Down on the Kibbutz

So, if you’ve been following along you must be wondering just what I’ve been doing in the five days I’ve been on the Kibbutz (aside from drinking and dancing with the volunteers and the Garin). Let me give you a little run-down of how things have been working around here. The Kibbutz is called Kibbutz Ketura, and it’s about fifty miles north of Eilat, which is right on the Gulf of Aqaba. We went on a hike up a steep trail just outside the Kibbutz the other evening, and as the lights came on down the coast you could see Eilat blending into the Jordanian city of Aqaba, which is about twice as big. The Jordanian border is extremely close to the Kibbutz – so close that a few days ago my friend Adi and I walked out of the Kibbutz, across the highway, through the date orchard, along the windbreak of the experimental orchard, and in about ten minutes we hit a sign saying STOP! BORDER AHEAD! Though Jordan and Israel have a peace, Israel is incredibly strict about wandering through the border. People say that they have seen Israeli soldiers come to the Kibbutz looking for the person who left their size 11 New Balance footprint on the other side! It was funny to hear the student life coordinator, on hearing that we were going for a walk outside the Kibbutz, say not “have fun!” but “Don’t go to Jordan!” In an earlier post I wrote about how small Israel seemed. Now I can feel it firsthand.


There are a number of different groups of people living together on the Kibbutz, which leads to some interesting dynamics. Firstly, there are the Kibbutznicks themselves, largely American Jews who have made aliyah. From what I have heard, many of the Kibbutz children don’t stay on the kibbutz for their adult life, and so much of the new population is new American blood rather than legacies. Ketura is one of the few Kibbutzim to have stuck with the real socialist ideology of the original Kibbutz movement, and so all income and all work is shared. However, one interesting deviation from the original ideology is that at some point, the Kibbutz decided that to make a profit on the date orchard, they needed to actually hire laborers rather than relying purely on Kibbutz labor and volunteers. So another contingent of the Kibbutz is about ten or fifteen Thai workers who come over for a year or two to work for relatively cheap, and then return to Thailand rich. Apparently they speak Thai, a little Hebrew, and almost no English. There are a few different means of income for Ketura, mainly dairy, dates, a really cool algae operation, and a few small businesses including a small cake company. They’re looking to expand and diversify though, getting into solar as well. Siemens has funded about 40 percent of a small solar project that’s hopefully a first step into a solar economy, so we can see firsthand how the Kibbutzim have to keep evolving to get by and thrive. I haven’t gotten to speak with many of the Kibbutzniks yet, but life on Ketura seems pretty relaxed and low key (for Israel anyway!), with few pretensions.

Secondly, there are the volunteers, mostly Jews but also some non-Jews, who come from around the world and take free room and board in exchange for doing work around the Kibbutz. For the most part these are kids taking a gap year either after high school or somewhere in their undergrad, out and about in the world “finding themselves” or just having a good time. There’s a group of eight Australian guys who are travelling together after high school, a number of Aussie girls, a few Americans, a couple Brits, one Scottish girl, a South African guy, and even a girl who lives at…Bathurst and Sheppard! Into this category I’m going to slip the people who are just here to visit the Kibbutz, which makes a little income on tourism as well.

Thirdly, there are the Garin, Israelis just out of high school who are doing a year of community service work before entering the army. I haven’t spent a lot of time with them, but from the interactions I have had, they seem like really solid, joyful kids a few years younger than me. They’ve got the Israeli energy and slight cheekiness I’ve been noticing all around Israel thus far.

Lastly, there’s the Machon, or Arava Institute. While the Institute finds its home on Ketura, and some faculty are also Kibbutzniks (about 13 out of 140 members work at the Machon), there is a slight uneasiness in the relationship. This is only natural when you think of a group of about 150 Kibbutzniks and their families living on a small patch of green in the middle of the Desert. The place is pretty enclosed and isolated and Kibbutz life is good and simple, but also hard. When you’re on the Kibbutz, everything is taken care of, from three meals a day to laundry service to child care, swimming pool, playgrounds and playing fields. But as one of the founding members said tonight, after all of this is paid for by the Kibbutz, the division of funds to members according to their needs leaves everyone feeling a little cash poor. So if you’re going to be a real member, and commit to the socialism, you’re going to feel pretty territorial about your stuff. Now throw into the mix about 20 volunteers, a bunch of Garin, and then about 50 undergrad and masters students from around the region and the world! I haven’t seen it first hand, but it should be interesting.

So far life here has been pretty smooth and relaxed. We’ve been swimming in the pool, hiking in the desert, playing football with the Aussies and Garin, playing music at night, and basically finding our footing and getting adjusted to life here have been our main activities. Now that the holidays are over and the Kibbutz schedule is back to normal we’re doing an Ulpan for most of the mornings. The students who’ve arrived so far are mostly American, with a token appearance from the commonwealth in my person and an Aussie named Philip. We come from diverse backgrounds, from California to Omaha to New York to North Carolina, from Day School to totally secular, and from right out of high school to beginning a masters degree. The diversity will only increase from here.

So there’s the set-up so far, in brief. I’ll keep you posted as things heat up!