Yigal Allon, Native Son. Anita Shapira

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СКАЧАТЬ to denying members of the kevutzah employment in its local public works. This strapped the group financially but did not endanger its existence.²³

      “Now, our main difficulty is our relations with the national institutions [namely, the JA and other central Jewish bodies]. The PICA is ostracizing us, Hartzfeld threw our delegate out of his office, Kofer Ha-Yishuv [a body that supported endangered settlements] canceled its promised assistance under pressure from the PICA, and every month we have about P£100 of bonds to pay”²⁴—Sini described the repercussions of having seized the land. The Agricultural Center was truly annoyed. Yet, when the PICA withheld payment owed to the kevutzah for work done, Hartzfeld remonstrated. “It is unthinkable that the PICA executive employs such measures”, he declared.²⁵

      The move to Ginossar launched a new chapter in the kevutzah’s life. Financially, the group still relied chiefly on outside jobs, though members tilled a vegetable patch, which was a kind of auxiliary farm, and began to raise animals, building a chicken coop, a cowshed, a sheep pen. They also tried their hands at fishing in the Sea of Galilee. One of the quickest branches to develop was the children’s house, lending members a sense of permanence, of home.

      Life at Ginossar’s small farmyard was far from easy. Every three months, Dr. P. Lander of the Histadrut’s Health Fund made the rounds with an eye to preventive medicine. After the doctor inspected hygienic conditions and living quarters, he stated in his report for April 1939 that “the camp is in a terrible anti-sanitary state.” The kitchen, dining room, and their surroundings were full of flies and garbage rolling about nearby. The shower was not yet finished and there was a lot of rubbish near it as well, and as to the toilets—the less said the better. He ended the report thus: “This sort of camp state could be a source of all types of infectious diseases and malaria.”²⁶ The next report, in July 1939, reported a sharp improvement in hygiene, especially in the delicate respects mentioned above.

      Yet the basic problem of overcrowding remained. Ginossar had sixty men and forty women at the time, including twenty-two families with twelve small children. All of these people lived in two huts of seven tiny rooms, three tents, and five lean-tos. Families did not have their own rooms or tents, and couples often had to share with a redundant “third”—the notorious “Primus” from the early 1930s when growing aliyah swelled the kibbutzim.

      Collective welfare, as a rule, took precedence over individual life. A member had to be prepared to submit to group judgment in all affairs. One member wished to attend his sister’s wedding. Since this entailed a loss of work days, the question was brought before the general assembly; because it did not sanction the trip, the member left the kibbutz.²⁷ The members agreed that every family was to have only one child at first. When a young mother fell pregnant for a second time, the general assembly discussed the option of abortion (which was voted down).²⁸ It did not occur to anyone to protest the public discussion of intimate affairs. In the case of a couple that separated, the woman demanded that the kevutzah oust her ex-partner;²⁹ the question discussed by the assembly was whether her pressure should force the man out. Nobody objected to the group’s right to decide matters of personal status if they affected the character or vitality of the small society. The ambition of members to pursue a specific occupation or further studies was considered a luxury no young kibbutz could afford.³⁰ One of the typical reasons for asking for leave was “parental assistance,” that is, the need to help aging parents who had no financial support apart from a child on a kibbutz. To counter the problem of absence, such members were asked to persuade their parents to come live at the kibbutz.³¹ Considering the conditions at Ginossar—overcrowding, no minimal sanitary standards, polluted drinking water, endemic fevers³²—it was an impossible demand. The person who made it was Allon: “True, parents would have to make an acknowledged effort to adapt to the kevutzah”—he said—“but if their situation is so hard, they can come to the kevutzah and find in it a solution for themselves and for the kevutzah on this question.”³³

      Dearth was rife. Legumes were the staple diet: bean soup and more bean soup. Meat hardly ever featured on the dining hall table. The food was flat, prepared by a young woman never initiated in the art of cooking by her mother. But given the ordeal of cooking in the heat of the Jordan Valley and in Ginossar’s primitive kitchen, the poor girl who slaved away could hardly be blamed.³⁴ Ginossar’s newsletter from the end of October 1938 tells of a decision by the kibbutz assembly to send a member to help and encourage a sister kevutzah that had just settled at Hulata (to the north). This formal resolution was never put into practice because the warehouse could not supply the slated member with a pair of shoes.³⁵ Only in March 1940 did a radio arrive at Ginossar, and it, a big, shiny Philips, then common in kibbutzim, was allotted a place of honor in the dining hall. The Ginossar newsletter reported the event: “It must have a fixed, permanent place, on some cupboard or special crate in the corner of the dining hall, rather than continue to stand on the piano; this is inconvenient and, what’s more, not good for the piano. It would also be a good idea to make some sort of cover for the radio, of cloth or wood, otherwise the flies in the dining hall—which are not few—will change its shiny color to speckle-bound.”³⁶

      In these conditions, some strong cohesive force is needed to counter a temptation to leave. This role was filled by the PICA. Ginossar’s collective character was consolidated in its wrangling with the PICA. The slogan “Ginossar and only Ginossar” evolved into lyrics for songs in hora circle dances, the speech of skits, and the battle cry of those hard times, protesting against the whole adult world. Constant tension and uncertainty about the future lent collective life the spice of danger that molds solidarity. Everyone felt responsible for the farm’s survival. Anyone leaving Ginossar quit not only the kibbutz but also the battle, abandoning comrades to struggle along on their own. This had nothing to do with socialism but with the sense of siege felt by an endangered group. In many frontier communities, the security situation filled the role of social linchpin. At Ginossar, the PICA played a similar role.³⁷

      Allon’s reputation preceded him to Ginossar. His friends from Kadoorie had sung his praises, and the kevutzah knew to expect a brave young hero, a born farmer who did not flinch from clashes with Arabs. Upon entering the yard at Migdal, he was immediately assigned to the small camp at the bottom of the plain, where the more daring members tilled the PICA’s lands. And that first night, he was posted to the middle shift to guard from 12 to 2 A.M.³⁸ Allon did not manage to reach any great heights at Ginossar, for within months, Nahum Kramer (Shadmi) appropriated him for a sergeants’ training course given by the Haganah. Allon left.

      Nevertheless, his heart was already lost to Ginossar. In 1936 the kevutzah was enlarged by a group of German-Jewish youth educated at Tel Yosef. They had been on a kibbutz for two years now and found it all overwhelming: the Hebrew language, the collective life, the hard work. The period was rough: it was the start of the Arab Rebellion and the tenderfoots were called on for guard duty on top of their daily work load.³⁹ Ginossar’s members began to grumble that the “match” with the group from Tel Yosef had been a mistake. Nor was the crowd from Kadoorie sympathetic to the heartbreak of the German girls who were asked to deposit in the common warehouse all of the fine clothing they had brought with them—their mementos from a faraway home. Some, however, were charmed by the foreign girls who were so different from those they were accustomed to. Sini and his friends told Allon that they were reserving the prettiest one—Ruth Episdorf—for him.⁴⁰

      Ruth Episdorf had immigrated to Palestine from Germany in 1934. Her family stemmed from Poland, although her father had served in the German army and the family had taken pains to integrate into German society. Her father was a sales agent, her mother a housewife. Hitler’s rise to power was traumatic. At fifteen, Ruth, was expelled from school, putting an end to her formal studies. Her father died of a heart attack, and as the family sat shiva in mourning for him German soldiers burst in on them in search of him. The shock was too much. The family’s vague Zionism gelled into practical action. СКАЧАТЬ