1 ISRAEL I
After 12 Years at Hunters Square,
Mikva'ot
We've Lost Our Lease
We Must Sell Out All
Continued from preceding page
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(Including Store Fixtures)
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Comforters, Bedspreads, Rugs,
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SEVENTH HEAVEN
Hunters Square
Orchard Lake Rd. at 14 Mile
855-3777
Hours:
Mon.-Sat. 10-6
Thurs. 10-8, Sun. 12-5
Yaakov. Spherical in design,
they are constructed as two-
story pre-fabs and are com-
prised of two mikvah pools in
adjoining facilities off narrow
hallways.
Rebbitzen Matilda Brand,
head supervisor of
Jerusalem's mikva'ot, at-
tributes wide attendance at
her facilities in Jerusalem to
the high standards maintain-
ed. Both she and Yehiel
Kirshenbaum, director of
Mikva'ot for the Religious
Council of Jerusalem, aspire
to a kind of state of the art in
the standards they are
establishing. Mr. Kirshen-
baum's technical improve-
ments include centralizing
the laundering of newly
bought mikvah towels on a
quality scale and subcontrac-
ting supervision of the
chemical hygiene of each
mikvah pool to a sophisti-
cated laboratory that tests its
cleanliness.
One aspect of the services
provided at the mikvah can-
not be assigned a money
value. Women attending the
mikva'ot are not merely in a
physical state of preparation
for resumption of marital
relations. The staff manning
these facilities are often call-
ed upon to share confidences,
if not to provide actual sup-
portive counseling to any
number of the capital's
female population. The pride
these "mikvah women" take
in being gracious, caring
"hostesses" reflects, in good
share, on the growing popula-
rity of this ancient custom. ❑
WZPS
Kibbutzim Today
Face Different Crises
AVA CARMEL
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TOWING & RENTAL CARS AVAILABLE
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MAX FLEISCHER, FOUNDER
72
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1991
553-7111
Special to The Jewish News
R
eminiscing about the
communal way of life
on Kibbutz Ma'ayan
Zvi 50 years ago, David
Raban recalls wistfully,
"Everything was shared.
When the first member got
his own private electric kettle
— what a commotion
everyone made! And the first
private radio! A few years ago
a member received a VCR as
a gift. Even then people made
a fuss. Why get so excited? I
said. Soon everyone will have
a video. And that's exactly
what happened."
Ma'ayan Zvi, an established
kibbutz south of Haifa, per-
sonifies the dilemma of the
kibbutzim today. With its
modern dining hall, swimm-
ing pool and broad lawns it
looks more like an affluent
country club than a pioneer-
ing settlement.
Located on the Carmel
Mountain range, overlooking
the aqua Mediterranean Sea,
it overlooks the fertile coastal
plain and the kibbutz fields,
orchards and fishponds. In ad-
dition to a commercial
garage, Ma'ayan Zvi also runs
"Scopus Optical Industry,"
which produces plastic lenses,
periscopes and night sites for
rifles.
Yet Ma'ayan Zvi, like many
kibbutzim, is deeply in debt
and in the midst of an
ideological crisis. Of its 400
members, more than 100 are
on pension and many fear
that members are beginning
to abandon the sacred ideals
on which the kibbutz was
founded.
Kibbutz children at play.
David Raban's soft-spoken
wife Ruth looks back on these
years with bittersweet
memories. "We were spoiled
children from Europe," she
says. "We knew we couldn't
build a country on intellec-
tual work, so we based
ourselves on agriculture, on
hard physical labor."
For many years, income
from agriculture, the kib-
butz's sole source of income,
was highly lucrative. Profits
had a direct relation to hard
work and bookkeeping was
relatively simple, with deci-
sions such as whether or not
to buy a new tractor being
made in the weekly members'
meetings. But in the 1970s
many kibbutzim invested
heavily in high-tech in-
dustries, managing them the
same way they ran their
agricultural branches. Com-
peting in the world market,
where currency rates fluc-
tuate and cheap products
from the Far East abound, the
kibbutz's problems began.
Hired labor also was taboo, so
the kibbutzniks had to man
their own industry, from
management down to
assembly-line workers, with
kibbutz members largely ig-
norant of the art of running
a high-tech industry.
In the 1970s and '80s,