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Aug. 23, 2013
A havaya on Maale Gilboa
The values of community and adaptation come to life on stage.
EMILY SINGER
A havaya is an experience – something amazing that you don’t see or do every day. The picture you will find with the term in the Isra-slang dictionary, if I ever get around to writing that thing, is of a wedding we attended the first time we moved to Israel (for a two-year fellowship) eight years ago.
We were invited to the wedding by our landlords. It was a modest wedding by Israeli standards, with a mere 800 guests. The groom, our landlord’s son, came from a traditional religious Yemenite family. The bride grew up in a totally secular Moroccan home. We called it “East Meets East.”
When we arrived at the wedding, we learned our first bit of Israeli wedding etiquette. We had been told that in this country people usually give money instead of gifts (or instead of the popular North American ritual of “registering” so the giving of money doesn’t feel so impersonal). We came with a cheque, but we also wrapped a gift because it felt rude not to.
At the wedding, there was no table for placing gifts. There was only a locked safe with a slot for money. There was even a credit card machine for your gift-giving convenience. When I handed the present to a brother of the groom, he looked at it like I had just placed a dead skunk in his hand, like, “What the heck am I supposed to do with this thing?”
That is not what made the event a havaya, however.
The havaya began with the guest attire. The invitation had explicitly requested that people arrive in “modest dress.” Indeed, half of the guests were dressed in suits and black hats or long skirts and elaborately tied headscarves. The other half, however, looked as though they could have been bounced from a Tel Aviv disco. It seemed like some of them had forgotten to get dressed at all.
When the milling music stopped, the crowd gathered around the chuppah. The lights dimmed, and in walked the rabbinic entourage. Elvis himself could not have riled more excitement. Our landlord was a connected man, and the officiating rabbi was none other than Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, an old friend of the family. He was surrounded on all sides by bodyguards (or students or something). As he climbed the steps to the chuppah, you could see more clearly his gem-studded turban and his gold silk robe. He looked like a Saudi prince. He performed a traditional Yemenite wedding (to the best of my knowledge), and then was immediately escorted out.
When he left with his proxy, men and women began dancing on two sides of a tall mechitzah. They danced with tremendous energy for a long set. Towards the end, someone removed the mechitzah. The black hats and scarves cleared the dance floor, and the two sides began to mix. The room transformed into a Tel Aviv disco.
That was a havaya.
Today, however, I want to share with you a different havaya – one that has been the highlight for me of our aliyah so far (excluding my son Shai’s bar mitzvah, of course).
After living on our kibbutz for nearly three years, we had the tremendous fortune of being here for its 50th-year celebration. We spent a full year preparing. The festivities kicked off with a Shabbat for which members of the original garin (group of settlers) came to share stories and give tours. Those first pioneers had come as an army unit, to protect the border between the kibbutz and Jordan. They were here for only six months to a year before they moved on with their lives, but Maale Gilboa held a special place in their hearts.
Throughout the rest of the year there were smaller activities like communal hikes and picnics, but the pinnacle was to be a mega event that would involve the whole kibbutz, and anyone who had a history here.
It was no surprise that they planned a big formal ceremony. The mayor and other local officials spoke, as well as people from the kibbutz, past and present. There was the requisite slide show of kids doing adorable kibbutz-related things. The highlight was the central event of the evening. They celebrated their jubilee year by writing and producing an uproarious, professional-quality musical theatre production.
The show was written by a team of extremely talented members from the community, and acted by 35 more. Another 25 or so were in the choir. Those who didn’t act or sing built sets (from bales of hay from the cowshed), organized costumes, or brought hot soup and spaghetti to the actors on late rehearsal nights.
My two oldest kids and I were in the play. My youngest sang a song with his grade during the show. My husband helped break down the sets the next day. In a community that is growing faster than Vancouver after they hosted the Expo ’86 world’s fair, averaging more than 10 percent growth every year, it was a tremendous way for us and other newcomers to bond and to feel an integral part of the whole.
Maale Gilboa wasn’t always thriving. Much of its history was quite rocky. After a few years of being a soldier lookout, it was established as a kibbutz by some hearty settlers from Israel and abroad. They were firmly committed to the kibbutz ethic. No one had money. Every family received specific allowances for all their needs. If they didn’t smoke, they were not allowed to use their cigarette allowance for, say, organic tofu.
One woman who still lives here recently told us about her experience running the kibbutz store in the early years. One year she decided to bring in ice cream. This involved ordering a special freezer from Strauss. The day they delivered the freezer, the administration was in a staff meeting. A couple of members saw the truck and ran out to stop it.
“Wait!” one guy called out. “We haven’t voted yet. Take it back!”
It appears there was a concern that it wouldn’t be fair for some kids to have ice cream while others were eating bamba. The truck turned and left with the ice cream freezer in tow.
At the meeting, the ice cream was voted in with only two dissents – the guy who stopped the truck and another fellow who doesn’t like ice cream. Unfortunately, Strauss had already given the freezer to someone else. It would be another year before there would be frozen treats available on the mountain.
Over the years, the kibbutz went through many transformations. Their industries of milk and carrots were not keeping it afloat. Kibbutzim that did not land mega-business deals (like Lavi with their synagogue furniture and Massuot Yitzchak with their Huggies wet-wipes) were forced to privatize. Maale Gilboa sold most of its agriculture and livestock to bigger companies, while members continued to work for them. When they privatized, many of the most idealistic members left. At one point, the kibbutz was down to close to 15 families.
Twenty years ago, Maale Gilboa did inherit one business of sorts – the yeshivah of the religious kibbutz movement. With the yeshivah came rabbis and their families. A few years later, when yeshivah students got married, many of them returned to make their homes here. One thing has led to another, and now we can’t keep up with the demand for housing. The place has grown by 40 percent since we arrived.
OK now, close your eyes and picture the scene. Oh wait, now you can’t read! Open your eyes and picture the scene, or have someone else read it to you.
There is an old, dying kibbutz on a small mountaintop. All the members sleep in one room, and they have just one clanky car among them. In the gan there is only a single child, with four caregivers to watch over him.
On the other side of the mountain, a new settlement is cropping up. It is full of young, flashy individuals who want to create something magnificent, but they have no idea how. All they know is the latest technology. Two of them communicate only through their smart phones. One has a hobby of knitting on his knitting app. They have all the latest gadgets, but no heart.
This was the premise of Hazeh (It), Kibbutz Maale Gilboa’s 50th year musical production.
The difference between the two communities is best portrayed in a scene where they each go to spy on the other. On the new settlement, the old-timers from “Kibbutz Budget” find an electronic message board. They make themselves dizzy trying to read the words that are flying by too fast. At the same time, the residents of the new and sparkly settlement “Gadget” (in Hebrew this somehow rhymes with “Budget”) come across an old-fashioned message board with papers tacked on. They can’t figure out what they are supposed to do with it. Why doesn’t it move? They conclude it must be broken.
A young couple comes searching for Budget. The man grew up there and wants to make it their home, but after being there for a short time, he remembers why he left. He goes with his wife in search of Gadget, which they find to be shallow and uninspiring. Both communities are missing something. They are missing hazeh, it. It’s hard to find “it” because no one knows exactly what “it” is. The people from Budget are sure they once had “it.” Perhaps they just misplaced “it,” but they are sure they will find “it” again very soon, and so on....
Two weeks before the show, messages went out on the kibbutz Google group looking for red, yellow and purple clothing (for costumes). In no time, the set looked like a clothing warehouse for last year’s Super Bowl.
A week before the show, more messages went out looking for antique objects and super-modern gadgets for the set. The response was overwhelming. In my life, I have never seen a group effort like this one.
You would have to come visit one time (you’re all invited) to begin to understand what it means that there were more than 1,000 guests at the event. A little more than 100 families live here. They created the stage on a nearly grass-less old soccer field at the entrance. A makeshift parking lot was erected at the refet (cowshed), and residents moved their cars elsewhere to make more room on the streets.
There was a beautiful buffet with a fresh falafel stand and pizza made to order in a portable oven. It was a challenge starting the show, as 1,000 people were connecting with old friends and catching up on each others’ lives.
The speeches were beautiful and the slide show adorable, but the peak of the ceremony was the very end of the play. After both settlements searched inside and out for the “it” that would make their community “all that” (in Hebrew it’s the same word), they came together to try to figure it out. They mingled on stage and looked busy working together, until finally one of the actors announced, “And here it is....” The stage lights went dark, and he concluded – “It!” The cast stretched out their arms and lights came up on the audience. And there it was. “It.” All the people who made it happen.
In the audience were all those who helped create a thriving kibbutz – one that shares traditional kibbutz values of work and communal responsibility, but embraces modernity and change where it is valuable. Sitting with them were a thousand more people who came to honor them, because they know what a special place it is. And I still have to pinch myself to be sure that my family and I are really among them.
That was a havaya.
Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. She is currently working on two books. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children.
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