views from the galilee


Hatzerim Air Force Base - the ceremony where pilot training course graduates receive their ranks has just ended. My brother-in-law, who himself holds a high-ranking position at the base's school, invited us to come and see this impressive ceremony.

After the ceremony was over, we sat down together for a festive dinner on the porch of the military residence where my sister, brother-in-law and their three children live. The air of the Negev desert was hot and dry, even at this late evening hour. As we finished the meal, and when I was already contemplating the long road ahead of us, back to our home in the Galilee, my brother-in-law said, "Tell me, did growing up on a kibbutz traumatized you too?"  "What do you mean?" I asked.  "Well," he answered. "When you think of your childhood on the kibbutz, what are the first thoughts that come to mind? Positive or negative?" I started to think. The truth is, this was the first time this (very good) question had ever crossed my mind.

Some weeks later.  Parents summer camp at Hoshaya.  Every child's parents are responsible for occupying and entertaining their children and their friends over one summer vacation day.  Thanks to parents camp, the families of Hoshaya manage to survive the long hot vacation months, and disconnect their kids from Facebook at least for a few hours.  In our family, it was clear that the responsibility for this children's activity (which most of the year is my wife's jurisdiction) would fall on me.  And if that was the case, then it was obvious that my son and his friends would be going for a visit to the kibbutz I grew up on, Ramat Yochanan.

Ramat Yochanan is one of the oldest and most established kibbutzim in the Kibbutz Movement.  It was established in 1932 by a group of immigrants mainly from Eastern Europe, and soon established a position of strength and leadership among the other kibbutzim. Today, its economy relies on a factory that manufactures polycarbonate sheets, with millions of dollars in exports each year. Some call it the kibbutz that laid the plastic egg.  Agriculture, which used to be the crowning glory of the kibbutz, is now practically only for show - to maintain control over the land and to occupy a few kibbutz members.

I was born into the third generation of the Melamed family on the kibbutz. My grandparents were among its founding members - not the first, but among them. My grandfather was a kind of unique kibbutznik.  One of the kibbutz elders who is longer with us once told me, one afternoon in the avocado grove as we were harvesting the fruit, that my grandfather died of heart failure at a young age because of "hyper-activity".

My father was born on Ramat Yochanan just a short time after the War of Independence, and his most vivid childhood memory was the evacuation of the children to the nearby town after an attack by the Druze on the kibbutz. My father is a classic product of the kibbutz. Highly talented and motivated who, in spite of the senior positions he held and continues to hold at the kibbutz (today he is chairman of the kibbutz industries and chairman of the regional factories, among others), he still cares what the dairy man said about him to the laundry woman at lunch in the kibbutz dining hall. 

My mother died of cancer when she was 52. She also grew up in a kibbutz - Ashdot Yaakov in the Jordan Valley.  After their marriage, and a short trial period in the blast furnace of the Jordan Valley, my parents moved to Ramat Yochanan, and soon afterwards, I was born.

I was born and raised on the kibbutz, the last generation that was raised in the communal living system of the children's home.  Until I left the kibbutz to go to graduate school in the United States, already with a wife and baby, I spent almost my entire life in the kibbutz. At the age of 15 I spent a year in Holland with my family, as part of my father's work. After high school I spent 5 years away from the kibbutz - one year spent in community service, and another four years in the military. Yet during all that time, the kibbutz was always "home".

And now, back to the laundry list.  What did we have?  How can one make an accounting of the pluses and minuses of growing up on a kibbutz?  The advantages and disadvantages, traumas and wonders, the good and bad, and the effect of the children's house on me and who I was to become?  At first I thought to create a kind of balance sheet of what was good and what was bad.  But then I changed my mind. On the dark side of kibbutz life much has already been written.  On the superficial connection between the children and their parents, on the kibbutz lawnmower that didn't leave room for any individualism, and on "us" versus "me.

But why focus on the bad if you can relate what was good?  Thus I decided to recount the advantages of kibbutz life from my own personal experience.

Equality Among People

Ever since my studies in the United States and until today, and with my work that takes me around the world, I have had the opportunity to meet, and often befriend many people of influence and means.  My kibbutz background serves me well in these relationships, with an ability to talk with people at eye level, without being intimidated or put-off by their money or power.  One of the more attractive values on the kibbutz of old was the equality among people.  Each person, regardless of where he or she worked and how much money he had in his account, was valued. I remember there were those who carried this to an extreme, denigrating the skewed values of bourgeois city society. 

Kibbutz members were judged according to a different set of values: the circumference of their muscle, the size of their tractor, their rank in the army, their ability on the basketball court and, of course, their diligence and hard work. 

The Connection to the Landkibbutz

In today's industrialized western world, many people grow up without knowing what bread is made of, from where milk comes and what is the connection between a flower and fruit.  Growing up where the milk came straight from the dairy, the birth of a calf was a social occasion, the prayer for rain was accompanied by a plea that the rain would not fall before the cotton was harvested, and where the season's fruit was picked from the trees, all these taught us about the circle of life.  In my youth I knew every fruit tree in every kibbutz garden. There was an undercover contest among the kids of the kibbutz over who would be the first to pick a new fruit (guava, figs, pomegranates, fijoya, persimmon and more) - even before it was entirely ripe but before anyone else got to it.  When we wanted a nut cake, my mother would send us out to collect pecans from under the tree and crack them over a newspaper. Cheesecake with berries was prepared during mulberry season, picked from the mulberry tree by the school. The connection between the land, the tree and the fruit was second nature to us.

The Work Ethic:

There was no greater insult in the kibbutz society I grew up in, than to call a member "lazy".  It was no coincidence that the Zionist pioneers of the early 20th century established the concept of "the religion of labor".  Many violations were overlooked at the kibbutz, including several of the ground rules of moral behavior described in the Ten Commandments. But for idleness, there was no forgiveness.  Naturally, hard work and dedication to one's job were highly esteemed.  As if it were yesterday, I remember Zvi and Abram'ke appearing at the orchard for an early morning cup of coffee before work, proud and determined workers already well into their seventies.  Once, kibbutz members insisted on working as long as they could stand on their feet. And those who didn't work?  They were never forgotten. About one senior kibbutz member who reached the age of ninety after a life-long career in public service, malicious gossipers attributed his longevity to a life spent slacking off.

From a very young age, we worked.  We milked goats before school, picked oranges and lemons after school, rounded up poultry at night, and the list goes on.  Half of every school vacation day was allocated for work.  Whoever grew up in a kibbutz learned from a young age that work was an inseparable part of life.

Independence and the Ability to Land on One's Feet

At the kibbutz I grew up in there was no place to escape and nowhere to hide. We grew up in the company of 10 other children in our same age group, living in a children's house without our parents, dependent on the grace of an intercom and the night guardswoman when we woke up from a bad dream or wet the bed.  We had to prove ourselves in the agricultural field and the sports field, and survive the struggles for power between children. After all that, we grew up empowered with endurance and independence - having learned to either sink or swim.

The Connection to Nature and the Seasons

From its earliest days, the Kibbutz Movement rejected and distanced religion and religious holidays. In its place, the kibbutz pioneers developed a religion of the land and of nature. Traditional holidays like Passover, Sukkot, Simchat Torah and Rosh Hashana shifted to the agricultural and cultural.  When the fall winds began to blow, driving away the summer heat, we knew that Rosh Hashana was near. And when the air filled with the intoxicating scent of the flowering citrus trees, every kibbutz member knew that Passover was around the corner.  The connection between nature, agriculture and the seasons was completely ingrained in us.  Nature wasn't some abstract idea that one reads about in poetry books or sees in films. It oriented us in our world.

In the fall of 1994, I left the kibbutz, together with my wife and our eldest child, who was then 6 months old, a few thousand dollars saved from my army service, and plenty of motivation and "chutzpa".  I had been accepted to graduate school at Harvard University in Boston. The kibbutz members asked me if that wasn't too daring a step, and I thought to myself how hard it was to see the kibbutz going capitalist. If I was going to live in a capitalist society, I might as well do it at Harvard.

One freezing Boston night, I was the first to arrive for an evening class.  The classroom was dark and when I turned on the light, someone suddenly jumped out from under one of the desks - a homeless man with long hair and ragged clothes.  Standing there face to face, we were both startled and a little frightened.  He recovered first and asked, "where did you come from?" "Israel", I told him.  "Then welcome to America", he responded with a broad grin.

That same welcome I received from a homeless man at Harvard stays with me to this day, and keeps me conscious of the balance of assets and liabilities ingrained in me from the kibbutz. 


Sagi Melamed lives with his family in the community of Hoshaya in the Galilee.  He is Vice President for External Relations and Development at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, and Head Instructor at the Hoshaya Karate Club.