Kovner's Childhood Landscapes by Michael Kovner

MICHAEL KOVNER

CHILDHOOD LANDSCAPES

CHILDHOOD LANDSCAPES Michael Kovner

Editor – Joshua Kenaz

Acknowledgements:

Design – Anastassia Rubinstein

Bineth Galler y

Photography – Shimon Z’evi Printing – Eli Meir, Ltd., Petah Tikva

© All rights reser ved to Michael Kovner and publisher Printed in Israel, 2007 All paintings are from 1997–1999 Oil on canvas Measurements in centimeters, height x width The drawings are charcoal on paper

Our Backs to the Cypresses

Our backs are to the cypresses. We hide the hills behind our houses ashamed to see the star we rush into the rustling streets lest our hearts become entangled in the open space. And so we live in closed rooms and in the environs strapped with wires of telephone and telegraph – far from everything we innocently loved – within time, beyond our selves. Lea Goldberg

translated by

Rachel Tzvia Back

The Child Leaned His Head

The child leaned his head against a tree. It would be better if he leaned his head against my shoulder when he’s tired, or against his mother. But sometimes his father and mother stand shoulder to shoulder and watch in silence as the child leans his head against a tree and cries out to the heart of the tree and after the child cries, he sees how the sun shines and through the sun perhaps he also sees his father and mother and the tree is redeemed. Abba Kovner

translated by

Shirley Kaufman with Nurit Orchan

ORCHARDS, COWSHEDS, HAYSTACKS

Menachem Ben-Shalom These words were written in the summer of 1999, when my close friend, the painter Michael Kovner, invited me to take a trip with him. We were to drive along Israel’s coastal plain, and then to the inland valleys of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, where he had painted orchards, cows and haystacks, fields and haylofts. We had thought that I might perhaps write something for the catalog of Kovner’s for thcoming solo exhibition, to open at Tel Aviv’s Binet Galley. Hapoel Tel Aviv had won the double in 1999; it was a happy year, brimming with optimism. And in those to follow, Kovner’s wor k would be exhibited at the Ar tSpace Galler y in Jer usalem, and at the Ramat Gan Museum. Words were prepared, but as it turned out, they didn’t fit in with the catalog. They would languish on my computer for over four year s; sometimes I’d read a bit, tweak a word here, feeling bad about what had been abandoned. For fifteen year s I had been a cowshed wor ker, and I had tried to combine my physical wor k with my writing and intellectual activity. I failed. According to modern capitalistic ideas this sor t of combination of physical wor k and writing is bound for extinction. My per sonal reflections about our trip together gathered dust, and I wrote other things. Until someone came along and suggested that we tr y to give it to Keshet Hahadasha. *

* The ar ticles that are quoted here are from the publication in Hakeshet Hahadasha, no.4, Summer 2003

9,,

ORCHARDS “When night fell, I wandered in the dust of orchard trails on the outskir ts of the city. They all belong to the sons of the land, the Arabs. All theirs.” In an ar ticle written by Yoseph Haim Brenner and published in Kuntress on 28th of April, 1921, a few days before he was murdered, he said: “The dust of the orchard trails on the outskir ts of the city all belong to the sons of the land.” That’s the beginning; that’s how it began. This is how the mental stage was set, this was the cr ystalline essence of the image of all the contor tions of the soul, of all the flesh and blood struggles of those who settled this land, of the two national entities struggling here, of the landscape pictures, of the metaphysical hallucinations of those who were born here, of the innermost recesses of the mind, of the struggles within the soul swallowed up within the hidden recesses of orchards, of the throbbing of engines with double-pistons, and the small irrigation runnels amid the prickly foliage and the dankness of the sandy red ear th, amid the drifts of fallen leaves, or the acacia screens fencing off the blocks of orchards from the clusters of settlements, or from the big sea, and the great clear light, and the winds of autumn…The orchard as a backdrop for the Israeli drama about the New Jew, is reflected in Nahum Gutman’s seductive paintings of Arab women. In the secrecy of seduction, unfulfilled romantic yearnings were laid to rest alongside power. Rejection, suspicious and alienated, had wormed itself deep inside, into the ver y potential of murder. Murders in fact occurred frequently within the deepest and darkest recesses of the orchard, similar to what had happened to Brenner himself a few days after he wrote that ar ticle. I’m meandering down a narrow road that leads to Beit Lyd’s Camp 21. It’s a road with orange groves running along both sides of it, which delineate what remains of the sea of green orchards that used to stretch here from horizon to horizon. In November 1967, we used to run on this road ever y morning. From “the jerk’s roundabout,”1 to the junction, and then back. Completely exhausted, spilling out onto a new day in our army fatigues (they still wore fatigues back then), Hup! Hup! Hup! First thing in the morning, as we stood to frozen attention on the parade ground, the lads from Gdud 202 2 would appear at the side of the square, passing us as they ran to the junction and back. Hup! Hup! Hup! The euphoria in the air, the sound made by Sherman tanks of the armored corps command regiment with their engines turning over, mingled with strains from the music of the Nahal troupe 3 which suddenly burst out of some tank-repair shed: “I had a youth, I had a lovesick boy”… Had any of us new recruits been able to shake off the sensation of being overwhelmed, he might have been able to smell the dr yness of the eucalyptus trees whose trunks had been painted white and were peeling away. They reared above the barracks of the old British camp that sprawled among them, overcasting them just as the deep dark recesses of the thick sea of orchards concealed the packing houses, the wells, the low buildings… Arab buildings. Hidden, fur ther away to the east as you reached Tul Karem; where Arab orchards were dotted among the Jewish ones, way beyond the railway tracks, hiding seduction and murder. The sandy ear th, light and red, was too damp to sit on, but it was warm, and it made one drowsy, padded with fallen leaves that hid the lingering kisses that the young men gave to their girls, those who did not return to their sweethear ts, in the tense days of waiting last June. 4 There was a sense of change in the air. We lived in the past but did not know that another future had already come into being, that the State of Israel and Israeli society had already set off in different directions, going to a place that would only be tangible 1 A central place in the camp where there was a pole. 2 Gdud 202 – an elite army unit. 3 Nahal – (Noar Halutzi Lohem) Fighting Pioneer Youth. A branch of the IDF training cadres for agricultural settlements. 4 Last June – a reference to the Six-Day War, June 1967.

years later, when those orchards would be ousted by prime real estate and when the Occupation would become a reality, a thorn in the flesh. And there, sometimes, at daybreak on an autumn morning, wagtails, robins and other birds whose names I wasn’t aware of, would chirp away, and I would be surrounded by friends, because even back then the paratroopers were something belonging to yester year, though they had changed without knowing it themselves, and here it comes, changing, and now it will never be like it used to be, so shor t-lived. When I reached the gate of the camp, three Thai workers were coming out of the Mehadrin Orchard Company, locking up the spruce gate of the orchard behind them, getting on their bicycles with their knapsacks, the way workers look after their daily provisions and other small necessities. They disappeared up the road. On the outskir ts of the orchard there was a small enclave of caravans and containers, where they lived. And the whole orchard was like a landscape, like a picture, like a proverb reflecting the mirror of change. It’s the kind of change that occurs when the entropy of a Capitalistic economy outweighs all considerations of society, landscape or the shaping of the human image and soul. Before all this took place, in the forward thrust of the early 1920s, huge quantities of orange groves were planted. Moshe Smilansky writes about it in Hassadeh 1 (1926), under the title “Planting an Orchard”: “On the one hand– arrogance: and amongst of all the official and non-official agronomists, who am I to talk about planting orchards? Yet, on the other hand, it’s almost childish, thirty-five years after the pamphlet of Feldman, the late orchardist, to talk about ’How to plant and look after an orchard’, once again to write about the same elementar y things? In the course of the year, from the time the plant nurser y is established until the orchard is planted, someone planning an orchard should arrange in advance for a well and prepare the ground. He should set the well in the highest place in his orchard and not tr y to save money here on extra expenses, because the money spent on these will only benefit him, and because there are other things one can save on -- the quality of hoses or the horsepower of the engine…but the fate of an orchard depends on its soil. If you happen to see a “righteous” orchardist suffering while a “wicked” orchardist goes blithely on with his life, do not rail at the laws of nature, but first go check the soil on two counts: its quality and its texture. An orchard can not sur vive if it has heavy soil, or soil that water cannot permeate. The best planting season is Fall, when the trees are greeted by our mild winter and do not encounter the ravages of a blazing summer just as their young lives are underway. The seedlings must be moved together with a clump of earth, so that the sun and wind won’t affect the roots, and won’t be detrimental to their absorption and development, and so as to ensure that the roots stay slanted and retain their natural course, sticking out and not bending. A seedling that has been planted properly with a lump of earth will continue to thrive.” The back pages of Hassadeh were decorated with adver tisements from the 1930’s: pesticides and a variety of citrus fruits, marketed in plant nurseries. And in pride of place, a picture of noble caterpillar tractors, resplendent in their chains, as well as some ploughs and scrapers, and various other strange instruments for land cultivation. There were also professional ar ticles such as “Protection against Frost in California’s Orchards“ and “The Impact of Dr y Winds on Citrus Fruits.” Inside the orchards, warehouses and packing houses would also be ‘planted’, so they could be right there, where the fruit would be sor ted while people sat cross-legged on mats, and would wrap it in fragrant pink paper. Later, we would pack the citrus in fabulous wooden crates (specially made by the carpenters) and later in the factories, just like it was until ver y recently in Gaza, we would load, the fruit first on car ts and then on to trucks, bringing it to the por t of Jaffa or to Haifa or to Tel Aviv, and from there, with the help of huge cranes, into the bowels of ships, straight from the docks of Haifa, or from small ships in Jaffa and Tel Aviv; and from there, 1 An agricultural periodical

;

from the mild and oft-dreamed of winter of the Land of Israel, all the way to a cold and snowy Europe. And we would give citrus fruits to those who were sick, so they would get well – the scent of the fruit like the perfume of incense from the golden sands. In summer, representatives of the farmers would go to sign the contracts in Europe. In the 1920s, smaller, more modest, citrus orchard businesses were established. These were the citrus growers of the Collective Settlement Movement, which also built independent networks for marketing, first at “Hamashbir,” later at “Tnuva Expor t.” Israel Traub, who represented the “Tnuva Expor t,” would accompany the farmers’ representatives ever y summer. But he wouldn’t fly first class and he wouldn’t even fly tourist class, but third class, and whatever he saved, he would give back, because it just wasn’t right for a representative of the workers to squander the hard-earned savings of struggling pioneer settlers. On several occasions, deep within an orchard, Arabs would build themselves a huge house. The house would be surrounded by a high stone wall, the trees in its garden were sweet scented, and its palms rose tall, easily sighted from a distance. These buildings, with all their bustling life – their entire existence – were completely erased in the cruel and final rounds of the blood feud. No longer were there any men, women or children, not from Zarnuga, nor from Kubeba, Yavne, or Jabaliyah. They all went to live in Gaza. As soldiers, we once chased the children or grandchildren of those men and women in the depth of an orchard in Gaza, who were and had always been our implacable blood-enemies. All of a sudden, one of them would burst for th and there would be a rapid exchange of fire, a tremor of vast excitement and a great dr yness in the throat. And he crumbled while the water kept on flowing in the open runnels. Over the loose sand one could hear the chattering of the double-piston engine from a distance. Who could deny the depth of the blood feud, against the backdrop of these orchards, which were to perish on its account? For a while there was an “enlightened occupation”, when the Arabs worked for us. Then the Thais came. Now they’re dr ying up the orchards of the Sharon and moving them to the Negev; now they’re changing to citrus which is easily peeled, which is attractive though not tasty, but excellent for marketing abroad around Christmas. This is the change, and not necessarily for the worse. But the image of the idealist farmer who did all the work himself, who exploited no one and was not exploited – this image has perhaps become nothing more than a fleeting shadow in the histor y of Zionism.

;,,

COWSHEDS He woke of his own accord, as people so often do when they’re expecting the alarm to ring, springing up, ran outside, flung on a work shir t, pants, sandals, and was off. The taste of the warm bed still lingered – his wife’s warmth, the scent of her sleep, her out flung arms, her softness. The cobwebs of her dreams enveloped his hear t but he didn’t succumb to them. He walked quickly. It was autumn. The morning star still shone, and the light of dawn had not yet paled on the horizon. In a clear sky, the stars rejoiced in a chorus, glittering in the upper firmament. Generations of cowshed workers in the tent camps, in huts, in small clumps of red-roofed housing – had all been early risers, all woken early by the night watchmen on the last watch of the night. He too had ser ved his turn as a night watchman for the last shift of the night. At school this had been drilled into them morning and night, and the experiences of that morning were etched on his hear t. A strong smell of silage and of haystacks thrust away the cobwebs of his dreams. Lights glowed in the sheds. He made a quick visit to the cowshed with the newborn calves. A cow was leaning over a calf, licking it with her rough tongue, cleaning off it the skin fibers of her placenta and blood. The scent of the tender car tilage of its tiny legs flooded him with a wave of compassion. He checked the newborn’s sex and stroked its soft balls. He went to the milking center, put on some coffee, and went out to bring in the cows. They crouched in the concrete yard, with its coating of moist, congealed fer tilizer, chewing the cud. When they crouched like this, it didn’t take long before they were aroused to heavy breathing, to groans of sheer pleasure that brought on a deep relaxation. Some spread their legs, lying on their side, where they had laid their heads as if dead, breathing heavily and then almost immediately getting into a crouching position. The gate opened with a rusty squeak. They star ted to get up heavily, breathing deeply, groaning. Now, smelling the newborn scent of the latest addition to the cowshed opposite, some of them stood there, mooing. He emitted quick, quiet words of prodding encouragement: Come along then; move it! Move it, sweethear t! Come on now… Move along…He spoke softly, with affection, calmly. While the first ones were already moving into the enclosure, the lazy ones were arching their backs into round cur ves, as if shaking off their own cobwebs of sleep. Afterwards they arched the other way, with concave backs, their heads stretched out taut in front, as again they arched themselves, before raising their tails, spreading their hind legs, and passing water in a formidable stream. He stood in wonder and was unable to move them. An involuntar y tremor passed through their bodies as they stirred, shaking off the last drops of urine, and he urged them on, prodding them with a small stick: Come on! Move it now! Come on then! They stretched, straightened out, and began drumming with their hooves, their warm breath, their nostrils exhaling a soft moisture. Ambling slowly now, their tails remained erect as their feces fell, plopping softly at first, plip, plip, like flakes, and then in great, warm clumps which hit the fer tilized concrete floor with a thud: plop, plop, plop. The other worker arrived, dragging at his cigarette with intense pleasure, his mouth exhaling circle upon circle of smoke, and clutching a cup of coffee. He brought the glass nearer to his bearded face and blew smoke and smoky breath into it. He reminded me of a picture from the album when they were small, all alone, just the two of them in a sea of small stone pebbles, with the Gilboa far off, and just the two of them in the endless open space of those far off years. He turned on the radio to Galei Zahal 1. Other sounds came from

1 Galei Zahal – the army news channel.

;,,,

far away: the drivers of the cooperative revving their diesel engines; the strains of music mingling into the rhythmical sound of the pulsers and the monotony of the milking machines. There was the cows’ scented warmth. They milked fast, the cylinders filling up, they still didn’t milk right down to the lowest level. He found himself filled with joy as the milking rhythm diffused throughout his limbs, making him star t to jump. Singing along with the radio, at first he moved his body tentatively, but afterwards he danced with a storm of sensations, “End of the orange season, me and Nitza are embraced.” The scent of the orchards rose in his nostrils. He would never dance outside the milking station, he really couldn’t dance, he found it almost impossible to be happy, but only now, at this moment, which sometimes recurred. He went out to bring in a cluster of cows. In the east, the sky had lightened. Mist hung in the west, and pictures of vague clouds rose from behind Mount Gilboa. The dawn light was gray. Sounds of work could be heard, cowshed workers came, the revving up of the engines of tractors blended into the chirping of autumn birds, with names he wasn’t aware of, though he should have been (he had never been that good at Nature Studies, he would content himself with the mosaic of landscapes). White egrets perched on the backs of cows and beneath their feet, as the warm cows stood before their troughs. They were eating the feed from the day before. The mountains turned blue and afterwards tinged to a reddening. The wheel of the sun rose from behind the hills of Gilead and the soft autumn sun star ted to gild the peaks of the mountains. He recalled father’s hands. Father, small and slightly stooped, his hands and his fingers delicate and sinewy despite their padding of calluses. The muscles of his forearms were crisscrossed with protruding veins, his entire arms sprinkled with freckles, as was his back. (Generations of cowshed workers had formed hands like his, hands which can be seen in Zionist propaganda films from the 1930s, where a cowshed worker in the Jezreel Valley milked as he sang: “Rest has come to the wear y and tranquility to the one who labors.”) When he saw Father lathering up the shaving cream and shaving, the scent of his hands was like the smell of the field, like the moisture that hung in the air. Then Father and he would go together to the cowshed, dropping in to the kibbutz dining room on the way, where Father would dip his piece of bread into the savor y olive oil. Emerging from the dining room, they would sink into the squelch of deep mud. Winter, his hand tight in Father’s hand (who he still didn’t call ‘Father’ by his real name, and that photograph, years later, which he saw at the home of other people, with Father sitting and milking by hand, his face thoughtful and sad.) One of their boots got stuck in the mud. They extricated themselves from the mud-dough and went into the shed with the calves. Gripping a pitchfork, Father brought down a pile of fodder coated with red ear th. With small thrusts of his left leg, Father spread out the hay, calling out all the time, Come on, come on, come on, he crumbled it for the calves, who fell upon it eagerly. And how Father had suddenly said, “We are nothing but a vehicle for the Divine Presence, a tiny spark under the hot ashes.” He didn’t understand what Father was saying, only sensed the enthusiasm, the turmoil, the utter, self-effacing obliviousness, the zealousness (which much later Muki Zur was to call ‘cracked’), the sensuous tastiness of the hay and the taste of the things that he didn’t comprehend. Until work found Father wor thy of it, and till the kibbutz found Father wor thy of work in the cowsheds, Father suffered untold agonies of body and soul. For two years he guarded at night, he was a “fill-in,” when he came down with furuncolosis he almost despaired, he attended a sheep-rearing course at Ein Harod, (even though there were no sheep on his kibbutz), and at long last, he was considered suitable–at a pinch–for work in the cowshed. In the pamphlet that was put out on the tenth anniversar y of the kibbutz, Father wrote: “Has the dream of integrating manual labor and intellectual pursuits really been disproved? Can it really be so impossible? Can we picture a deeply-rooted national life without any knowledge of our culture? Are we able to develop national culture without drawing upon the Jewish sources? Are we going to turn into Hebrew-speaking

;,9

(and not even all that good) Gentiles? For we know that this is a precious and rich culture, exceptional in its attempt to bend over backwards in its aspiration for justice, for honesty, and for its love of mankind and its redemption…” Ah, Father. Yes. The dream had proved false. But on that morning, the child had not yet realized it, during that milking. At that time, Father also didn’t know that on Israel’s tenth anniversar y, when he would teach a Bible class in the evenings, expounding on the Book of Joshua, the red-brick bookcase in his room would be full of scholarly German Bible commentaries, Christian tones in an awkward style; with a Picasso print hanging on the wall – a young girl hugging a dove. The dream was shor t-lived, it lasted barely more than an immigrant’s voyage on a ship from Argentina to Haifa – that dream about the Land of Israel and the kibbutz, while working on dialectical Marxism and historical materialism. It was a shor t dream, like the Bible Class, like morning clouds fading away, as in the Book of Hosea that Father used to read in the freshly sown pasture: “Therefore, it shall be as a morning cloud and as the early-rising dew, walking like stormy chaff from the barn and as smoke from the chimney.” Gazing westward, they completed the milking. There was a pleasant haziness in the air and a smell of organic waste in the fields, which had been disk-plowed and then leveled, and now the ridges faced Mount Gilboa, whose yellowish-gray shadows were grooved with black stripes of soot, where there were wisps of white clouds floating aloft, fading away to the far south. He looked up again towards the west, to the tracks, and from there to Tel Amal, to Beit Alpha and Heftziba, to Beit Hashita, to Tel Yoseph and to Ein Harod, to Geva and to Kfar Yehezkel, formerly Ein Tavoun, with its dwellings in concentric circles. You could see it in the old picture, the houses in concentric formation, like Nahalal, and from there to ridge of the watershed, separating the eastern valley from the western one. The fields were ready to be sown with the winter crops, and car ts stood at the sides of the fields of white cotton that hadn’t yet been picked and taken to the factor y.

The cow and the cowshed symbolized a society which revolved around the New Jew in the New Land. The New Jew aspired to work his land freely and independently, as a person who was neither exploited nor exploited others. The New Jew produced a generation or two, or even three, of peasant-workers who tamed work without exploiting their fellow men, and who earned their daily bread by the sweat of their brows, and with their sorrows, and their sufferings, and their joys. Those who were the first to settle in Gush Noris, and in the western valley, wished to become as knowledgeable as they could in their professions. They were modern people, men of the world, to whom thoughtful deliberations and self-reflections came easily, and they were uncompromisingly hard on themselves and their fellow men. Right from the outset, they set themselves to learn as much as they possibly could about farming. They maintained contacts and cooperated with researchers and advisors so as to improve their methods and become more efficient. One step backward and two steps forward. Researchers and veterinarians published articles that expounded upon farming and estate methods to those who had never been farm workers up to that time.

HAYSTACKS At the feeding center, just as the JCB tractor came to load the Lachish feed mixer with a blend of silage, cotton, grains and hay, a mash was being prepared for the midday meal. The hay-lofts held a variety of different kinds of fodder, organized according to type – vetch separately, the alfalfa separately, the grain separately, the small bundles separately; and the large square, bales that each weighed half a ton, also in a separate hay-loft. These hay-lofts had been the for tresses in gang fights, they had been the sites of secret tunnels, where hidden treasure had been buried – there couldn’t have been a child on the meshek1 which they had not ser ved at one time or another. Much later, it was in these haystacks that we spent the stolen hours, the incipient unfulfilled loves inside the pricking and the itching and the softness, while high up, at the rim of the hay-loft a light wind blew and your head spun as you looked down on a soft, gray winter’s day. Wagtails hopped among the cow troughs on a hazy autumn day, and the starlings had not yet come; and far westward, and southward and toward the east lay all the thirsty fields and the russet strips of land, and the grey ones; all of them disk-plowed and lying in strips, and yearning for rain. And then, after the first rains of the season, the winter grain would be sown, and then the corn grains and the vetch. (The alfalfa fodder is all year round, and har vested throughout the summer). The hay connected the cowsheds to the cultivated fields, to the Arab merchants, to the contractors of the heavy, mechanical, equipment, to the presses, to the combine tractors with their huge rakes, to the big modern reapers, manufactured by companies like Case or John Deere. The coarse fresh green fodder, processed and dried, was the mainstay, fuelling the production of the protein and the cellulose in the cow’s food. Without them, the activity of the monocellulars in the belly could not have taken place, and they would not have been able to chew the cud – so without them this entire milk production would not have been possible. It’s hard to find a cowshed worker who doesn’t enjoy sucking on a straw of clover, with its salty, sour-sweet taste, smelling like the fields on a Spring day, with a wind that presages a heat-wave blowing warm, and a huge brightness to the light, not yet hot, but dazzling to the eye and the whole wide world. He remembers the first time he saw Father loading up the bundles of vetch in Oum Djara, up right to the seventh level, with the car t hitched to the red tractors, the Farmall MD Internationals, sticking a hayfork in one of the heavy bundles that each weighed around twenty-five kilos. Suddenly noticing the effor t, the difficulty; his father’s heaviness. Suddenly seeing the valiance of his effor t not to collapse under the load, and then Father’s elation when he prevailed, overcoming the effor t. Only much later, in the wonderful opening scene of Brenner’s “Breakdown and Bereavement” which gets right into your ver y guts would he notice the existential sun beating on Yechezkel Chefez’s head while he loaded hay. It was high noon, and he felt the wind that presaged a heat-wave, and there was a great brightness to the light, and there was Pazi, who would eventually become his favorite teacher, but back then he was nothing more than a vulgar Egged bus driver, shouting at Father : “Why did you bring the kid along?” Then, he noticed that Pazi had a growth on his nose. Years later, he would compare Eliezer to Hercules, as he tossed the huge bundles of hay to the seventh level, as if they were as light as rubber balls, while Arieh Rofeisen arranged the bundles into ar tistic pyramids on the big Farmall car t, then bringing them back home from the lower slopes of Mount Gilboa. Aiming at a satisfactor y level of feed production for the cowsheds, at a reasonable price, there was always the dilemma of whether to grow hay on naturally irrigated land or to grow a blend on irrigated land. It was a question that had vexed the agricultural instructors from the early days of farming in Israel. Shlomo Zemach carried out experiments in hay-irrigation with

1 Meshek – Hebrew for farm or moshav. Also the most common term that a kibbutznik will use when talking about the kibbutz on which he lives.

;9,

Krause both at Mikveh Israel, and later, in the Emek Jezreel Region. They introduced the scrapers to scoop out irrigation channels by flooding them with small channels or wide, shallow gullies. The ar t of creating haystacks of legumes was perfected by the farmers of the Beit She’an and the Jordan valleys. Those watching through the small hours of the night would wait for the moment when the level of moisture was exactly right for bundling the hay after it had been strewn and then piled up, a day or two beforehand. They would sit through the entire night in the hut in the field, with the tractor drivers and the Arab contractors and the huge bales of compressed hay, drinking coffee after coffee, blowing smoke rings from their endless cigarettes, like hunters patiently waiting for their prey, they would await the moment that the hygrometer would indicate just the right amount, a moment usually when the sky pales in the east and the morning dew descends and the first birds ring out with pleasant chirps, and when there’s the calm necessar y for the tastiness of the hay, for its crunchiness, and for the delicacy of the cow’s palette munching from the trough. And the entire Jezreel Valley rapt, outspread before the heat’s oppressive onslaught. And suddenly the huge combine rollers would be hitched up to the John Deeres, or approaching the alfalfa fields, coming for the vetch, to compress it. Ever ything so transient, “In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” (Psalm, 90, verse 6.) Man is likened to a broken vessel, a dr y stalk, a withered blossom. He’s like a passing shadow, dispersing like clouds. Like the way the wind blows; like dust in the air. Like a fleeting dream. In the inland valleys of the Syrian-African Rift, where the histor y of our civilization is like a reflection that disperses with sunrise… that’s how ever ything passes. The haystacks, like Jewish farming itself, are inextricably linked to tilling the soil, to various types of tillers, and above all, to the

noble, low form of the caterpillar tractor, first the D2 model, and then the D4 . There surely can’t be a child on an Israeli meshek who hasn’t dozed off to the monotonous tone of the noise of a far-off tractor in the dimness of night. At summer’s end and in the beginning of autumn, an armed guard sits next to the tractor drivers, so they’ll be able to cultivate the land in deep-ploughed furrows before the coming rain. There isn’t a child on a meshek who hasn’t run to the tractor driver in the fields near home (for there are also distant fields), pleading to be lifted up, put on the tractor, allowed to move the gears of the caterpillars. A deep furrow is the emblem of the Zionist Revolution, a metaphor for its transience. The tractor-driving farmer heads the pyramid of the professions on the Israeli farm; many people would once have given anything to have his deeply sunburned face and his calloused hands. Not ever yone had the good for tune to be allowed to work on a tractor. Because the tractor itself was an ideal and the expression of a noble dream, in its form, in its power, in the way it ambled slowly along, pulling drill behind it, and the wagon of seeds in sacks, when the western horizon darkens with heavy clouds por tending rain. The kibbutz and the moshav may be places of relative pover ty and of social challenges for many years to come, but paradoxically its petit bourgeois normality, so secular permeated them vir tually from the outset. Perhaps it could not have been otherwise. The culture of the New Jew, of the Jewish working man, the Jewish laborer, barely got underway before it was over. The Jewish workers stream in Israeli society came to an end so quickly because the overwhelming majority of people in this countr y did not really aspire to that goal. Working men lost their vital centrality, and work ceased to grip the hear ts of many kibbutznikim and moshav members. This was also due to changes that took place in the meshek, changes which no longer provided fair wages in return for work and more work.

A PAINFULLY HARD EMPTINESS Last summer, after Michael painted orchards, cowsheds and haystacks, we set off together to meet people in the small farming settlements, and kibbutzim. We had come to see the Jezreel Valley, to see what was left, and what was new, what had changed and what was being renewed, and what anticipation and the new future held in store. Because the essential thing for us, for most of us really, is to be able to find some continuation, some sense of the ongoing existence of true rural landscape and of human communities. Even if the spiritual landscape of those times had ceased to exist – surely something else, even if different, would remain of the Israeli texture of what we had known. We sat in the middle of the Jezreel Valley. A quar tette of F16 planes, returning from a routine exercise, or perhaps some mission in Lebanon, had just landed on the runway at Ramat David. Before us, this huge hump of buildings and then the mosaics of fields outspread in the valley. As if all the foundations of Israeli might, farmer and fighter, all together, were caught up in a kind of drowsy harmony, comfor table and perhaps illusor y, thirsty. An intense, hazy sun hung in the sky, illuminating ever ything with its bright strong light. At the uppermost ridge of the Carmel mountain range there was a thin mass of clouds floating in a blue-grey haze, aimless as a flock of sheep that had strayed, and was then swept away and blurred into the huge light, which absorbed them and ever ything into it. This huge sky had descended into the valley, strangling it with the viscosity of the humid, dead-end heat. We sat down to cool off at old Beit Shearim, in the shade of an oak tree, at the foot of Alexander Zeid’s horse, the whole valley spread out. There was a tangible sense of relief: since there was “a before,” there would surely be “an after” – it was impossible for ever ything to vanish. And at Ramat Yochanan they met Ezra, with his hands thickened by for ty years of toil in the cowsheds. He was the hear t of conviviality, and had the biography of someone who had given himself unsparingly to others, and to new settlements, and to miluim 7, and more miluim; in fact, a great deal of miluim – joyfully volunteering for more than his annual stint of a month’s army reser ves duty. And when they went there, people like Ezra would bring the best of the kibbutz along with them, or the best of the moshav, or the Jewish settlements at their best, because places like the army replicated the sor t of hierarchy that the kibbutz was based upon. And those who ser ved as commanders in the army – the people from the settlements, or the city residents who had the same cultural values – brought it along with them, and brought along their public-spiritedness, their personal example, and their core belief that one gave oneself unstintingly for the common good. And there was a sor t of an Israeli assurance, a native, Sabra, Israeli assurance, that this was the right thing to do, and that one should do it without asking too many questions. That whatever you were supposed to do, whatever missions you were given by the democratic leadership, (until the first Lebanese war, the leadership consisted of “our kind of people”), you should carr y them out swiftly and unquestioningly. Because people led by personal example, and through action, and acted from intentions that were pure, because, in spite of ever ything, the countr y’s leadership embodied, within understandable restrictions, the essence of what was right, and moral, and was founded upon the complexity of a reality in which a small nation had to defend itself against its enemies. The dialectic contradictions of kibbutz life have been ver y painful. They have been ver y real, and completely indivisible from real life, or the values of a society made up of people who fight for their nation and do militar y ser vice. Mostly, people were happy to do their army reser ves duty, not only because it was in agreement with their mindscape and their self-image, but it went with

7 Miluim – army reser ves duty.

;;

what applied to their practical careers. It was a society where being an officer in the army was valued, where it was considered right and proper to want to be promoted and to get ahead, to ser ve in an elite combat unit or to command a squadron of tanks, or ser ve as a pilot during reser ves duty, in the same way as it was proper to progress through various posts on the kibbutz – on the meshek – and to attain the position of a division coordinator or become the meshek secretar y, or teach agricultural economy in Rehovot, or at the Ruppin Academy, and then later go on to manage regional plants, or take on a post within the Kibbutz Movement and to ser ve within its economic division. And all this was no more than an idyllic foreshadowing of what the first generation managed to hand on to their sons, and the way that the life of the second generation was too often blocked by silences, by the fathers being away from home so often on obscure, secret missions. At times it was because they were caught up in a life of posturing or hypocrisy. Not that there weren’t also dead-ends between the generation that had rebelled against its own fathers, though more than anything that first generation wanted to see their own sons follow in their footsteps, doing exactly what they had done, without the slightest deviation from their own path. But they only managed it convey a shadow of their glorious existance. And the Sabra children, the efficient ones who took upon themselves all the tenets of the kibbutz collective, and took onboard the great idylls that went with it, would frequently play down the ver y real, operational capabilities of the pioneers. These Sabra sons sought fulfillment through their own active, masculine lives; they never dared to expose the hidden landscapes of their soul, not even to open a skylight on feelings that could not be put into words, but only referred to by raising an eyebrow or blushing.

Just as, in the midst of radio contact in the field, when someone who’s loved (and suddenly realizes that he’s loved) is suddenly cut off straight after a salvo of shells has fallen on the same trench, that ver y trench where he had been in his Jeep just minutes ago. Yehuda Geller had been a commander of tank brigade no. 410. He led the fearless attack on “Misuri” 8 , where we lost all the remnants of our brigade on the 21st of October, 1973. He had been par t of the first thrust, rushing forward to do his duty, in the way that his generation would always rush to carr y out their obligations wholehear tedly, without unnecessar y questions. And when Yaron, the operations officer, had the chutzpah to ask Yehuda for something to do with one of the tanks, Yehuda said: “Don’t bother me right now by asking me annoying questions about Tank G-10; I need to run the battle.” But now Yehuda himself askes questions, and plenty. Difficult ones, disturbing questions: Will Kibbutz Givat Haim remain a collective settlement in the next few years? And what about Kibbutz Hamadia? Over the past ten years many scores of members among its best and brightest have

8 Misuri – code name for the famous attack on the “Chinese Farm” in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War, 1973.

;;,

left the kibbutz – those with the resources to get along outside of it, to do well without it, those that the collective invested in heavily, providing them with an education and training. Yet the members who had left, had themselves invested in the collective, giving of themselves day and night, body and soul, but eventually despairing of being able to make a real change, of breaking through the invisible barriers. That’s why no missions are carried out today without kibbutzniks asking heretical questions, and without involving considerable pain. Nothing can be taken for granted. Yet, as in the militar y sphere, there are also demarcation lines, in fact rather extensive demarcation lines. And it’s impor tant to have Givat Haim and Hamadia. It’s impor tant that they go on; simply exist. Even in a different form, even as community settlements. Because the future should become whatever people want it to be. So the way you do things has to be fitted to how people are, and you have to get the right management and the right political lobby and the right economic platform, and it has all got to be geared to their needs so they’ll sur vive. And then you have to hope that something will be preser ved of this native, rural life. Perhaps, as with the ebbs and flows of great historical movements, an old concept would be revived again, returning in a different guise, and people would once again aspire toward a Utopia where ever yone would be treated fairly, where the weak would be taken care of, at least to some extent, and where the gaps between people’s salaries would be narrowed. However, in today’s kibbutz, some members can charge ridiculous salaries for a simple day’s work, which fools from another kibbutz will pay them for having shared their exper tise, and having provided them with ‘consultation ser vices’. And these ridiculous sums will be paid into the members’ private bank accounts and not into the communal kitty – as they should be. Yet why shouldn’t there be a socialist idyll within society as a whole – an unashamedly socialist idyll that was based upon the principles at the hear t of Jewish culture, right there in the Torah, in the books of prophecy, in the writings of our ancient Sages of Blessed Memor y – but also based on one hundred years of revolutionar y Zionist culture. In Israeli society today, bourgeois capitalism has triumphed over ever ything and set in motion a process of disintegration and fragmentation, constantly widening the chasm between salaries and worsening pover ty. It has melted down societal and national unity, on the one hand replacing them with a patriotic state of mind, and on the other, a ‘yuppy’ sor t of indifference and ener vation. The culture of the collective has been abandoned to the Or thodox, whose life experience in ongoing occupation has seeped into its consciousness and infused them with a lofty sense of untrammeled power. This feeling is unfounded in a society in which social solidarity is crumbling and there’s no Left wing with a socialist, humanistic culture of its own. All that’s left are the memorial ser vices at the foot of Tel Shifon. 9 The memorial ser vices in themselves represent a kind of last struggle for the way this heroism is perceived, which is the clearest essence of that generation. Aging dries out the bitter tears, yet the wounds will not heal. There is only a kind of painfully hard emptiness which lingers on, and for whose sake one is ready to give one’s soul.

9 Tel Shifon – battle of the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War.

;;,,

;;,,,

SAFE HAVEN

ĵıįİĩĶ Ļĭį

Beit Yanai is a small settlement that spreads itself over a cliff of dunes. The marvelous shore of the Mediterranean sea stretches at its feet.

ĨĴļĸĬ ĭļĭį ĺŀłŁĶ ĭıĴĪŀĴĭ ŀĳŀĭĳ Ŀĭľ Ĵĺ ķĳĭŁĬ ķİĿ ĩĭŁıı ĨĭĬ ıĨĸı łıĩ

In the history of Zionism, this coastline is mainly remembered for the battle over the smuggled ammunition ship, the “Altalena.” It’s a wound that still bleeds in the collective, national memory. To the west of Beit Yanai there is the well-established settlement of Kfar Vitkin. Between them runs the coastal road (in our childhood, this road had not yet been built.) Between the two settlements there was a concealed grove of eucalyptus trees which had served the British army before the establishment of the State. I remembered it as a place where we came each year in August, spending the time in a summer camp for the kibbutz children. There we were supposed to eat “special” healthy food (French fries & chicken & ice pops), and enjoy our spor ty activities in the healthy sea air.

łĭľıļĿĩ ĭĸıŀįłĬ ĭĸłĭīĴıĩ 1ķŁı įĮĶ ĭĮĳŀĶĩĭ /ĵıĬ ĴĨ ĲļŁĸĬ ŀīĸĹĳĴĨ

I had a childhood friend whose name was Amos (years later he would be killed in a plane crash in Africa). Amos was a favorite of the older girls. Because of him, I was also able to mingle with them, partaking of activities in their company that had the delicious taste of illicit water.

ĬııłŁ 1ĵıĩĭĸĪ ĵıĶ ĵĺİ ķĶĺİŁ łĭĴĭĺļĩ ĻłłŁĬĴĭ ķłŀĩįĩ ĻļĭłĹĬĴ

We would drink (beer and other hard liquors), we smoked cigarettes; we had slow dances. The main thing I recall was the skinny dipping in the sea at night. Boys and girls and their nakedness, and the scent of the sea and the sight of the white waves and the light of a dim moon, all these were etched into the soul of a child where an adolescent creature was already sprouting.

/Ĭŀīį ĴŁ įĭĳĬ łĸįł łĭĩĭŀĨ łĨ łĭĨŀĴ ŀŁļĨ ķĭļľĶ 1ķĭĳıłĬ ĵıĬ ĴŁ Ĵįĸ ĭİĨĴ ĭĴ ĵŀĭĮ ĻĭįĬ ĴŁ ıĸĭļľĬ ĭīľĩ 1Ĭıĸłĸ ĴŁ ķĭĴĶĬ ıłĩ łĨ ĵĭŀīĶĭ 1łĭıŀıŀĩŁĬ ĭıĴĪŀ ĴĨ ĵıľļĸłĶĬ ĵıĴĪĬ ĴĨ ĭĸĶĶ łĭĸĳĭĹĶ ĿŁĸĬ łııĸĭĨ Ĵĺ ĩŀĿĬ łĭĳĮĩ ŀĿıĺĩ ĬĮĬ ĻĭįĬ ŀĭĳĮ łĭĸĭıľĬ łĭīĴĭłĩ 1ıĶĭĨĴĬ ıĩıİĿĴĭĿĬ ķĭŀĳıĮĩ ĵĶīĶ ķııīĺ ĬĮ ĺľļ 1%ĬĸĴİĴĨ% įŀĩĭĶĬ Łıĩĳ ŀĩĭĺ ĵĬıĸıĩ 1ķıĿłıĭ ŀļĳ ĿıłĭĭĬ ĩĭŁııĬ ķĳĭŁ ıĨĸı łıĩĴ ĩŀĺĶĶ łŁŀĭį ĬĴ ĬĸĭļĹ ĵıĩĭŁııĬ ıĸŁ ķıĩ 1ĵııĿ ĬıĬ ĨĴ ķııīĺ ĭĸłĭīĴıĩŁ /ĻĭįĬ ĬŀĭĳĮ ĨıĬ ıĴ 1ĬĸıīĶĬ ĵĭĿ ıĸļĴ ıİıŀĩĬ ĨĩľĬ łĨ ĬŁĶıŁŁ ĵıĹĭİļıĴĿĨ ĵŁ 1ĽĭĩıĿĬ ıīĴı ĴŁ ĽıĿĬ łĸİııĿĩ İĹĭĪĭĨĩ ĬĸŁ Ĵĳ ĭĩ ĭĸıĴıĩŁ ĵĭĿĶĳ łĭĸĬĴĭ /+ĵıĿıİŀĨ.Ļĭĺ.Ĺļı*ľ, Ĩıŀĩĭ %īįĭıĶ% ĴĳĭĨ ĴĭĳĨĴ ĵıŀĭĶĨ ĭĸııĬ 1ĵıĬ ĴŁ ĨıŀĩĬ ĭŀıĭĭĨĶĭ łıĩıİŀĭļĹ łĭĴıĺļĶ 1+ĬĿıŀļĨĩ ĹĭİĶ łĸĭĨłĩ ĬļĹĸ ĵıĶıĴ, ĹĭĶĺ ĭĶŁĭ łĭīĴı ŀĩį ıĴ ĬıĬ ıĸĨ ĵĪ ıłıŁŀĭĬ ĭłĭĳĮĩ 1ŀłĭı łĭĴĭīĪĬ łĭŀĺĸĬ ĴŁ ķĩıĩį ĬıĬ ĹĭĶĺ ŀĿıĺĩĭ 1ĵııĸĭĴĹ ĵıīĭĿıŀ /łĭıŀĪıĹ ķĭŁıĺ /+ĵıŀįĨ ĵıļıŀį łĭĨĿŁĶĭ Ĭŀıĩ, ĵıĬ łĭįıŀ ĵĺ /ĵĶĭŀıĺĭ łĭŀĺĸĭ ĵıŀĺĸ 1ĵıĩ łĭıĴıĴĬ łĭľįŀĬ ıĴ ĵıŀĭĳĮ /īĴıĬ Łļĸĩ ĭĿĿįĸ ĬĴĨ Ĵĳ /ŁĭĴĿ įŀı ĴŁ ĭŀĭĨĭ ĵıĸĩĴĬ ĵıĴĪĬ ĬĨŀĶĭ 1Ĭĩ İĭĩĸĴ ĴıįłĬ ŀĩĳ ıŀĺĸĬ ŀĭľıĬŁ İĹĭĪĭĨĩ ĬĸŁ Ĵĳ ĵıīŀĭı ĭĸııĬ /ĵıĸĩĬ ıĸŁ ĭĸĴ ĭīĴĭĸĭ ıłĨŁıĸŁĳ /ĵıĶıĴ ĵĭĿĶ ıĴ ŁĶŁĶ ĵĭıĬ īĺ 1ĬĮ ĨĴļĭĶ Ļĭįĩ ĵıĶı ĬĶĳ ĵıĴĩĶĭ ĵıĴŁĭŀıĶ łĭīĴı ĴŁ łĭĸĭŀĳıĮ ĵĺ ĭĩ łĩŀĭĺĶ ıļĭıĭ ĵĭĴį łıĭĭįŁ ĵıįİĩĶ Ļĭįĳ ĬĮ 1łŀįĭĨĶ łĭŀĪĩĭ

Later, when I married and we had our two boys, each year in August we would travel down from Jerusalem and spend a few days at this wonderful beach. Up to this day, it is a place that has become a safe haven for me, where the experience of dream and beauty mingle with childhood memories and later adulthood. Michael Kovner

;;,9

ŀĸĩĭĿ ĴĨĳıĶ

x170 x 130 ,1995 ,ıįĨ Achi (My Brother), 1995, 170 x 130

Limestone Dunes, 70 x 100 /ŀĳŀĭĳ łĭĸĭıī

x, 50 x 30 ,ĵıŁĭŀĩ ıĸŁ Cypress Trees, 50 x 30

~J J J ~JV J JV J JX J J J J J J J ~ J J J JV J J ~J J J J J J J E J J E JX J J J JV ~ J J J J ~ J J J J J ~ J J J JX ~E ~J J J J J J JX J J J ~J J J J J J JX J J J JX J J Q J J ~ J J ~JX E JX JX ~ J J ~ JX JV J J JX ~ J J J J J J JV E J J J J J J ~ J E J J ~ JV E J JV J J J J J i J J Q J J ~J J JV J JV J JV ~ E J J J J JX J J~ J J J JX J J J JX ~E J J JX J JtJ J J J J JtJ J JV JV ~ JV ~ J E J JV J ~ JV J J JV ~ J JV J J ~ JV J Jt J J J J J J J JX J J J ~ J J ~ J ~ JX JV JV J JX J JV i J J ~J J J JtJ E J JV J J ~ J J J JV J J J JV J JV J J E JV J J J J ~ J J J~ J ~ Ji J J J J J J J ~ J JV J J ~ JX J J J i J J J J J JV E J J J JX ~ J J J J J ~ J Je J JV J JV ~J J J JtJ JX J J J J J J JV J JV J~ J J J J JX J J J J J JV J JV J J JV E J J J J J ~ J J JV J E J J J J JX J J J J J J JV ~ J J JV Jd XXX E J J J J JtJ J J J J ~ R[c^cJ S

.1930- ĩ ĬľŀĨ ĬĴĺ 1ŁŀĭįĬ ķıĺ ĽĭĩıĿ ĴŁ īĹııĶĬ ķıĺŀĪĬĶ ĬıĬ łŀĭļ ĭĬıĴĨ

Hangar in Kfar Vitkin, 50 x 100 ,ķıĿłıĭ ŀļĳĩ ŀĪĸĨĬ

White Hangar, 50 x 70 /ķĩĴ ŀĪĸĨĬ

x30 x 50 ,Łĭŀĩ Ľĺĭ ķĩłĶ Barn and Cypress, 30 x 50

x, 120 x 140 ,ĩĭĬľ Yellow, 120 x 140

ĵīĭĿ īĭĶĺĩ

x, 80 x 120 ,ĵııį łĺĩĪĩ ķĩłĶ Previous page Barn, Givat Haim, 80 x 120

x50 x 60 ,łĭŀļĭ ĵıĶŁ ,ķĩłĶ Barn, Sky and Cows, 50 x 60

x 80 x 100 ,ĩĭĬĮ ķĩłĶ Golden Barn, 80 x 100

x100 x 140 ,Ĵĭįĳ īĭĶĺĭ ķĩłĶ Barn with Blue Pole, 100 x 140

x130 x 150 ,ŀĭįŁ Ĵĭłįĭ ķĩłĶ Barn and Black Cat, 130 x 150

x50 x 60 ,łĭŀļĭ ŀıľį łĭĶŀĺ Haystacks and Cows, 50 x 60

~J J J JV J JV J JX J J J J JV JV JV J JX J~ J J J JV J JV J JV J J J J JX J J ~ JV J J JV i J JV J J JV J J JV J J ~ J~ J J JX J J J J~ J J ~ JV J JV J J J J JX J J J J ~JX J J~ J ~JtJ E JV J J J Jt J E JV J JV J J ~ J

JX ~J~ J J JX J J ~J J J J JX ~J J J J ~J J J J J ~J J J J ~ JX J J JX J Jt J JX J E J J JX J J J JV J JV J J J J JV J JV JV~ J JV J J JV ~E ~ J ~ JX JV ~ XXX J J J JV JV J J ~J R[c^\J ~S

x, 70 x 90 ,ĬĶĭīĨ łļŀ Cow Shed in Red, 70 x 90