4/10/02

Kibbutz of Dreams

Surely you've seen the movie Field of Dreams, in which a godly voice commands an Iowa farmer to build a baseball field so that long-dead players could play again. So here's the sequel:

 

Yoram is strolling through the corn field on tiny Kibbutz Davka. Suddenly, he hears a mysterious godly voice: "Build it, and he will come."

Yoram takes no notice, because unlike in Iowa, this sort of thing happens all the time in the Holy Land.

"Allo, Yoram, I said --"

"I heard you the first time," Yoram snaps back at the voice. He continues inspecting the crop, largely ignoring the commandment.

A flicker of lightning, a crackle of thunder, and the voice repeats, but with a tone of ominous impatience: "Build it, and he will come."

Exasperated, Yoram glares at the sky and bawls out the voice. "Ya-all-a! Do I look like the kibbutz secretariat to you? I don't make decisions. And don't think I'm going to stand up at the next general meeting and tell them we have to plow under our corn and build -- build what? For who? Why?"

There's a tremendous burst of fiery lightning, and suddenly Yoram is standing in a dunam of popcorn. "Build it, or else!"

Back home for lunch, Yoram tells his redheaded wife Uglit what happened. Humming absentmindedly, she places a plate of shnitzel, rice and peas in front of her husband. "Go wash your hands first. What do you think the voice wants you to build?"

"A baseball field."

"Not until you fix the trissim. And the door still squeaks. And ..."

Yoram rolls his eyes. One overbearing voice isn't enough?

Word gets around, because this is, after all, a kibbutz.

"Ma pitom baseball?" Bilha, from the laundry room, says in that way of hers. "I'm telling you it's a hi-tech factory we're supposed to build."

She just has to open her mouth, and a wild debate gets going.

"Whatarya, crazy? This is a kibbutz, the corn stays, I don't care what God says."

"Who's saying all of a sudden there's a God?"

"Yoram heard him, no?"

"So he should have asked for rain."

"Let's vote."

"Anyway, what's 'baseball'?"

"We should build a shopping mall. People will come."

"ALLO! THIS IS A KIBBUTZ!"

"She's right. First let them build a corn field in the middle of Tel Aviv, then we'll talk about this."

Well, being that this is a kibbutz deep in debt, and there is a hierarchy for decision-making, they go right to the top. Not the secretary. The bank manager.

He's religious, and American, he worships both God and baseball, and he's seen the movie, so he gives the bank's blessing. The kibbutz gets rid of the corn, sells off its tractors, builds a baseball field, and goes deeper in debt.

Nobody comes.

Yoram is sitting out in left field one day when he hears the voice again. "Ease his pain," it says, very nonspecifically.

He runs home and tells Uglit. Uglit has had enough of this. She slams down his plate of shnitzel, rice and peas, unties her apron, stalks out of the house, and yells at the sky. "You wanna talk, talk to ME. C'mon, big shot, like the corn field we once had, I'm all ears!"

She notices a shimmering light behind a cloud, which is weird, because there shouldn't be any clouds for another three months.

"Go the distance," the voice says; in other words, "Take a hike."

Apparently God does not realize: NOBODY talks to Uglit like that. A bolt of lightning ascends and evaporates the cloud.

She marches off to the baseball field and starts tearing it up. There's a man standing at first base. A ghost. It's Hank Greenberg. "Is this heaven?" he asks her innocently. Uglit doesn't know who the hell he is (she's Polish) and chases him away.

Yoram (he's Romanian) realizes instantly who it is. "He's a building contractor! Now it all makes sense! We weren't suppose to build a baseball field after all -- the voice was telling me to pave over the kibbutz and make roads and apartment buildings and parking lots!"

The kibbutzniks get together on this.

"God wants the kibbutz to make money."

Bilha reminds them what's what. "There is no God, there is no money, there is no baseball. There is no corn. But there is laundry, and so there is still a kibbutz."

"So, what, we build a laundromat?"

"Makes more sense than a baseball field."

"This is a kibbutz! CORN makes more sense!"

"Let's vote."

"What're you suggesting, we plow up the baseball field and plant corn?"

Yoram is deep in thought, trying to figure out the mystery of the voice's exhortations, until finally: "Aha!"

"Yeah, nu?"

Yoram is all sparkly, like he's just had a vision from -- well, if not God, a bank manager.

" 'Build it ..." he says breathlessly, " ... and he will come!' "

"What? Who?"

"Dairy!"

"We had a dairy, and we got rid of the cows to plant corn, which we got rid of to --"

"No!" Yoram exults. "Deri! I think we're supposed to build a yeshiva! I know you'll think this is stupid, but that's what God wants us to do! If we build it, Aryeh Deri will come study here; then, thousands of Shasniks will come too! Don't you see? 'Ease his pain' -- this'll do it!"

He's right about one thing: they think it's stupid.

Have you ever seen kibbutzniks get into an ideological frenzy? Yoram had said all the wrong words. He is very nearly cast out. Uglit divorces him on the spot.

Menashe, who used to run the tractor but now sponges down bleacher seats, spits indignantly. "Deri! He should go back to jail and finish his sentence!"

"But that's just it!" Yoram exclaims. "That's what the voice meant by 'Go the distance'! Deri should do the rest of his time here! Lots of prisoners go to a kibbutz for rehabilitation, right?"

Bilha shrugs. "He's right. And think of all that extra laundry."

"THIS IS A KIBBUTZ!! Is this what we've come to?!"

"Unfortunately, yes," says the bank manager the next morning, when all the kibbutzniks crowd into his office. "You're the last ideological holdout, the only real kibbutz left. It's time you made some big-time money -- if not for you, for me. You owe the bank millions."

"And you're not going to loan us more."

The bank manager smiles, which makes them uneasy. "You don't know how things work in this country? There's no money to bail out the kibbutzim. Why? Because it all goes to build yeshivas. Build it, and the money will come. You'll be rich. If you don't, you'll be bankrupt. So choose."

"Let's vote."

They build the yeshiva.

Nobody comes.

Then, one twilit evening, Yoram notices a ghostly figure in the yeshiva. "Are you Deri?"

"No, I'm fleishig." The man shakes Yoram's hand. "My name is Rabbi Nachman, from Uman. Is this heaven?"

Yoram's head is spinning. "No, it's Davka."

"You don't mind if I stay a while? There's some Talmud I want to go over."

"Sure. We built this for you."

"There are others, you know."

Yoram smiles. "They're welcome here too."

The next day, Yoram brings the other kibbutzniks to see. They're stupefied. "Hey look, there's Rashi! And that's Maimonides, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Vilna Gaon ..."

"I hope you don't mind," Reb Nachman says to Yoram. "I needed a minyan."

The kibbutzniks vote, and it's unanimous: they all become religious.

Reb Nachman gives Yoram a twinkly-eyed look. "Build it," he says, then looks over to a young man hunched over a scroll, "and he will come."

Yoram is stunned. "The Moshiach?"

The young man looks up. It's Yoram's late father. "My God," Yoram says breathlessly, "I haven't seen him since I left home to join the kibbutz ... All he wanted was to sit and study with his son ... Can you imagine, a Jewish boy, not wanting to study Talmud with his father?"

The other rabbis disappear.

"Reb --" Yoram whispers hesitantly; "-- D-dad?" There's a flourish of base violins. "Y-you want to study a page of Gemara with me?"

His father smiles sweetly. "I'd like that -- son."

Which they do.

"Say -- is this heaven?"

"Must be."

And out the window, you can see a long line of cars approaching -- Subarus, Mercedes taxis, Egged buses, Toyotas, toos-toosim -- full of government-subsidized yeshiva bochers, each of them ready to hand over 20 shefor a chance to study with the great rabbis of the past.

The kibbutz, if you can still call it that, is saved.