Page 33 - C.A.L.L. #36 - Summer 2013

volunteers. We were gathered together shared history, a consciousness of the
in the dining hall, perhaps a hundred
people all together, getting into our
first glass of wine, when one of the
members in charge of fields came in to
announce that there was rain being
called for, and that there were
thousands of bales of hay scattered
about the fields, having been cut, dried
and then baled that day:
“I don’t want to interrupt the Seder,
but I would invite anyone who wants to
help to come back to the dining room
afterwards in their work clothes, and
we’ll get what we can under cover
before the rain comes.”
The Seder continued, with most people
drinking their four glasses of wine, and
several of us being much more generous.
After the dishes were cleared, and the
place tidied up, people began drifting
back in their work clothes, more and
more of them. It seemed as if everyone
came back. So many that a kitchen crew
was assembled to make hot coffee and
soup, and the electricians zipped off to
their workshop to rig up arc lights
around the barns. The rest of us divided
into work teams, each one with a
tractor and a wagon, and off we drove
into the fields to load up bales.
Jan and Ruth - Kibbutz Gezer back in the day
Each time we returned with a loaded
trailer, we were greeted by steaming
cups of soup and coffee, and lit up barns
to stack into. Enthusiasm, fun, and
dedication pulsed through the crowds.
When the dawn came, most of the bales
were in, and as we stumbled home,
exhausted, we met the morning milkers
on their way to the dairy.
This story from Gezer will be
recognised and shared by those who
were there. It’s a bond between us, a
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group. As such, much higher value than
the hay bales. It’s difficult to estimate
the value of such community
biographies. My intuition tells me that
the strength of a community is only
partly based on material and measurable
things like financial success or building
mass. More and more, experiencing and
observing community, I see that there
is something beyond, behind or above
the material which gives the community
its soul, its essential life force, its
individuality. Part of this individuality is
the shared and remembered history. It
may often feel like endless hours of
overtime, but it contains moments that
will live on in our consciousness.
When we moved to the kibbutz in 1984,
we were already a nuclear family, and
had no intention of being anything else.
The kibbutz had voted for children
living at home a few years earlier, and
we were happy with that. Every morning
Ruth and I went off to work, the
children went off to school or
kindergarten. Breakfast and lunch were
eaten together with our colleagues,
most people came home around 4 or 5 in
the afternoon, had free time together,
and supper was eaten in the dining hall
between 6 and 8. When the children
were small, and needed help choosing
and eating supper, they generally ate