food establishments. And they were right next to each other. I thought of buying a disposable camera just for the occasion but I resisted. If I'm not going to have a camera, I'm going to try to go all the way.
Well, I will be asking people to take pictures of me. But it's the burden of carrying it around that I'm going to avoid if it's possible. I'm either in serious hobby photographer mode, or I'm in camera-less traveller mode, and the serious hobby photographer in me doesn't want to take pics with a disposable.
Flash forward: in two hours, I'll be in Jordan.
Showing posts with label kibbutz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kibbutz. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Back in Cairo
It's amazing how much you can get to like slightly familiar places when you're in an unfamiliar place.
The most familiar place to me in Egypt is definitely the Sun Hotel in central Cairo, and the second most familiar place is probably the internet cafe nearby, called "Virus." I asked the owner (who speaks English quite well) why it's called "virus," and he just laughed.
The Sun Hotel costs $5 to $6.00 a night including breakfast, a towel, semi-decent water, and English-speaking staff. The Virus cafe costs about $1.00 an hour and it has headphones with microphones for skype. In Egypt, all of the place's qualities - price, fast internet, and skype capability - are not easy to find.
I hope to stay in Cairo long enough tomorrow that I won't be sad to leave, and I hope to leave soon enough that I will not be sick of it. After Alex, Matruh, Siwa, Alex again, and then the disappointing Port Said, Cairo is surprisingly refreshing. I never thought a city that started out as exciting and then became annoying could have such a calming effect on me.
When I first arrived here, my travel buddy Jay and I took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi zoomed in and out of traffic, over highways that winded around minarets. We got so close to other cars, it felt like bumper cars, only more fun, because in bumper cars, you sort of end up staying in the same place, getting banged around. Riding in a Cairo taxi for the first time, with a massive, exotic city zipping by, was one of the most fun experiences I ever had in a car.
When I returned to Cairo, I decided to take the now-familiar Cairo Metro instead without hesitation. It was a much more efficient way to get from the bus station to the Sun Hotel.
I think I'll be heading back to Israel soon. I reckon I'd like to work at Kibbutz Neot Smadar in the Arava. It doesn't require the registration fee from the Kibbutz Program Center. It's also not far from the Red Sea, so it'll be easy to get to from here. Lonely Planet describes it, in a very brief recommendation of their restaurant, as "very alternative." According to one travel blogger (http://www.createdestroyenjoy.net/mideast.html), the people there have a "twinkle in their eye." It's in the middle of a desert full of colorful rocks and it has a lake. It also has colorful, playful architecture, as can be seen in the wikipedia article.
If I pay registration and go all the way to the program center in Tel Aviv, and then make another trip all the way to the Lebanese border, I can work on Bar'am, the classic kibbutz, with lots of volunteers, trees, organized excursions, a pub, lots of history attached to it, and all that sort of thing. But at the moment I feel like going to the Arava - and saving the money I'd pay for registration and insurance, as well.
I've been in the Virus Netcafe for about 2 hours . I'm going to pay the owner the 10 Egyptian Pounds I owe him and call it a night, internet-wise.
The most familiar place to me in Egypt is definitely the Sun Hotel in central Cairo, and the second most familiar place is probably the internet cafe nearby, called "Virus." I asked the owner (who speaks English quite well) why it's called "virus," and he just laughed.
The Sun Hotel costs $5 to $6.00 a night including breakfast, a towel, semi-decent water, and English-speaking staff. The Virus cafe costs about $1.00 an hour and it has headphones with microphones for skype. In Egypt, all of the place's qualities - price, fast internet, and skype capability - are not easy to find.
I hope to stay in Cairo long enough tomorrow that I won't be sad to leave, and I hope to leave soon enough that I will not be sick of it. After Alex, Matruh, Siwa, Alex again, and then the disappointing Port Said, Cairo is surprisingly refreshing. I never thought a city that started out as exciting and then became annoying could have such a calming effect on me.
When I first arrived here, my travel buddy Jay and I took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi zoomed in and out of traffic, over highways that winded around minarets. We got so close to other cars, it felt like bumper cars, only more fun, because in bumper cars, you sort of end up staying in the same place, getting banged around. Riding in a Cairo taxi for the first time, with a massive, exotic city zipping by, was one of the most fun experiences I ever had in a car.
When I returned to Cairo, I decided to take the now-familiar Cairo Metro instead without hesitation. It was a much more efficient way to get from the bus station to the Sun Hotel.
I think I'll be heading back to Israel soon. I reckon I'd like to work at Kibbutz Neot Smadar in the Arava. It doesn't require the registration fee from the Kibbutz Program Center. It's also not far from the Red Sea, so it'll be easy to get to from here. Lonely Planet describes it, in a very brief recommendation of their restaurant, as "very alternative." According to one travel blogger (http://www.createdestroyenjoy.net/mideast.html), the people there have a "twinkle in their eye." It's in the middle of a desert full of colorful rocks and it has a lake. It also has colorful, playful architecture, as can be seen in the wikipedia article.
If I pay registration and go all the way to the program center in Tel Aviv, and then make another trip all the way to the Lebanese border, I can work on Bar'am, the classic kibbutz, with lots of volunteers, trees, organized excursions, a pub, lots of history attached to it, and all that sort of thing. But at the moment I feel like going to the Arava - and saving the money I'd pay for registration and insurance, as well.
I've been in the Virus Netcafe for about 2 hours . I'm going to pay the owner the 10 Egyptian Pounds I owe him and call it a night, internet-wise.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
A bit of summary
It occurred to me that this blog hasn't quite succeeded as a travel blog up to this point. Nobody can quite keep track of where I am and where I've been based on reading it. I feel that, if I am to succeed from now on at updating it, it will become more of a memory blog. An impressionist blog.
It's always been hard for me to summarize. Actually, no- it's hard for me to get myself to summarize. Because it's just plain not my instinct to summarize. It's my instinct to dwell and expand upon little things. That, like many instinct, is both helpful and harmful.
Anyway, I'm going to try to summarize my trip.
With Birthright, I was in a group of about 40 people. I hope to keep in touch with them. I'm often uncomfortable in groups of that size. I can handle bigger groups and smaller ones, but a group of that size just takes me a long time to adjust to. Plus, when I travel in groups, it's harder for me to focus on where I am. Being constantly dropped and picked up sometimes makes me focus more on things like what time we're going to eat than the places we're at... but at the same time, when you're with a group, you're rarely alone and you rarely get lost and you're rarely anywhere long enough for it to get boring.
And we weren't anywhere long enough for it to get boring. We started off at a desert kibbutz called Masabai Sadeh. It had cute, tiny stucco-roof houses, bicycles, animals, gardens, and art made out of junk. I didn't get to meet any of the inhabitants, but they didn't seem too friendly.
In the Negev desert, we also saw the grave and house of David Ben-Gurion and went on a night time hike. The guide, Ran, told us to think about how Abraham walked through this same desert. I thought about that, and it was pretty awesome. I understood why people rave about the desert at night. Being totally in the dark is always cool, but being in the dark in the desert, where there are no trees for the moon to hide behind and no plants to rustle, is a different experience from anything I've known. There was also a unique dark blue in the sky. The dry wind is also pretty unique.
I thought about how people like Abrahah, Jacob, and Lawrence of Arabia may have found themselves in this very spot, and I felt more like them, while at the same time realizing just how different a life a person would lead living in the desert.
I had a conversation with Justin, a guy on the trip. He confessed that, since he lives in New Mexico, the Negev isn't much of a new thing to him. I told him I understood. I quoted Omar Sharif in Lawrence: "No Arab loves the desert. We like water and green trees." If that's true, then I'm a bit of an Arab myself. The desert has its thrills, but the potential for desolation, desperation, and poverty has always been very palpable to me.
We then moved on to Masada and Ein Gedi at the Dead Sea. It rained. Masada was cloudy, which gave the "sunrise" a dufferent quality to it. The cloudy view was nonetheless impressive. At the Dead Sea, more rain came. Some people floated in the cold muddy water but I chickened out. Mudfalls filled the mountains at Ein Gedi. Apparently some people died that day. I hope to go back to the Dead Sea on a better day.
After that, we spent a night in Tel Aviv. It was a Monday and it was cold. I went to an Irish pub- the first of several I would find in Israel. Irish pubs there are very much like Irish pubs in America- asymmetrical, wooden, and with lots of Guinness. Israeli ones just play up the Irish-ness a bit more. Pictures of James Joyce and bouzoukis line the walls, and that sort of thing.
Then I went to Mike's Place. It's owned by Canadians with dual citizenship. Then a friend named Josh and I lead a search for drunken felafel. Coming from America, where drunken pizza walks are possible in any small city, we expected this endeavour to be a cinch in the so-called party capital of Israel. But the search proved to be in vain. Josh and I hoped to go on more successful drunk walks together later on the trip, but it unfortunately never happened.
When I returned to Tel Aviv later on my own, I realized that this first incident was just another example of the city's horrible urban planning. Tel Aviv has several main drags, but none of them are parallel to each other or to the ocean. Some cities have main drags with smaller streets between them. In Tel Aviv, everything criss-crosses everything, like a plate of spaghetti that's suddenly cut off by the ocean.
The next day in Tel Aviv, we met some friendly soldiers in Rabin Square. I got my picture taken in front of the S'licha ("sorry") wall. It was one of the most moving memorials I've seen anywhere. Ran had us sing "Imagine." Later on, when Ran asked for feedback on his activities, several people said they felt weird singing the song because "Imagine there's no countries" runs contrary to the idea of Israel. I figured Ran just chose it because it's about peace, and that's the idea behind Rabin Square. I realized that I agree with John Lennon. Singing the song was indeed awkward, not because of its meaning, but because of the Israelis who walked by. I figured they must be used to this sort of thing, though.
I will continue later (hopeuflly not too much later) because right now I have to catch an overnight train from Luxor to Cairo. I'm not looking forward to it.
It's always been hard for me to summarize. Actually, no- it's hard for me to get myself to summarize. Because it's just plain not my instinct to summarize. It's my instinct to dwell and expand upon little things. That, like many instinct, is both helpful and harmful.
Anyway, I'm going to try to summarize my trip.
With Birthright, I was in a group of about 40 people. I hope to keep in touch with them. I'm often uncomfortable in groups of that size. I can handle bigger groups and smaller ones, but a group of that size just takes me a long time to adjust to. Plus, when I travel in groups, it's harder for me to focus on where I am. Being constantly dropped and picked up sometimes makes me focus more on things like what time we're going to eat than the places we're at... but at the same time, when you're with a group, you're rarely alone and you rarely get lost and you're rarely anywhere long enough for it to get boring.
And we weren't anywhere long enough for it to get boring. We started off at a desert kibbutz called Masabai Sadeh. It had cute, tiny stucco-roof houses, bicycles, animals, gardens, and art made out of junk. I didn't get to meet any of the inhabitants, but they didn't seem too friendly.
In the Negev desert, we also saw the grave and house of David Ben-Gurion and went on a night time hike. The guide, Ran, told us to think about how Abraham walked through this same desert. I thought about that, and it was pretty awesome. I understood why people rave about the desert at night. Being totally in the dark is always cool, but being in the dark in the desert, where there are no trees for the moon to hide behind and no plants to rustle, is a different experience from anything I've known. There was also a unique dark blue in the sky. The dry wind is also pretty unique.
I thought about how people like Abrahah, Jacob, and Lawrence of Arabia may have found themselves in this very spot, and I felt more like them, while at the same time realizing just how different a life a person would lead living in the desert.
I had a conversation with Justin, a guy on the trip. He confessed that, since he lives in New Mexico, the Negev isn't much of a new thing to him. I told him I understood. I quoted Omar Sharif in Lawrence: "No Arab loves the desert. We like water and green trees." If that's true, then I'm a bit of an Arab myself. The desert has its thrills, but the potential for desolation, desperation, and poverty has always been very palpable to me.
We then moved on to Masada and Ein Gedi at the Dead Sea. It rained. Masada was cloudy, which gave the "sunrise" a dufferent quality to it. The cloudy view was nonetheless impressive. At the Dead Sea, more rain came. Some people floated in the cold muddy water but I chickened out. Mudfalls filled the mountains at Ein Gedi. Apparently some people died that day. I hope to go back to the Dead Sea on a better day.
After that, we spent a night in Tel Aviv. It was a Monday and it was cold. I went to an Irish pub- the first of several I would find in Israel. Irish pubs there are very much like Irish pubs in America- asymmetrical, wooden, and with lots of Guinness. Israeli ones just play up the Irish-ness a bit more. Pictures of James Joyce and bouzoukis line the walls, and that sort of thing.
Then I went to Mike's Place. It's owned by Canadians with dual citizenship. Then a friend named Josh and I lead a search for drunken felafel. Coming from America, where drunken pizza walks are possible in any small city, we expected this endeavour to be a cinch in the so-called party capital of Israel. But the search proved to be in vain. Josh and I hoped to go on more successful drunk walks together later on the trip, but it unfortunately never happened.
When I returned to Tel Aviv later on my own, I realized that this first incident was just another example of the city's horrible urban planning. Tel Aviv has several main drags, but none of them are parallel to each other or to the ocean. Some cities have main drags with smaller streets between them. In Tel Aviv, everything criss-crosses everything, like a plate of spaghetti that's suddenly cut off by the ocean.
The next day in Tel Aviv, we met some friendly soldiers in Rabin Square. I got my picture taken in front of the S'licha ("sorry") wall. It was one of the most moving memorials I've seen anywhere. Ran had us sing "Imagine." Later on, when Ran asked for feedback on his activities, several people said they felt weird singing the song because "Imagine there's no countries" runs contrary to the idea of Israel. I figured Ran just chose it because it's about peace, and that's the idea behind Rabin Square. I realized that I agree with John Lennon. Singing the song was indeed awkward, not because of its meaning, but because of the Israelis who walked by. I figured they must be used to this sort of thing, though.
I will continue later (hopeuflly not too much later) because right now I have to catch an overnight train from Luxor to Cairo. I'm not looking forward to it.
Monday, March 10, 2008
The German of Zichron Yaakov
Today, I saw one of the most surprising things I've seen in this whole trip.
Last night, I stayed in Zichron Yaakov/ זכרון יעקוב with a guy named Iftah who I met on couchsurfing. Zichron Yaakov is the kind of town that, if it were in America, I'd call a "tourist town." Israel is, in some ways, a tourist country, so it's hard to call one town a "tourist town," but Zichron Yaakov has that key combination of quaintness, smallness, and a sense that people there are very happy with their town and it's small size. And it has cafes, a pedestrian mall, antique stores, a winery, and one or two museums, all within about 500 feet of each other.
It also has an obscure kibbutz called Beth El. From Iftah, I learned that the founders of the kibbutz are messianic German Christians who build bomb shelters.
I learned more than that today, however. A second couchsurfer named Luke joined us. Luke is an American who moved to Germany to study in a university that is home to a particular scholar of Judaic studies who interested him. He wanted to find out the story behind these mysterious Germans. Iftah pulled the car up to the entrance to the kibbutz and Luke spoke to one of the Germans in German. Next thing I knew, we were on a tour of the kibbutz, conducted in Hebrew by a nice old German man.
Last night, I stayed in Zichron Yaakov/ זכרון יעקוב with a guy named Iftah who I met on couchsurfing. Zichron Yaakov is the kind of town that, if it were in America, I'd call a "tourist town." Israel is, in some ways, a tourist country, so it's hard to call one town a "tourist town," but Zichron Yaakov has that key combination of quaintness, smallness, and a sense that people there are very happy with their town and it's small size. And it has cafes, a pedestrian mall, antique stores, a winery, and one or two museums, all within about 500 feet of each other.
It also has an obscure kibbutz called Beth El. From Iftah, I learned that the founders of the kibbutz are messianic German Christians who build bomb shelters.
I learned more than that today, however. A second couchsurfer named Luke joined us. Luke is an American who moved to Germany to study in a university that is home to a particular scholar of Judaic studies who interested him. He wanted to find out the story behind these mysterious Germans. Iftah pulled the car up to the entrance to the kibbutz and Luke spoke to one of the Germans in German. Next thing I knew, we were on a tour of the kibbutz, conducted in Hebrew by a nice old German man.
He took us up into an office and gave us coffee and cakes. He talked about the ancient debate on whether the kingdom of heaven exists on earth or in our hearts. Apparently many Christians believed that Armageddon and the messiah would come in 1836, but that didn't happen, and so many of them abandoned the idea. But some still believe in the kingdom of heaven. The Germans on the kibbutz are followers of Albert Schweitzer, who apparently believed that the way to the kingdom of heaven was to help the Jews in earthly ways.
So, in 1973, these Germans started Kibbutz Beth El in northern Israel and the Israeli government asked them to manufacture bomb shelters, since that was something they needed and which there wasn't enough of. They became very good at these shelters, and demand for them exploded during the Gulf War. After the Gulf War, however, demand decreased, but instead of slowing down production and letting workers go, the manufacturers decided to expand their market. They built air filters for tanks and bomb shelters. They built isolation chambers for contaminated persons. We saw all of these things in various states of construction in the factory.
The filters were particularly impressive. They consist of a cyclone that collects the dust and a filter made of some sort of fiber that absorbs it. Apparently, it's far more efficient than just having a fiber filter to collect and absorb the dust. And apparently, it makes the air inside tanks and inside bunkers far more breathable.
We also got a preview of a machine that may be installed in future airports. It's an isolation chamber that looks tiny but expands to hold about 30 people. It's made to protect people if bomb experts have to examine luggage in the airport.
I don't remember the guide's name and I don't even recall if he told me his name. He was a good guide. He kept my attention 99% of the time, even though my mind was working overtime as I tried to visualize the physical science he described as well as rack my mind for Hebrew words I didn't recognize. Not surprisingly, it turned out that I actually didn't know most of the words, and I had to ask Iftah for translations a lot.
The more I think about it, it's truly amazing that this guy managed to hold my attention despite the language barrier. I think it was something about the enthusiastic and - by American and Israeli standards - awkward way he expressed himself. He moved his long, thin arms almost as much as your stereotypically hysterical Italian or Jew (except he had those giant Germanic/Scandinavian arms), his vocal mannerisms were a bit reminiscent of Max von Sydow, and he had a high-pitched laugh that seemed to be beyond his control.
The more I think about it, it's truly amazing that this guy managed to hold my attention despite the language barrier. I think it was something about the enthusiastic and - by American and Israeli standards - awkward way he expressed himself. He moved his long, thin arms almost as much as your stereotypically hysterical Italian or Jew (except he had those giant Germanic/Scandinavian arms), his vocal mannerisms were a bit reminiscent of Max von Sydow, and he had a high-pitched laugh that seemed to be beyond his control.
Since writing that last sentence, I spent a good amount of minutes trying to figure out why I like people like him.
For some reason, I tend to like Northern Europeans. I think it's because they're funny.
For some reason, I tend to like Northern Europeans. I think it's because they're funny.
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