: Can anyone give me serious info on Kibbutzism I'm thinking of integrating it into my three year plan for adventure and travel once I'm done in the Uni.After I finished college I went to live on a kibbutz for several months. I loved it. First of all, Israel is a beautiful and fascinating country; it's a shame that Jerusalem is such a dangerous place now, because I was there before the Intifada, and I got to tour this ancient city. Things might be better now than a few years ago, though.
As a socialist, Lark, I'm sure you'll be fascinated by kibbutz life. The one I was in was called Moran Golan, and it was in the Golan Heights (I recommend if you do it, you go to a kibbutz down south, by Eilat or Tel Aviv or even Haifa -- the Golan Heights are the boondocks of Israel). I lived in pre-fab housing with other volunteers/visitors, and it was an international group: Americans, Danish, English, German, Finnish -- so we learned a lot from each other.
Work varied. Each kibbutz has its own industry. Mine was basically a farming kibbutz; they grew apples, primarily, but also potatos and avocados. And (this would warm the cockles of Barry's heart if he ever visited this chat room), we practiced job rotation. Some days I worked in the fields (hard, but rewarding stuff), some days I cooked in the communal kitchen, some days I helped oversea the children, and on some dreaded days I worked in the apple factory sorting apples. If you go to a kibbutz, make sure you bring a walkman; we didn't have any personal music at the factory and had to rely on the occasional radio being brought in -- factory work is tedious beyond imagination.
The families on the kibbutz did live in private apartments with private kitchens, but most kibbutzniks ate lunch and dinner together.
Since Israel has the draft, there were few older teenagers and young 20 somethings around. This left mostly kids up to age 15 -- and for better or worse, the 15 year old girls were a dangerous group, if you know what I mean. Israeli women can be painfully beautiful. Mostly, though, we foreign volunteers socialized amongst ourselves.
The country itself, as I said, is fascinating and very affordable (at least when I was there). Youth hostels abound, and my favorite way to travel was by bus and then on foot, consuming mass quantities of falafels and Maccabee beer, both of which are inexpensive and widely available. You can also hitchhike in relative safety (use your noodle, of course), and army trucks are a good way to grab a free ride, albeit with very uncomfortable wooden seats.
As a resident of NI, you're probably used to seeing soldiers with weapons everywhere. This took some getting used to for me, though.
The Israelis are gruff on the outside, but cordial within (for the most part). Learn some key words, like "Sleeha" (phonetic) which means "excuse me," and you'll stay out of scuffles.
What else? Don't forget to take a dip in the Dead Sea -- it's so salty, you float on top with no effort at all - in fact, going under is a chore, but you wouldn't want to do that anyway. Climb Masada and spend a night under the stars for a really groovy time.
While I didn't have a chance to hang out with Muslim Arabs, I did spend time with Christian Arabs, and they are generous to a fault. They plied us with sweet coffee and sweet delicacies like baklava (unfortunately, they were out of hashish at the time - a friend of mine had gone their the week before and indulged all night long with them).
Most of the people there, Arab and Jew, were generous and open to strangers.
If there's any hippy in you, go down to Eilat. It's basically party central there, and it's a beautiful city on the Red Sea. A good place to go scuba diving, by the way.
I took a side trip into the Sinai desert and had a very bad time with the Egyptian soldiers at the border, no doubt because one look at me and my name on the passport told them I was Jewish. Among the other things they told me in rapid-fire Egyptian was "Heil Hitler." Fuck 'em. Once I got into the desert, the Bedouins more than made up for the rudeness of those soldiers.
Please let me know if there's anything else I can answer for you.
