Rina Amit brings a wealth
of wisdom to children and
parents at Workmen's Circle
from Scotland, England
and Israel
ina Amit is sur-
rounded by children. It is Israel's In-
dependence Day, and she tells them
stories of other children on the kibbutz
where she once lived. They see the
tears in her eyes. All the children at
the Workmen's Circle Nursery School
in Oak Park, know Rina is from Israel.
Many of them believe that Israelis
speak English, like Rina does, with a
Scots accent. All are too young to know
that her gifts as a teacher, and a
friend, first came to light in Israel and
flourished there.
When Rina was 15, she decided
she could no longer attend the
Presbyterian church services which
had been so much a part of her
childhood. "I was looking for some-
thing that I could believe in with
dignity, without pretending that I
believed in fairy tales," she says.
She imposed on herself an intensive
course study about "all religions."
She read philosophies and teachings,
searching for meaning and relevance
that she ultimately found in
Judaism.
Rina is a long way from the shy,
ginger-haired 19-year-old who, in
1958, left her family in Glasgow to
find office work in London. It took a
lot of bravery to get that far and she
was overwhelmed with the com-
plexities and loneliness, of life in a
strange city away from family and
friends.
She found herself drawn to Fri-
day night services at a London syn-
agogue. She attended faithfully for a
year, but was frustrated by her ina-
bility to understand the Hebrew por-
tions of the service. In particular,
she wanted to understand what the
rabbi said to her personally, with
such kindness, at the end of each
service. She was too timid to ask
him.
As a remedy, she began taking
Hebrew language classes in the eve-
nings, after work. "It took me weeks
to figure out that Gut Shabbos
SCO TS
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MARILYN LESSEM
Special to The Jewish News
wasn't Hebrew at all. I felt really
proud when I could finally say to
him Shabat Shalom."
It was from her Hebrew teacher,
and the books he used, that her
interest in Israel grew. She was a
dreamer than, and more and more
her dreams became preoccupied with
the idea of Israel, the idea of kib-
butz. "I liked the idea of people liv-
ing in an equal society, with
everyone having equal chances, if
they wanted to utilize those chances.
That's what took me to Israel."
Her parents were convinced she
was making a serious mistake. They
made her promise to get a round-trip
ticket and return in a year, so she
wouldn't be "stuck" there. Friends
warned her that Israelis weren't
friendly to outsiders, and that she
would find it difficult to feel like she
belonged.
"I really didn't know what to
expect," she recalls. "I thought of the
kibbutz as being full of supermen
and superwomen, always serious and
intellectual."
In February 1962, Rina found
herself on a boat leaving the harbor
at Marseilles, destined for Israel. "I
stood on the back of the boat, and
watched the water get wider and
wider and wider. I thought, 'My God,
let me off!' It was only then that it
hit me what I was doing."
She arrived in Israel knowing
enough Hebrew to say "good morn-
ing" and "good evening."
Her first night on Kibbutz
Machanayim in the Galilee, "I lay in
my bed, in my room, alone. I didn't
know anybody. I just listened to
people speaking Hebrew outside my
room, and somehow they sounded
Scots. The intonation, and something
about the way they spoke, was just
like country Scots to me." She was
home.
The next morning, rising at 4
a.m., she was put to work in the or-
chards, "tiger hunting" — killing in-
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