My first time in a Kibbutz...

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My first time in a Kibbutz, Israel...January 1981.

Sometime while I was beginning to plan my very first backpacking adventure I heard from a friend who had Jewish friends in Mexico about the Kibbutz, I'd never heard of that before, and probably you hadn't either until now... So let me tell you a little bit about it...

A Kibbutz is a collective community which is primarily based on agriculture. There are many Kibbutzim (plural for Kibbutz) in Israel, there are about 250 still active today...although things are changing to some degree for what I've heard...

These mini communal villages work their land and many of them have cows, chickens and artificial fishponds for commercial fishing and some run some type of industry as well, it is quite impressive what they do there in reality.
These Kibbutzim are run by the members of each Kibbutz, who organize manage and share the workload for the benefit of their community. It is a good example of what a socialist society model should look like...we could say.

All live in modest housing and don't lack anything you'd want to live a relatively good life in any modern society. (in my opinion)

It is nearly a utopia, where all work, including the elderly while they still can, and the young ones go to school or daycare, where the local ladies look after the kids while their parents are out there working...
There's practically no need for money while you are there as everything is provided for you and your family, clothing, housing, entertainment, and of course plenty of food.

All get up early to start working, according to their own working rosters and meet for meals in the huge communal dinning room at specific times, where there's usually a self service buffet, you can eat all you want and there's usually great freshly cooked food for all. They cook in large quantities but they cook for their own families so they care about what they cook and eat. Mostly fresh produce from their own kibbutz or the kibbutzim nearby. 

On top of that most houses have small kitchenettes in case you want to have something extra after hours...
and on Friday night, everyone cleans up and dresses up for Shabbat Dinner!
They set the tables with nice cutlery and white table cloths and you get served a special meal at your table, with wine (not great and too sweet but...) and with some special bread called Challah Bread...so delicious! 

​All families including their kids come to dinner well dressed and they say a little prayer and light up the Shabbat Candles before dinner is served... Shabbat starts at sunset on Friday and ends on Saturday at sunset and nobody works, except when live stock needs minding, like milking the cows, that never stops...

The working week would then start on Sunday morning...that was a bit strange at the beginning but you get used to it after a while...
Well, I guess you have now a basic idea about what a Kibbutz is... but there's much more to it.

To me it all sounded 'hard to believe' when I heard about it for the first time, I just couldn't believe such places existed nowadays...so, I was extremely curious to learn more about them...

Then I was told they accepted volunteers from all over the world to go and work there and live a "Kibbutz experience" and learn some new skills in exchange for food and accommodation, you just had to be healthy and fit enough to do some physical work and be between 18-30 years of age and had some basic English, as they would talk to you in English...

Hey, that's me! I said, I've got to check it out....
So, that was actually the main reason why I wanted to go to Israel in the first place....

After arriving in Tel-Aviv and spending that 'New Year's Eve' at the Youth Hostel, watching the BLUES BROTHERS movie, I went down to the Kibbutz Organization Office, where you can apply to volunteer in a Kibbutz...

I think I paid a small fee, just a few dollars and had a quick medical test...I passed!
I filled out a form and they said right away...
"OK, we have a place for you, how long would you like to stay? It is a minimum of 1 month" and I said...
Yup, one month's good for me... (I actually ended up staying for 3 months!)
Then I asked, when can I go? thinking I may have to wait a week or two...
"Now!" The man said with a big smile on his face, "they are eagerly waiting for you!"
Cool stuff!

They gave me directions on how to get there by bus from Tel-Aviv. 
It was a 2 hour or so ride by bus all the way to a small town called Beit-Shean, at the North of Israel close to the Jordan River Valley and 15 minutes from the Sea of Galilee. 
"Once you get to that town, ask around, there are some some buses that go from there to your Kibbutz or you can walk it from there or hitchhike, it's only about 2 kilometres from there"... they said...
Excellent! 

I went back to the Youth Hostel, picked up my stuff which I'd left there and went straight to the bus terminal in Tel-Aviv...there were hundreds of "Egged Buses" (the largest transportation company in Israel) and there were hundreds of young soldiers there too, going somewhere...by bus!? I wondered why...

It was a bit hard to find the right bus but I found it and got on my way to my kibbutz...NEVE-EITAN... 

It was an interesting ride as I was travelling inland within Israel, passing through some great sights, some new developments and also some interesting looking old towns...and I was blown away by how green it all was!
It was meant to be pretty dry arid land, basically as it hardly rains there, but they had developed the land and turned it into fertile fields through irrigation...I was witnessing something special...a transformed dessert into productive fields!

The bus was a Mercedes Benz, quite modern, and super clean...and I happened to be seated next to a young soldier who was carrying his gun, a rifle...without the bullet clip...I was a bit nervous at first, why is this guy and other soldiers travelling by bus?

So I asked, what's the story?
He said, "I'm going home for the weekend and so are the others, we get some time off during our 3 years of military service"...and why take the gun with you? and he said, "We are given our own gun when we start and we are responsible for it and cannot lose it, if we do we may go to jail"...

Yup, they do take their national defense quite seriously, specially as a country that has been in some heavy  conflicts since 1948...
The boys get to do 3 years of compulsory military service and the girls 2 years...
To them, it is all normal, to me a bit too much and I was just trying to digest that ...

After a long ride to Beit-Shean, I started making my way on foot down to my Kibbutz but decided to hitch a ride on the back of a Ute (a mini pick up truck)...it turned out to be a member of my kibbutz, lucky me!

On arrival I went in looking for the volunteers' leader to get me set up...and found her in the kitchen, her name was Dudda... an interesting lady in her 30s with extremely curly red hair... and she said.
"Shalom Hector, welcome to Neve-Eitan I was waiting for you, where are you from?" I said Mexico...
"Oh, Mexikani... (Mexican in Hebrew) we've never had anyone from Mexico here before, so glad to have you here, let me show you to your house and room", we walked through the beautifully landscaped gardens, no one was around, they were all out there working somewhere, we went past several houses then she walked me to a house towards the end of a path and she said...
"Here we are, welcome to your home... This is your room, you can take one of the beds and here's the shower and the toilet is at the other end"... there were 2 beds, my room-mate was yet to arrive...

"You can unpack and get yourself set up and then come back to the dinning room to have a chat and we'll get you set up for work and all that, good?"
Yup, no problem...

There were some folded clean sheets on top of my bed, which I made right away, not sure why, but maybe that would sort of make it official that that was my bed...the other bed was empty...
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I unpacked and put my clothes in a small wardrobe and took a look around the room, there was a small window at the back of it, with some thin curtains covering it and shutters outside to completely block the sun if you wanted...it was clean and spacious...

I sat on a chair we had in the room took a deep breath and I said to myself...
Welcome to 'My First Home Away From Home'...and headed back to the dinning room...

Shalom Dudda! Where to from here?
​More on this on coming posts...