PRESENT AND FUTURE
Visiting journalists and volunteers meeting in International Department at Givat Haviva and right: Arnie Sasportas, a member of Kibbutz Ein Gev and Heath Attia, presently volunteering at Kibbutz Hazore, a outside the Yad Yaari Research & Documentation Center at Givat Haviva
Within the framework of celebrations lauding the 100th anniversary since the founding of kibbutz and the subsequent kibbutz movement, the Kibbutz Programs Center is attempting to reconnect with some of the 350,000 former kibbutz volunteers of yesteryear.
Making contact with so many living around the globe is no mean feat but a new website has been set up and events being organized in various European and Scandinavian countries to encourage former volunteers to take a nostalgic walk down a collective memory lane.
Recently foreign journalists based in Israel where invited to meet and write about kibbutz volunteers of yesterday and today – and hopefully attract to the meetings planned for abroad those who will want to come to do likewise tomorrow after reading about the possibility in one of their local publications. A gala gathering is also planned for former volunteers from home and abroad to be held in Israel next summer.
Thousands of those who volunteered in kibbutzim since the 1960s remained in Israel and not a small number eventually became permanent members of a way of life known as kibbutz and unique to Israel.
Danish Journalists Allan Sorensen, Negus Sanna from Finland, Dutchman Adrian Bloemendaal, Arne Lapidus from Sweden and Norwegian John Solsvik, were invited by Aya Sagi, Director of the Kibbutz Programs Center in Tel Aviv and Aviv Leshem, the Kibbutz Movement spokesperson, to meet up with some of those former volunteers and now members of kibbutzim and a few present day volunteers.
The journalists and volunteers - former and present – also spent some time in the kibbutzim of the 1920s and 1930s through photographs exhibited in Yad Yaari and an explanation around the somewhat grainy sign of the times photographs given by Dudu Amitai, director of the veteran research center and extensive archives. A special exhibition is also being prepared by Givat Haviva staff focusing on the overseas kibbutz volunteers of the last four decades due to be shown at the June, 2011 event slated to be held in Israel.
Pens poised and ready to go … members of the foreign press take notes
“One hundred and twenty-five kibbutzim were established before the State of Israel was established,” explained Aviv Leshem. These days there are 274 kibbutzim with a population of around 126,000 adults and children in those communities.
Giving a summary of the rather tumultuous latter decades and drastic changes wrought upon the kibbutzim, Leshem said that between 1995 and 2005 over 20,000 left the kibbutzim but in latter years a few thousand have returned to what is nowadays called the ‘renewed kibbutzim’ where privatization has changed the face of the kibbutz as it was known in the past.
“At the height of the volunteer program most kibbutzim had volunteers but for many different reasons volunteering in kibbutzim dropped off the radar screens and we are intent on bringing the trend back there,” said Aya Sagi of the KPC.
Viewing the kibbutz of yesteryear exhibition in Yad Yaari, Givat Haviva
Arnie Sasportas arrived in Israel when he was 19 years-old and volunteered at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the shores of Lake Kinneret and tucked under the steep slopes of the Golan Heights. He worked and studied Hebrew at the kibbutz and when he went home to America it took him just two months to realize where he wanted to be and that was kibbutz. After a career in hotel managements Arnie – nowadays a grandfather – works in the kibbutz well tended gardens where he has time to reflect on the kibbutz of yesterday, present times and what of the future.
Heath Attia, in his early twenties and also from the States, has spent some months volunteering on Kibbutz Hazorea in the Jezreel Valley. Working in the kibbutz kitchen, Heath says that his period of volunteering at Hazorea has been a very positive experience and would recommend such a ‘time out to get in’ to other young people from abroad. Gabriel Spilkin, a fellow volunteer from South Africa who came to the meeting with Heath and Hazorea volunteer leader Racheli Sharon, agreed with the San Franciscan.
“We work hard but we get to know so many people both among the volunteers and the kibbutz people themselves,” Heath told the journalists, some of whom based in Israel for many years.
Arnie was joined for the journey from Ein Gev to Givat Haviva by Piter Strumer who arrived at the kibbutz in 1972. Piter had heard from a friend about volunteering and coupled with the fact that he had just finished reading the book “Exodus” by Leon Uris, decided to try his luck and headed for Israel.
“I had intended to do my national army service in Holland after a time in kibbutz but when I went home decided to return to Israel and ended up serving in the Israeli Army instead,” explains Piter, who also converted to Judaism and became father to four Sabra – Israeli born – children.
Coming from the Lebanese border kibbutz of Baram to meet with Aya Sagi, Avi Leshem, the journalists, Arnie, Piter and Heath was Anneli Laine Maestro who originates from Sweden. In the mid-1980s Anneli had decided she was going to travel the world with a friend. Having heard that starting out in a kibbutz created many contacts in different countries the friends began their globetrotting at Kibbutz Baram. Anneli fell in love with the kibbutz and an Israeli and has been at Baram ever since. In present times she is busy working as a human resources manager and bringing up her three daughters.
Volunteers from many different countries are presently living and working on 25 kibbutzim throughout Israel. Aya Sagi is hoping that more kibbutzim will join the program in the near future enabling more young folks from abroad to have a never to be forgotten positive Israeli experience.
*** Seminars for kibbutz volunteers and volunteer leaders have been organized by the International Department, Givat Haviva, for over 25 years. The popular seminars generally take place on campus and consist of lectures on varying topics, visits to the museums and archives on campus and culminate in tours of the Wadi Ara region.
A field service is also offered and a recent seminar held at Kibbutz Hazorea on the topic of kibbutz was well received by the present group of 14 volunteers who come from not only different countries but a number of different continents.
Encounters of a different kind:
Journalists & Volunteers, old and new, meet at Givat Haviva. Aya Sagi kneeling front row next to volunteer leader Racheli Sharon of Kibbutz Hazorea
Photos & text: Lydia Aisenberg
