I Spend the Summer in Israel : The Kibbutz

Somewhere in my freshman year, my parents figured out I was smoking pot. My father had a long talk with me about it. He told me when he grew up, drugs were considered a crutch and I was searching for something. He decided I needed to be sent to the Holy Land.

So we applied to a program for college students to go to a kibbutz. I knew nothing about Israel or kibbutzim. I was as naive about this as everything else in the world except my hometown, and now my college. I was interviewed, and part of the interview he asked me if I smoked pot. I never lie, but I did this time because I knew they wouldn't accept me. Who would say yes anyway?? I was told that pot smoking would not be tolerated, and I would be sent home.

Anyway, I got accepted and went. I ended up on a large kibbutz in the Negev Desert, that had been established right after 1948. We were 5 kilometers from Gaza Strip and could hear explosions at night. I don't think I even realized what that was about. I truly was in a world of my own.

I liked the kibbutz. I made fast friends with two girls, and we were roommates. We would work 6 days a week, and 1 day off for Shabbat. The work was not hard. They were more like slave drivers in America. They had a relaxed attitude on the kibbutz. They put all the students in my program in older cabins near the entrance. Years later I googled the kibbutz, and found out we had stayed in the very original quarters of the kibbutz when it was founded. I see now, that I had lived in a historical building and feel honored.

The kibbutz was basically a farm. We drove for 2 hours through sand desert, before we got there. I thought, where are these people sending me? When I got there I was amazed. It was beautiful with lots of lovely gardens and fields and trees. And a swimming pool.

On the kibbutz in those days, it was a socialist type of community. Everyone was given the same type of housing in exchange for working a job. You really didn't earn money. You just got your housing and food. The regular residents got a little bit of money to go to the city once in a while, but nothing really.

There was a big dining hall and everyone ate together, breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food was challenging. We ate there three meals a day. This was what we got. Breakfast: vats of whole carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, grown on the kibbutz, eggs, rye bread, yogurt, milk from the kibbutz, Turkish coffee and pear juice from the kibbutz. Lunch: chicken soup, one day rice, next day noodles, some kind of awful meat, whole carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions whole in vats, pear juice. Dinner: Vats of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, rye bread, yogurt, milk, coffee, pear juice. Well, I was a regular American food eater at the time. I got really sick of this, until one day I made a breakthrough. I had a mad urge to take the carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes and onions and violently throw them across the room. I didn't but after that, I somehow acclimated better.

We had to wake up every morning at 3 am, because it would get so hot in the day, that we had to quit by 11. It wasn't bad. We went to work at 3:30, as it was getting light. There was a few wisps of clouds in the sky, that would burn off quickly.

We mostly worked in the fields. At first we picked pears and peaches. We mostly hand weeded cotton. It was fun. We would all sing or talk. After a couple of hours every morning, this very jolly fellow would come singing loudly with vats of Turkish coffee and chocolate sandwiches. The sandwiches were rye bread and chocolate spread. This is the only time in my life I have drunk coffee. It was different than what they have in America. He would come back again after breakfast with only coffee. This time he was never jolly. I never knew why.We also harvested potatoes.

We were each given a kibbutz family to go visit everyday. At that time on the kibbutz, the children lived in separate children's houses than their parents, and would visit their parents before dinner, and have snacks. So we were told to participate in this tradition as well. It was pleasant going to visit them. I had a kibbutz mother, father and brother. My brother was a little older than me. They didn't speak English much, and I didn't speak Hebrew. We would do sign language a lot. Part of the visit was eating sunflower seeds out of the shell, watermelon and homemade ice cream. My kibbutz mother ran a order pad factory on the kibbutz. It made all the order pads for the whole country of Israel. Sometimes she would special request that I come work on it.

At the kibbutz, there wasn't really anybody my age. I was 18 and they were all in the army. They came home one weekend, and decided to have a party with us Americans. I remember it was the most retarded thing . We were at the party, and then they shut out the lights, and it was dark. Then all the Israeli Boys grabbed an American girl and tried kissing her. It was nuts. That's not all. The boy who tried to kiss me, decided he was madly in love with me. He followed me around the kibbutz all the time and wouldn't leave me alone. It got bad. He told me in broken English, he wanted to marry me, and if I wouldn't he would put himself in water and not come up. I got worried and told my kibbutz mother and she must have dealt with it, because he left me alone after that.

One woman who was in her 20's did meet a guy on the kibbutz and was going to stay and marry him. She said she could never find anyone she liked in America.

I guess the kibbutzim has changed for the most part in modern day Israel. They use money, and everyone buys into it.

copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.