Growing up on the Kibbutz

Finally I have a chance to write. It is amazing how fast the days are flying by. Tomorrow it will be a month that I am in Israel. My days are so full. I am struggling to find time to go to the beach!!! But, I feel my days are good and well spent.

My class is hard and very challenging. For the first two weeks I felt I was really struggling. This week, I am getting things quicker. My teacher is so wonderful and caring. Last Friday we had a little Shabbat celebration and it was so special. I miss going to temple and that was fun. We went over the ritual of Shabbat in Hebrew.

In less than three weeks we have covered about 50 verbs in the present tense. I can’t remember everyone every time, but I am remembering them easier these days. It took me a while to get a good study pattern down. I am wasting tons of ink and paper but my system is working. I am basically writing standards like when you are punished in grammar school. I say the words as I write them. I guess it is thanks again to my forth grade teacher, Mrs. Miyashiro who taught me my multiplication this way too. It is working. Slowly but surely.

We are learning sentence structure right now. And it is very different than English. One example is there is no I and Me, it is the same word. But there are many differences. Hebrew is not a real polite language. They don’t sugar coat there thoughts. It is a language of commands and yelling. One of the ladies that works in the laundry with me was in the Ulpan years ago. I asked her when she felt she could speak without having to think about it. She said the first time she fought with her husband and yelled at him in Hebrew; it took about a year.

So that leads me to work. Work is not really work; it is more tedious than anything else. I do enjoy speaking to some of the women working there. There are a lot of different views and options and personalities. I am not crazy about the woman that manages the ulpanists in the laundry. She is pretty crabby and never even attempts to be nice to us. One of my fellow ulpan laundry buddies did point out that at least she is not only mean to us, but to all the other women as well.

But many of the women are friendly and loving and quite interested in the ulpanist. I was warned that Kibbutzniks don’t give a fiddlers fart about us, but it is not true. They want our options and they like to talk about their lives.

Some of the things I have learned about Kibbutz life have lead me to believe that this is a very fascinating thing I am in. Something interesting to think about is this; when kibbutzim first start back in the day, the children lived together, separate from their parents. Actually, one of my peers on the ulpan grew up in Israel till he was 8 in this manner. I was amazed to hear of this practice. As far as I know this is no longer done, but 10 years ago it still was common.

Omar said it was a great way to grow up and that when his family moved to the US it was very hard to get used living with his parents. He said he is much more distant and independent from his parents than most kids.
Sofit works in the laundry with me and has two kids of her own. She spoke to me about her experience growing up this way and now having children that she has to raise. Sofit felt that this system was a coping mechanism for the generation that survived the Holocaust. She said her mother and father were both survivors and her mom had many mental problems from this trauma. She said when she would stay over night sometimes at her house, that she hated it. She told me her mother wouldn’t let her cough; if she took a crap she couldn’t stand the noise or smell. But Sofit said she would not want her kids to grow up this way because there was a lot of smoking and sex at a very young age and she said the kids were wild. Sofit loves her kids. She talks about them all the time and shows me pictures and tells me stories. So to each there own. I just can’t imagine how weird it would be to raise a child as their parent after you basically raise yourself with other kids your age.