eggedmuseum110Note from author: A “garin” is a term used to describe a group of young people (either immigrants or native born Israelis) who do the army together – from start to finish – usually in the Nahal unit/division of the army. Historically, Nahal included such pioneers as Golda Meir and Yitzchak Rabin who were attracted to the concept of Nahal to protect Israel’s borders in addition to the social/communal value of work.

As a Nahal soldier, many of our duties involved working on kibbutzim and serving on settlements. There were some army duties involved but our duties were more “social” in nature. Mainly we served on the settlement by working at other kibbutzim – i.e. working at the date factory at Kibbutz Ketura and in the dining room and children’s houses of others kibbutzim.

August 14th 1990.

At four o’clock in the morning, I wriggle in-between the sheets of this iron cast bed complete with a thin foamy mattress. I’ve just arrived on this kibbutz, a close knit community settlement, consisting of just twenty three people in the Negev Desert in Israel. Just five hours ago, I was en route to Kibbutz Revivim from New York City. My body tells me I’m okay with just five hour sleep after jetlag. In the dark, I stare at my fingernails. They are still chewed up with dried blood stains from waiting four hours at the airport to get my teudat olah, an immigrant card, which I didn’t get.

Once I leave Ben -Gurion airport, I am entitled to one free taxi ride so instead of going straight to the kibbutz, I decide I need to see a familiar face. I tell the taxi driver to take me to 38 Katznelson street in Givatayim, a suburb of Tel-Aviv to my Grandmother’s house. I’ll still make it to the kibbutz before nightfall. Savtah, my grandmother, leads me to the guest room I once slept in when I was twelve years old during a family trip. I put my worn-out suitcase next to the pull-out bed. Buses from the busy street. Cold tiles. Shouts of Hebrew down below.

When I feel focused and clear, I make one phone call to my cousin Sigalit, the family liaison, and the only one who can meet me, hoping we to make up for the missed time when she waited for me at the airport. Savtah looks as I talk – eyes like a hawk’s. I’m stretching across vast oceans and miles of transatlantic conversation trying to timestamp the last moment of memory with a familiar voice, accent and tone. I find my way to the words in Hebrew again from the lefet, the turnips the salt that still stays in my mouth. Even when I talk in broken Hebrew with bits of English, Savtah says, “Tidaber b’Ivrit, speak in Hebrew.” Savtah doesn’t know how green I really am. I just feel like a goofball —  jetlagged and anxious.

In a few minutes, plans are made — Sigalit has told me she has to get back to her work as an army career officer, but she can come and pick me up in a few minutes.

Savtah wants to know when I’m leaving. As much as I want to stay here, I am anxious to get to the kibbutz by nightfall. After all, I have a destination.

Within ten minutes, I am at Sigalit’s apartment in Ramat Gan, and walk up to her apartment on the top floor. The higher up, the cooler the air. Surprisingly, we have enough time to watch a video of her marriage just four months earlier. Sigalit flicks on the air-conditioner and I can feel my skin soaking in the coolness from this dry Mediterrenean heat. There’s a man with some grey hair clicking a goblet of wine and saying “le’Chaim,” who turns out to be her husband, Itamar. There’s a sea of new faces – perhaps some could be long distant cousins – who knows? Sigalit makes a call to find out about my bus schedule.

“One hour till the bus leaves,” she soon says emerging from the kitchen offering me a tall glass of ice cold water. An hour later, after a brief intermittent hug and questions about my plans, Sigalit whisks me off to the bus stop and I am on my way to Kibbutz Ze’elim and the pace turns fast again.

Can I overcome my fear and doubts of being able to successfully integrate in this new country? Will I be strong enough  to believe in my stepmother’s hopeful future message: We’ll be together in a year’s time that eventually would stick like glue. Do I want to go forward with this army experience so badly? Do I want to figure out the system? Or do I need a bunch of American-Jewish teenagers to feel Israeli – can I manage on my own, at least for the first year?

Sigalit waves a heartily goodbye as I slam the two door small white car that is as grouchy as a Volkswagon. I plop my bag on the dusty cracked wooden long bench. To the right of me there’s a shack.

Within 20 minutes, the bus arrives, the old Egged bus model with white and red padded seats. There are only a few of us on board. I fish for some change and am given a few white tickets. I slide into a seat halfway towards the middle and instantly lift my legs against the hard divider after watching another passenger do the same. Israeli style.

It’s hard to imagine how this city landscape will turn into sand. The evening sun dances in and out of buildings as we circle in and out of the bus station and finally enter the highway. We start our journey past billboards in Hebrew and signs that do not remind me of America.

Between this point and the next few hours, few people get on –all of them civilians. More nail biting. Can I find a way to believe Israel is my country too and not just a place for “other” immigrants and native born Israelis – that it is, in fact, my home?

When Mom finally consented to letting my brother and myself go to Israel, Dad had to fight to reverse the law of parental rights because I wasn’t yet eighteen. She doesn’t know I’m going to the army. She thinks I’m here for some kind of study trip.

 

Nobody on this bus knows of my journey. I’m a bit nervous stepping out from the world of my Israeli father’s art, but it’s better than being paralyzed by my mother’s fears. Especially of Israel. Like many of my American-Jewish peers and their parents, she got her impressions about Israel through the media – mainly the news. She was fearful of terrorist attacks and suicide bombers. But she was also fearful of me walking down Greenwich Village streets surrounding our artist residence known as Westbeth without a sweater in early spring because she thought I would catch bronchitis. She told me to take Flinstone vitamins every day before I went to bed and every – more than the recommended dosage for my age, which I hide in-between the clothes of my drawers and under my pillow. She even had a diagnosis label relating to some kind of disease. That was before I officially decided to emigrate to Israel.

 

Finally, at ten o’clock at night, I arrive at my “dream” kibbutz, Kibbutz Ze’elim the one I’ve been assigned to work on for three weeks before my army induction date. This is the name of the kibbutz that is written in Hebrew but spelt incorrectly in English on my immigrant papers.

Even from the glossy pictures, I fall in love with this kibbutz because of its circuitous meandering paths that remind me of Central Park and the throes and bushes that were desperately missing from the New York City landscape. This is a kibbutz complete with a pool, a big supermarket, a factory, Ben-Gurion’s house and museum, older and younger kibbutz members – my ideal kibbutz, the one I have waited for after months of research. And for a moment, I feel at home.

At the kibbutz bus stop, Dov the coordinator of the garin of this kibbutz greets me – my first official welcome. He flashes a cigarette stained smile. We walk down a meandering path until we reach a small one room not big enough to formally be called an apartment. He tells me to put my bag in another room.

“Wow, what a long trip,” I say. I am eager to settle down and see what this kibbutz looks like in the morning.

Other members of the garin saunter in and out. Lots of Hebrew chitter chatter. There is a confused look at Dov’s face.

Tell me there is nothing wrong.

“There are too many people in this garin,” he says solemnly. “You’ll have to go someplace else.”

“Where?” I ask raising my voice.

Already I sense disorganization. Messiness. If I just stayed in New York City, none of this would happen. I could follow the predictable and “clean” route of getting my degree just like Mom had advised me.

“Kibbutz Retamin.”

“Where’s that?”

“About twenty kilometers south of here.”

He tells me I need to wait until the van comes to pick me up, but I don’t want to drink the cup of  water he gives me or sit in a chair. I start to chew on whatever is left of my nails.

This can’t be happening.

An hour later I find myself in a white van, this time heading south. Will I ever settle down? There’s not much to see in the way of a view at 10pm at night. The vast desert looks like one big crater, which scares me. To assuage my fears of uncertainty, I tell the driver where I’m from and why I’m here. Like most Israelis, he can’t understand what would motivate an eighteen year old to leave New York City to volunteer for the Israeli army which makes me feel even worse. With the little energy I have left to find the words to express exactly how I feel in Hebrew, I tell him, “This is my homeland. This is where I belong.”

And even at 3:30 am on this tiny settlement known as Ritamin, I wake up to the feeling I’m here to conquer the dream. I manage to catch the sight of my roommate, buxom and stout blonde Karla from South America, whose quick jump from bed startles me. During those precious early slumber minutes, I open half an eye wide enough to see her grab her army uniform from the shelves behind the sliding closet door.

Only the moonlight reflects from the open kitchen window. Within five minutes, she is dressed and out the door. As soon as she leaves, I flick on the light. There is a packet of birth control pills on the circle corner table next to my bed. I look at them and wonder, who is this roommate? By the time my feet touch the cold brown and cream speckled tiles, I forget about those pills. I step over my suitcase, which is in complete disarray and just so happens to be the only item out of place in this clean, well-lighted room.

I’m here to work the land. Work the soil. Till the earth. I grab the letters from my suitcase from my Dad and stepmother and reread their encouraging words for the hundredth time:

“…We will join you in a year’s time. Joining the Israeli army is going to make such a big difference in your life.”

I smooth the edges of the letter, creased from hours of reading. By now, I have memorized their words and still, I take the letters. Something tells me I’ll need them to get through this first day.