Doron, kibbutz Ramat Yochanan's legendary auto-mechanic, was a multi-talented and unique character.  If he had not made a career out of being the best mechanic in the kibbutz movement - the kind who can fix anything that moves - he would probably have been a professor or an educator of some sort.  Many kibbutz youngsters who had dropped out of the formal educational system, found Doron's garage to be a safe haven and educational establishment all rolled into one, and under Doron's guiding hand, these youngsters acquired not just mechanical skills but also values and life skills.

As a second generation kibbutznik, the son of founders of Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan, Doron would often say, "This isn't what we were promised."  Apparently, on September 3, 2011, that same feeling brought nearly half a million Israelis out of their homes to protest, to declare that they expect more of their government and more from their government.

When the protest movement announced its "March of the Million" it was obvious to my family that we would take part.

The demonstrations were held in various regions and cities the length and breadth of Israel. We debated which demonstration location we should attend.  In the end, we chose the one closest to where we live, at the entrance to Moshav Kfar Yehoshua in the Yezreel Valley.  On our way there we began to think that maybe the demonstration at Kfar Yehoshua had been canceled at the last minute, because the location was not mentioned at all on the radio news programs we heard - the radio ignored it completely.  Apparently the broadcasters were simply ignorant of the veteran moshav, which had been established in 1927 and was named after Yehoshua Hankin, the man responsible for most of the major Zionist land purchases in the late 19th century and early 20th.

During the first decades of the Zionist settlement in the Land of Israel, when someone said, "I'm going to the Valley," everyone knew which valley they meant.  The Yezreel Valley was the bastion of labor settlement, the cradle of the kibbutz movement, "THE Valley" of Israel.

In daily life, by the time evening falls the inhabitants of the Valley are already cocooned in the shelter of their homes - the habits of farmers who are up before dawn to milk the cows and plow the land, people who cannot afford the luxury of a nightlife.  But on this occasion the Valley surprised even itself;about 10,000 demonstrators filled the cornfield, which transformed that night from a dry harvested tract of stubble into a town square filled with protesting masses.

I walked around, greeting friends and observing the diverse people at the demonstration.  I saw old people and babies, farmers and philosophers, religious wearers of yarmulkes and secular wearers of tank tops.  I could identify only one single common denominator: The expectation of something more for the Promised Land of Israel.

The wave of social and economic protests appears to have simply brought to the fore a feeling that had been incubating a long time, but had not found a mode of popular expression prior to this summer.  A feeling of "this is not what we were promised" and  the feeling that we deserve better.  A feeling that we expect more of ourselves and we expect more of our country. A feeling that the Israel of the 21st Century is not the Israel we were promised and that we promised to ourselves and our children.

My neighbor, Yitzhak Lavi, told me a joke that seems very appropriate right now.  "A kibbutznik goes into the kibbutz dining room and tells the other kibbutz members that his cat just gave birth to eight kittens: two capitalists and six socialists.  The next day he goes back to the dining room and says that there are still eight kittens, but now six of them are capitalists and only two are socialists.  The members ask him, 'So what changed between yesterday and today?  How come all of a sudden the majority are now capitalists?'  He answered, 'Today they opened their eyes...' "

Israelis feel they too have now opened their eyes, but in a somewhat different way.  The old-school socialism that had seemed to have lost its vitality has suddenly attracted Israelis who feel that during the period when they were under the spell of capitalism and privatization their country was stolen from them.

While attending a conference on regional economic cooperation, I sat next to a senior Israel-based American official.  This period is not exactly the Golden Age of cooperation between Israel and its neighbors, and the atmosphere was a bit despondent.  Nevertheless, everyone was unanimous that even at a tense and difficult time, it is critical to keep trying.

As we waited between one presentation and the next, the American official and I began talking about the social protest movement in Israel.  He said he had been in Israel a year and was still trying to understand the country.  I told him that even though I have lived here my whole life, I am still trying to understand it.

He shared with me some of his wisdom about the protest, using the American example.  "In the States, it is considered perfectly legitimate for different members of society to reach different outcomes.  It's fine that some people are rich and others aren't - that's the essence of the American dream.  But what's not legitimate is for there to be unequal opportunities. In my opinion," he said, "while it's vital for Israelis to stress the importance of everyone having equal opportunities, they must also take great care not to stop people from achieving different results."

The recent wave of protest reminded Israelis of their hopes for the "Israel that we were promised", and brought them out into the town squares and the cornfields to seek their Promised Land.  The soul-searching days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are fast approaching.  While we continue our quest for the land we were promised, we should remember that in fact we are already living in it - against all odds - and that its existence in our stormy neighborhood never came with a guarantee.

September 2011