I A WOMAN'S VIEW I

Desert
Song

After a year on the
kibbutz, the heat got to
me so I took a break. I
always intended to return.

JORI RANHAND

Special to The Jewish News

went to Israel to find G-d
and I did, on a kibbutz
bounded by Akko, Haifa
and the sea.
God, a nice Jewish girl who
goes by the name of Yael, put
me in the avocado fields, my
first morning, starting at 4
a.m.
"I am the field manager,"
she told me as we rode out on
the tractor. "I decide all the
work people do — planting,
pulling weeds, picking. Or
when a field needs rest, I
decide. I am God in the fields."
"I always knew God was a
woman," I told her. Ah,
laughter.
I spent a week adding
white plastic sprinklers at in-
tervals along the black rub-
ber tubing by the avocado
plants. Our pipe in the desert,
she called it. Israeli irrigation.
My hands blistered from the
work, my back blistered from
the sun, but a harder job was
in store — pulling weeds in
the cotton fields. They don't
use hoes in Israel. lbo wimpy.
They use their hands. I never
failed to pull up a weed. Not
one of them could resist a
tyrant like me. I planted my
feet on either side of the weed,
grabbed low, and yanked. God
— that is, Yael — worked with
me, laughing at me the whole
time.
In August, after the cotton,
I was given an easy job, wash-

Jori Ranhand is a writer in
Jackson Heights, N.Y.

ing glasses in "moadon," the
kibbutz equivalent of a cof-
feehouse. They also served
tea, lemonade, and as much
gossip as we could handle.
We, the volunteers, and they,
the ulpanists, gossiped the
most. We did it separately
from them, and the kibbutz-
niks did it separately from all
of us. They huddled in cor-
ners, far away from us, vora-
ciously reading the Hebrew
newspapers and not talking
to us outsiders, suspicious
even of those of us who could
speak Hebrew.
We weren't staying, not on
this kibbutz, possibly not in
Israel, better not to get too
attached to us. Better not to
think about or remember the
possibilities of an easier life
off the kibbutz, outside of
Israel. I absorbed all this
from Yael — me with my bat
mitzvah lesson Hebrew and
she with her high school
English.
I marked the end of the har-
vest by a week of assign-
ments in the kitchen.
Somehow, peeling onions and
stacking cardboard boxes
weren't quite the same as
pulling feisty Jewish weeds
out of Israeli soil but Yael was
God in the kitchen, after the
harvest. Not even peeling
onions on the back porch by
the garbage heap kept me
safe from her teasing. She
would come out and watch
me shedding onion tears.
"You know all your onion
peels are going to end up in
that lovely green dumpster
you are so fond of sitting
near. That garbage will go on

the avocados, and grow killer
weeds in the cotton, just for
you, so you must stay," Yael
said.
"I know, all Jews should
live in Israel."
"So you'll join the ulpan, it
starts again soon. Go talk to
Ahuvah."
What else could I do? God
had spoken. I joined the
ulpan, which meant giving
over five - and - a - half months of
my life to the study of
Hebrew. Classes began with
Lily at 6 a.m. She then had
until eleven o'clock to fill our
sun-baked, sleep-glazed
brains with new words and
grammar. Actually, the sec-
ond half of the class was
devoted to conversation, an
impossibility to the stupid
sleepy, like me.
It was only because I got
into Akko regularly that I
discovered I might actually
be catching on. Cruising the
aisles of the supermarket was
a favorite pastime of us
starved Americans, unused to

the sparse, mostly vegetarian,
diet, and to the lack of read-
ily available bottles of Coke.
Going into town was a des-
perate need. When the labels
started resolving themselves
into words that made sense
and had meaning together,
well, my shock was great. My
compatriot ulpan dwellers
even caught me understand-
ing street signs.
God was glad I was learning
Hebrew. So were my Israeli
cousins, who live on Beit
Herat, a small moshav near
Aviv. They wanted me to
live in Israel, as they had
since 1947, as their three
children and ever-increasing
number of grandchildren do.
And I was ready to stay.
Almost.
My Jewish roots thirsted
for sand, but I couldn't take
the heat. I was glad when the
bronze sky became that Med-
iterranean azure blue, and the
rains came. Ulpan had ended,
and I had been on the kibbutz
for nearly a year. lb relieve

my cabin fever, I headed for
London, where I could be
rained on continuously, drink
gallons of Coke, eat meat.
I really meant to get back
to Israel. That was five years
aga I chose the Diaspora
because it made no demands
on me. I need not serve in the
army, speak Hebrew all the
time or become a vegetarian.
Now, when the harvest rains
swish against my New York
window pane, watering my
Queens interior gardens, I
remember how it felt, once,
against my legs, when I lived
in Israel. The Diaspora needs
Jews, too, I told myself, but I
knew I was lying.
So, I listen to the Israeli
tapes my cousins gave me.
My favorite song title means
"This Rain." I am writing,
with my life, my own desert
song. As for God, well, she
keeps sending me letters in
Hebrew asking me to come
back and help her build that
pipe in the desert. Her plea
adds words to my lament. ❑

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 77