Shnat

So. I've been on Kibbutz Holit for the last two and a half weeks. Its been pretty crazy.
The kibbutz is beautiful, in the Eshkol region of the Negev, sandy, sunny, grass growing, date trees, and irrigated gardens. I love being here. I really, really want to climb a date tree and see if they'll ripen in my freezer.
I'm with about 30 other people from Hashomer Hatzair worldwide. There are people from the US, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. Its pretty crazy having people from all over the world, everyone has their different things, different senses of humor, and although almost everyone knows English at least a little, the language barrier is a little wild. Half the group is speaking to each other in Spanish most of the time, and I'm not so good with languages, so I find myself learning broken English more than anything else. I'm practicing my Hebrew a little, but from my few experiences in the outside world, it really needs a lot of improvement.
Our schedule changes day to day. Friday and Saturday we usually have off. Sundays we have Hebrew classes and art classes taught by members of the kibbutz. We're only split into two Hebrew classes, so they have a wide range of levels. My Hebrew isn't so good, so for now I'm in the lower level, with people who have never seen the Hebrew alphabet before as well as people around my level. The teacher is also actually just not so great. There are some new words we go over, but I'm not sure I'll stay there because I don't know how much I'll learn, but the other class is taught all in Hebrew, so I'll probably try it and see if I can follow enough that I'll be able to learn with them.
Mondays we work in an artistic construction project on the kibbutz and we have a class in Jewish thought taught by a professor from a small nearby university. A lot of people aren't so enthusiastic about having a class in Judaism, and although I'm interested, I really don't think the teacher is teaching from an angle that applies to the group as very critical, secular Jews, or to myself, as a more traditional, equally as critical Jew. Definitely has a lot of potential though.
Tuesdays are our tour days. We go out to see different places in Israel. The first Tuesday we went to a few random places. We went to a memorial with a tall tower where you can walk up the stairs to the top and see Gaza on the horizon. We talked briefly there about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and it was a little intense. We also went to a historical site where you can see the mosaic floor of an ancient synagogue, which was really cool. We finished the day with a stop at a beautiful spot in the desert. There was a long wooden bridge over a lagoon that swung when we walked on it, super fun, and then sand/rock hill after sand/rock hill to create a gorgeous landscape. I really enjoyed climbing up, down and across a number of the hills, and on a far side I found a ton of seashells, which were really wild to find in such an incredibly dry place that, when you looked at it, was so evident of having hosted water long ago.
Yesterday on our tour we visited three kibbutzim in the Arava, a desert region near Jordan. All three were shitufi, meaning they maintain the traditional, communal lifestyle of a kibbutz in many aspects, whereas most kibbutzim today are much more largely privatized, and all three also were involved in some ecological way of life.
The first kibbutz we visited was Neot Smadar, where my brother worked for a while when visiting the Middle East. It was fantastic. Beautiful gardens, fountains and buildings, including this arts and crafts building that looked like Jasmine's palace from Aladdin. Insane. More than that, what really intruiged me about this kibbutz more than others I've been to, is the fact that it isn't based in any real ideological goal or purpose, but simply in the idea that this communal way of life is one that better suits human beings. The kibbutz is young, and our guide was in love with the place, so its hard to say how real its success truly is, but as it was presented to us, the kibbutz functions without many social or economic issues because there is no concrete socialist ideology used to judge its members and their actions or worth. A typical kibbutz is founded by a movement with a clear ideology, or at least a group of people with set beliefs and goals, and through these they hold meetings to make decisions, create committees, evaluate new members and so on. Becoming a member often takes a long time because the potential member needs to first know the community and then be approved as someone who will work as a positive member, and this process takes years. Often kibbutzim have issues with newer people joining and not fully believing in the ideology, so they don't work hard and try to get what they can of a free ride. There is a need to privatize in many kibbutzim because people stop being responsible members of the community, and many people work outside of the kibbutz to make their own personal money and the kibbutz hires people from outside to do the labor kibbutz members aren't interested in doing. Its often pretty far from a socialist community. On Neot Smadar, people take responsibility to work with the community and spend responsibly. They are wealthy because they all come together to work in many profitable mini-industries on the kibbutz, inlcuding a date plantation, winery, coffee shop and the craft center. When people ask for money, they are given. When people want more with their life, to buy more, to work more, to be more ambitious, they leave, and no one is forced out. When people want to be members, they are. This interests me so much because I feel that very often in ideological communities, such as the one I am in now, ideology gets in the way of personal relationships, and people forget that they are dealing with their friends, with real people, and instead see them as objects of their ideology, under high scrutiny and judgement, and it seems so far from what any socialist belief should lead one to believe. Socialism is about people, about living together in harmony, not about objectifying another because it feels awesome to know you believe in something high and mighty and they have been judged negetively in that eye.
I'll go on in this tangent for just a little longer. There have been issues within the movement at home where people have reverted to viewing their friends through this ideological, objectifying glass, and I was upset, but not shocked, to find that happen here as well. Two girls in the program from Belgium are not from Hashomer Hatzair, and one of them is not Jewish and doesn't speak any English, either, but know the movement through a friend of theirs who is here. They are fantastic people. The one who knows English is very critical and honest when it counts, asking very interesting questions with an open mind everywhere we go. The one who doesn't know English, I honestly find incredibly inspirational, for the fact that this is something she is so interested in doing and being a part of that she is willingly putting herself through what most would see as an impossible process of education, and she is thriving. I encountered people on this program who don't really see their being here the same way I do, don't understand why there here and don't think they should be here, because in their mind, the rest of us are all here from the same movement, which means we have had similar educations and experiences, and come to this program with similar goals and things we will bring back home to the movement in our countries. This is true, although the movement is different in every country, we each have our own feelings and experiences with the movement, we all have gone through different processes leading up to this year, and all have different futures with our movements when we get home. Beyond and above that, these girls are bringing something wonderful to our experience, and the fact is that they are here. We are doing this together. I don't really understand how people can get so caught up in the fact that they are a part of some fantastic movement that they would ignore all the great things these people are bringing and forget the fact that we're here to live intentionally together. Ah. I could go on for days. Ask me to if you want.
But also, no worries, because we're all already on the path to figuring all this stuff out. We have a year of living together ahead of us. Theres no way any issue can last for long. No one wants to live unhappily, everythings going to hit the fan, everythings going to get discussed to death and a solution.

Long post. Not even done with Tuesdays. But its time for dinner. Love.