Trifter

Israel provided the world’s travelers and youth with experiences and memoirs for a lifetime and although most people have moved on now from Kibbutzim they are still known worldwide as the institution that enabled their people to work together and rebuild their inheritance. From the ruined malarial swamplands to the fertile land it is today, Israel fulfills the Scripture which says that her fruit will fill the earth. (Psalm 128:2) The communal nature of the lifestyles on a kibbutz provided a background and support for work to continue while at the same time guarding against attacks from their enemies. This very notion of rebuilding with one hand while defending with the other brings back memories of the rebuilding of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s time. (Nehemiah 4:16, 17).

Now the founding fathers of the modern Israeli State were smart if anything. They said, ‘Hey let’s get young people from all over the world to come to Israel and do our work for us.’ Isaiah 2:2-3) And so the Kibbutz volunteer program started. It caught on very well and soon it was almost a right-of-passage for young Europeans and any would-be backpacker touring Europe to spend the customary three months working and socializing with fellow travelers in Israel. The author of this article was much slower on the uptake than most. Oh I had heard of Kibbutzim and the lifestyle, but I had no idea that they actually took workers from other countries, and introduced them to, pretty much whatever they desired. I was walking along Queen St Brisbane, Australia, on a typical day, nothing to do, nowhere to go, when I started browsing in a blue-jeans store. Of course no sooner had I grabbed a pair of Jeans and held them in front of me than a trendy young incredibly beautiful salesgirl sashays up to me.

“It suits you.” This curly black-haired vision of Mediterranean beauty says. Now I am not so naïve as to think that she was talking to me, because I knew she was talking to the dollars she would get paid for a sale. But despite that we got to talking probably because I imagined she was Italian but the accent was wrong for an Italian, she sounded French, but maybe Southern French. I was only a few thousand miles off, she was Israeli, which I found intriguing so we chatted about Israel and she was impressed that I knew the scriptures of the Torah so well and she therefore assumed that I was Jewish, as you do. Anyway, we get to talking about Kibbutzim etcetera, and she starts talking about how Israel became a nation and refugees and wars and Zionism and I am totally lost. I didn’t know what she was talking about, I thought that God founded Israel about 3,500 years ago and it was still there, wrong! Joanne, her name, tells me to buy a copy of The Exodus by Leon Uris as this will get me up to speed. Well I have never read a book so fast and loved it. I devoured Uris’s Historical Fiction account of how Israel was re-born after 2,000 years in the wilderness. I was now educated as to Kibbutzim and their purpose and I happily discussed this knowledge with said Israeli girl who still thought I was Jewish, although I didn’t know that she thought I was, I just assumed that she liked bookish nerds. Well I wasn’t really a nerd but I wasn’t really a Jock either, I was sort of in between, and I liked the Historical Fiction genre. One day she raised the idea of ‘Aliya’ and if I loved the Kibbutzim so much I could get Israeli sponsorship to go work on one and they’d teach me Hebrew to boot. She told me to phone the Israeli Embassy in Sydney and set it up and it would work out fine and I was full of enthusiasm.

On speaking to the Israeli representative for Absorption, the ‘Aliya’ guy, I found out that the ‘Ulpanim’ program was for returning JEWS and not for just anyone who wanted a change of scenery. So that’s why the word ‘Aliya’ was used by Uris in Exodus. To make things worse the Embassy told me that I was too old at 26 because the age limit was 26 and before I arrived in Israel I would be too old so he basically said to thanks but no thanks. I went and told Joanne what I had found out and she said, “What, you’re not Jewish? “I thought you were a Jew, you look like a Jew, you quote the Torah like a Jew, why aren’t you a Jew?” From that point on what was a budding relationship cooled down and we decided to just be ‘say g’day’ friends and leave it at that. I went back to cab driving and my activities in the Church.

Then one fateful night driving cabs I picked up a 30 something guy at the Airport and I asked him where he’s just arrived from. He had just flown back from Sydney but before that he had come from Israel. So I ask the obvious question that if he was Jewish and he said no, but he had just arrived back from working on a Kibbutz in Southern Israel. I was a bit miffed here and I told him that I was told by the Embassy that I was too old to go but my passenger was on the wrong side of thirty, and how did he get accepted. He laughed loudly and said, “Mate, you have to think like an Israeli, they respect you if you do it like them.”

“Yeah, ok, so how can I get to a Kibbutz if the Embassy says I’m too old?”

“Mate, just turn up like I did, tell ‘em here I am, you want me or not? They’ll take you.”

The Kibbutz office in Tel Aviv was just around the corner from Enzo St, and I took this to be a good sign, so I just marched on in to the office. I said to the girl that I had come looking for work on a kibbutz and she told me to wait in the waiting room outside the manager’s office. There were about 10 Swedish backpackers in the waiting room, all decked out with their shorts and tank tops and blonde hair, all dutifully waiting like they’d been told. So I said to them, “What are you all waiting for?”

“We ar weiting to into kibbootz.”

“Well is someone in the manager’s office now?”

“No, he say to wait, he call for us.” Hmn I thought, I am eleventh in line if I wait, there’s no way I will get work today at this rate. I told the Swedes that he could only throw me out, and I was already last in line, so I just clutched my shoulder bag and marched right on in to the manager’s office. He looked up at me and smiled, “Yes what can I do for you?”

“I want to work on a Kibbutz mate.”

“Passport please.” And he picked up the phone a called a number, and he spoke some machine-gun Hebrew for about five minutes, then he turns from the phone, “I have a place for you on Kibbutz Nirim in Negev Desert, you want?”

“I want” so he rattled off a bit more into the phone, reading from my passport, made me sign a 1 month contract and gave me the address of the Tachanah Mercazit (central bus station) and I left that afternoon for Kibbutz Nirim, about 3 miles east of the Gaza Strip.