1/3/99

Memories of Idl

    They laughed at Idl's funeral.
    "Did you hear the one about Idl and the 'bathroom clerk'? He went into Jerusalem and he had to use the bathroom. So he went to the bus station, and a man said he had to pay a shekel. He was amazed: 'I have to pay to pee?!' He said to the man, 'I only need a minute. But if you come to me, to Kiryat Anavim, I'll give you something to eat, I'll show you around, you can pee, it'll cost you nothing.' The man let him in."
    When Idl died a month ago, all the Idl stories came out, and in death as in life, he had 'em chuckling.
    "With Idl, you could never tell. At times, he'd be talking seriously, but laughing inside. Or he would tell you a serious story, but laughing."
    Yehuda "Idl" Ben-Avraham (1899-1999) died five months short of his 100th birthday. With his demise ends a remarkable era: he was the last of the founding generation of Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim. The first settlers, including his two older brothers, were an organic group of 25 pioneers who came en masse in the early '20s -- all from the environs of a Ukrainian shtetl, Zhvanitz.
    By the time of his death he was a curious archeological relic in a community far removed from its origins. Not a single member of the Ben-Avraham family remains on Kiryat Anavim; none of the crops the pioneers established are still grown there -- not even grapes, which gave the kibbutz its name.

IDL HAD 10 siblings: one was slaughtered in infancy by an intruder while suckling her mother's breast; another died young; of the remaining eight, one lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the age of 103, and the rest came here during the Third Aliya, following World War I. One brother lived to 94; two sisters, 85 and 95, are still alive.
    Idl was said to be the only one of the family with a sense of humor (he was also the only one with blue eyes, if that means anything). His brothers Yossi and Yitzhak were ideologically zealous, and dismissive of the more quixotic Idl: he was ... different, which, given the prevailing attitudes, was unforgivable.
    "Yossi was the 'finance minister,' and he ruled over Kiryat Anavim with an iron fist: he controled the money, the people -- and even the time. In the early days, it was felt that no one should own anything that others didn't have. Now, Yossi had a watch. Others wanted one too, and they confronted Yossi. 'What do you need a watch for?' he would answer; 'If you need to know the time, just ask me.' "
    The youngest of the founding halutzim (pioneers), Idl was shunted aside, in Kiryat Anavim just as in Zhvanitz. His revenge was to outlive them all, but there was a sad irony: he spent most of his life at the kibbutz a loner, either because he was too young, or too old.
    In the waning years, however, no longer repressed by his domineering brothers, Idl developed a following of younger people grooving on his folk wisdom, humor, good nature and colorful memories.
    "When he was 80, Idl decided to be a strudel baker. In that way, he always had company. People would come, sit with him, have a cup of tea and a strudel." 
    Idl loved labor, and he had his hand in everything, from cleaning sewers to making jam. From 1921 to 1926 he lived in the north, making gravel or clearing swamps. He spent 73 years on Kiryat Anavim in the Jerusalem Corridor, but he was always a Zhvanitzer.
    "A month before he died, I took a picture of him. I had a fancy camera, with a remote control. Idl said, 'Y'know, not even in Zhvanitz was there such a camera like this!'"
    "Idl predicted the end of the kibbutz movement in the 1970s. Then, he was working in construction. A couple asked for a particular color of tile for the bathroom he was building them, and he said, 'This is the end. When people can choose bathroom tiles, phht, the kibbutz is a goner.'"
    "It was sometime in the '40s, he went into town to hear a lecture, and he had to pay a piastre. It was no money, but of course he didn't have it, because he wasn't allowed pocket money. So a stranger loaned him a piastre. And I tell you, to his dying day he felt bad he never repaid the man."
    "Oh, he was a shovav (mischievous). He got involved in everything. There was a story he told me, about 60 years ago: he was in Tel Aviv, and he had no money for a bus back home. It so happened that there were floods that day, and people couldn't cross the street. So Idl, he quickly got some boards and laid them across the street, and he stood at one end, and collected a toll."
    "Idl hated milking the cows. One day he milked one, made cocoa, sat and waited. Sure enough, two men came by, and they wanted cocoa. 'Milk the cows,' Idl told them, 'and I'll make you a cocoa.' Y'see, Idl was the first kibbutz capitalist."
    When he was nearing the end -- well, that's what people thought a decade ago, when he hit 90 -- microphones and video cameras began to appear before him, collecting his memories.
    "How long can a person live?" he asked in 1989. As it turned out, a lot more.    
    A recording stored at the archive of Kiryat Anavim captures him at his best. Still speaking in a quaint, archaic, Ashkenazic-Russian accent, Idl gave his younger admirers something to treasure. "We were young, and lonely; you know how it is, we were clearing the swamps and we wanted a little company. Some of the girls were more pretty, some were less pretty. Not that I was so good-looking. Anyway, I was walking with a girl, I forget who by now. Suddenly I feel a hand on my shoulder. Some fellow from the Second Aliya. And he pushes me aside, and continues on with the girl." Poor Idl. He was only from the Third Aliya, lower on the pecking order. Why didn't he stand up for himself? "I was not one of the brave ones," he admitted. 
    Idl was afraid of death, he recently told a 69-year-old nephew, who tried to reassure him.
    "Look," Idl retorted, "When you get to my age, and you know what you're talking about, we'll discuss it again."