11/5/98
C'est
Lavi
Where Saladin and the Crusaders did battle eight centuries
ago, fighting for the Holy Land to be Moslem
or Christian, a jaunty Irishman strolls about,
living proof that it was the Jews who won.
ג€The place was abs'lutely barren when
we arrived, nothing whats'ever,ג€ says CB Kaylook
what I've done here. You don't think of it;
occasionally you might say, my, it's beautiful
here.ג€
But they are reminded of it every day. Lavi runs a thriving
hotel, a rare place where haredim and Christians
vacation together. (The only hotel mentioned
in the Talmud was right here.) There is always
a gaggle of oohing and aahing visitors promenading
about the grounds, which is not always appreciated
by the natives.
For one thing, certain kinds of Jews don't feel good about
serving Christian Germans of that generation. , in a sort of growly, baritone brogue drawl. He
invites a gander 'round the lush lawns and forestry
of Kibbutz Lavi, a strategic Galilee hilltop
hard by the Horns of Hittin, site of the Crusaders'
final comeuppance.
Practically upon the bloodsoaked battlefield,
Lavi is surviving another historic rise and
fall -- that of the failing kibbutz ideology.
Later, I find CB on guard duty in the sentry hut, keeping
an eye out not so much for crucifix-toting or
Allah-chanting hordes but for winsome lasses
coming up the road. He jabs his cane at the
buttons on a TV in the hut, changing channels
with this low-tech remote control until he settles
on a nature program showing mating walruses.
ג€Bred and buttered in Dublin,ג€ CB has been on Lavi since
1955, six years after its founding. ג€The main
job, for yars, was clearing the rucks off the
fields. We have a problem t' this day, as we
plow, we pull oop more rucks.ג€
There may have been barely a blade of grass when the original
43 settlers arrived, but in time, it got to the point where Lavi had to hack down the damn
foliage because it was getting to be a bit much.
A visitor once marveled that it was a great
idea to establish a kibbutz in a park, though
it was in fact quite the opposite.
ג€Look,
y' don't sit and pat yerself on the back every
day and say, my Gawd,
Lavi is a religious kibbutz, and not a few original members
were orphaned by the Holocaust. Some of them
were saved by the Kindertransport, a pre-war
mission to get Jewish children out of Germany
and into England.
ג€There war people who warn't too huppy about Germans staying
in the hotel, and being on the kibbutz at all.
But then somebody made the point, where're you
going to draw the line? The Germans were terrible,
but who's t' know who wasn't? What about old
Poles? And the French were so wonderful? And
who wants the bliddy British either? There are
people who wun't work in the hotel because of
it.
ג€We have one member -- he even gives lectures to the groups
-- but he will not give his hand to any of these
people because, he says, I don't know which
hand has blood on it.
ג€I always say to them, 'Nobody can ever repay me for...
for one Jewish child's terror. How can anyone repay a child being torn away from his parents?ג€
CB once flew into a rage when a Swiss tour group set out
on a sightseeing march through the kibbutz.
They were carrying their national flag -- a
cross. ג€No, hey, no!ג€ he bellowed, running
at them. ג€You take that thing down, you're not
going to walk through my home with a bliddy
cross!ג€
He's capable of pouncing on a group of elderly pilgrims,
but CB is much more likely to charm them. His
large, square face has impish mischief written
all over it, he's lightning-quick with the (usually
off-color) rejoinder, and he's a crackling good
jokester, boosted by his gregarious Irishness.
WHILE SO many kibbutzim face a glum future, bereft of their ideological raison
d'etre, Lavi's laughing.
I wonder if it is, perhaps, because secular kibbutzim could
not adapt to radical changes in secular society,
while religious kibbutzim don't have that problem
because religious society remains constant.
No, CB says, religious society has changed: it has polarized,
as Jews of all stripes migrate to the extremes.
Lavi, however, has not become more this or more that: by
resisting deviation, it has become more itself.
It has maintained the communalism that other kibbutzim lost.
ג€We had meetings about it recently, and people,
yoongstuhs, want to carry on. The dining room
is still used, of course! Breakfust, loonch,
great loonches!ג€ He pats his wobbly belly and
grins. ג€Soopers I don't go to. I've ritched
an age where all the kids running about drive
me oop the wall.
ג€In that respect we're quite successful too, t'ank God.
We've got yoongstuhs staying, new yoong families
coming. I think we're more successful in keeping
our youth than the majurity of kibbutzim. We're
pretty much set for the next generation.ג€
The secret to success?
ג€Oh, I dunno. You'll have to make something oop.ג€
I don't have to. After a moment of thought, he does.
ג€Lavi is one of the few kibbutzim that still goes on [as
a kibbutz]. I t'ink
it's because of our, uh, permissiveness: in the early years, when other kibbutzim
wouldn't move either way, Lavi had a reputation
-- 'ah, Lavi isn't a kibbutz!,' people said,
'they have children sleeping at home with their
parents, and personal budgets.ג€™ We started that
a long time ago.
ג€F'rinstance, when the German reparations money came about,
we decided at the general meeting to allow people
to use a certain amount of that money to do
something with it -- go on a trip abroad, or
buy a piano, y'see. It was unusual, other kibbutzim,
no way, they wouldn't let people keep a cent.
And people said what the hell, here I've been
living like a pauper all me life, and all of
a sudden I've got this money... and people ooped
and left.
ג€Yeah, it was our permissiveness, our bending within the
framework of the kibbutz.
ג€We
were among the first to return the children
to their homes. The parents were very happy
about it; the kids, they didn't like it very
much.ג€
CB struggles to sketch a perspective from within. ג€It's
a great place, a great situation, people are
generally very nice to each other, we get on
together. I think meself the religious atmosphere
helps make things a lot more peaceful. People
have always been very willing to help, to work
together, pull together. Old timers, f'rinstance,
who've reached their 70s, still volunteer.ג€
F'rinstance. ג€Here's a mun, almost 60 at the time, he couldn't
carry on in agriculcha. He went out, learned a completely new trade, and today has a flurrishing new bookbinding business earning money for Lavi.ג€
And the mix of people?
That toothy grin. ג€You might say, heh, heh, the Anglo-Saxon
background has helped somewhat. And, the Yekke-Saxon
background as well.ג€
Economically, baruch Hashem, Lavi is doing well --
again, unlike so many other kibbutzim. ג€We did
hit a bad patch, about 10 years ago -- we were
taken to the cleaners, somebody did us for a
lot of moony -- but when t'ings were bad, we
tightened the belts, and we had meat on Shabbat only, we cut down on holidays
for a year or so. We coom oop again, though. We've paid off all the huge loans,
t'ank God.ג€
The 750 souls of Lavi are doing swimmingly now, thanks to
income-generators as diffuse as agriculture
and tourism, ranching and carpentry. They have
beef and dairy cattle, 100,000 head of chicken
(ג€And not an egg between them, nebichג€),
and a synagogue-furniture factory. ג€When we
finished furnishing our own synagogue, some
o' the guys said, 'Look, wiv dun sooch a nice
job fer ourselves, maybe we should go into the
business.' We've become the main suppliers for
synagogue furniture inside the coontree, and
for 15 years now we've been exporting, going
as far afield as the Stets, Australia -- Tahiti
even.ג€
Pew-builder for the world: Is that what Christians and Moslems
died fighting for, 800 years ago?
CB grins and growls. ג€The bliddy bahstids!ג€
