Kibbutz Life and Yom Kippur

Though I'm beginning to lose a track a little, I believe we are now at the end of our third week on kibbutz. Or in terms of our studies, we've just concluded People in Exile week (the Jewish People... obviously). But the history of the Jewish People aside, I have some commentary on kibbutz life after spending some time here.

For a little background, we're living on Kibbutz Ein Dor in northeastern Israel. There are 58 North Americans (I would say simply Americans if not for the 10 or so Canadians), 15 Brits (mainly from Manchester - pronounced MON-chest-tah by the locals - and one from London), and 6 Dutchies (that's Holland). As I mentioned previously, the North Americans are split into three groups; two of the groups are living in one large house and the third group is living in a separate smaller house. All of the European kids comprise a fourth group which lives in a third, separate house. All the houses also contain classrooms and are situated around a courtyard which makes up the guest center of the kibbutz.

First off, this place is overrun by stray cats. I don't think this is an issue specific to our kibbutz - I've been told that cats are the squirrels of Israel - but nevertheless, we especially have begun to feel the effects here. For example, one of the North American houses has adopted Maxi, a tabby which has become a little too dependent on its adoptive owners. To be fair to the cat, it's owners named it and they also occasionally feed it, resulting in the cat wandering into the house at intervals and cuddling with its occupants. But it's okay because Leya, who has a borderline inappropriate obsession with cats, says it doesn't have rabies. The Europeans have also adopted a tabby kitten and affectionately named it Puss-in-Boots (it's way funnier when the Brits say it). They even made it a little cardboard-box home and set it on their front porch to assure that it will never leave. Thank goodness.

The kibbutz is also home to a man we call Minyan Man (no one knows his real name), a proselytizing Jew who comes around on most Saturday mornings and on the recent high holidays to recruit people to participate in his religious services. With a long white beard and the traditional tzitzit, Minyan Man definitely looks the part, and on Rosh Hashanah he stood outside of our house aggressively blowing his shofar. Luckily for me, he's only interested in recruiting men to make up his minyans.

Another kibbutznik (someone who lives on the kibbutz) you should be familiar with is Chava, the director of the kibbutz guest center. She serves as the liaison between the program and the kibbutz. While I really haven't spoken to her at all, she seems friendly enough, though she sometimes shows up at our house for no apparent reason. She just rides her little scooter onto our front porch (I'll discuss the variety of modes of transportation around the kibbutz in a minute), surveys us for a minute, exchanges a few words in Hebrew with the little kibbutz boys who sometimes accompany her, and then goes.

On to available modes of transportation we've observed around the kibbutz. While it seems easy enough to walk anywhere you want to go, I've observed all forms of vehicles from bicycles to golf carts to - I swear - ATV's driving all around the kibbutz. You'll see these vehicles parked outside all the public places on the kibbutz, such as the kibbutz convenience store and especially outside of the dining hall during mealtimes. And of course there are several people driving cars around the place. Normal traffic conventions don't seem to apply here; for example, sidewalks are apparently not just for pedestrians. It's not uncommon to have to move off the sidewalk in order to let a car pass on your way to dinner.

The last thing I want to mention about kibbutz life is that groups sometimes come to share the guest center with us. For example, last week we shared the space with a group of Jewish monks on a silence retreat. By the fourth day they taped off an area of our shared courtyard and marked it "Silent Zone." And on the fifth we came back from dinner to find two shawled monks playing chess on our front porch....

As you may know, last Monday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of repentance (it literally translates to Day of Atonement) and one of the holiest days of the year. On kibbutz, many of us wanted to do something to commemorate the holiday, but the kibbutz is a pretty secular community and no one was offering Yom Kippur services (except for Minyan Man, of course...) so on Sunday a group of us got together to plan out the day. We broke it down into a bunch of one hour blocks which were a mix of traditional text-based prayer and discussion. The day started with Shacharit (morning prayers), followed by Yizkor (a service to remember people who are close to you who have died). Then came a telling and discussion of the Torah portion and the Haftorah, and then we broke into chugim (which translates to something like "interest groups"). We did two hours of chugim separated by a two-hour break. The first hour of chugim was more discussion and text-based, the second being meditation and reflection based. A few people signed up to lead chugim on topics of their choice. For example, for the first hour of chugim, Elijah, who plans to go to culinary school and is Workshop's resident chef, led a discussion on how our society relates to food and why we fast on Yom Kippur. In the second hour, Erez led guided mediation and some Yom Kippur Yoga. After that we planned to go to the kibbutz's Ne'ilah service (where the shofar is blown and the Book of Life is sealed until next year) and then to dinner.

That was the day in theory. In reality, all those things still happened, but by around 4:00 p.m. everyone was so delirious and hungry that all many of us could do was sit and color and play 20 Questions. Mollie tried going to guided meditation, but she returned about five minutes later and declared that she couldn't concentrate on anything. We also found out that the kibbutz Ne'ilah service was more of a philosophical discussion than a service, so unless you knew Hebrew AND had the stamina to sit through it, there was little motivation to go. What we ended up doing was playing 20 Questions and the Awkward Story Game until 6:05, which is when Chabad said the fast ended, and then we played a recording of a shofar blowing on Youtube. Afterwords we broke the fast and went to dinner.

There were a few things I learned from this Yom Kippur. First, I realized that one of the main reasons I was connected to the religious traditions of Yom Kippur was because it connected me to home, not to the religion itself. Second, I learned that food is so available to us and we largely take it for granted. And finally, I learned that everything is a lot funnier when you're twenty-two hours into a fast and it's all you can do to not just lie face-down and cry.

On Tuesday we leave for a four-day tiyul from "Yam L'Yam," or Sea to Sea. We'll hike from the Mediterranean Sea to the Kinneret with all the habos from Australia, South Africa, England and Holland. I'll post after that. Have a good week!