A few months ago I went to a shabbas lunch of a member of my local favorite minyan - shira chadasha. She is in her 50s and has two teenage daughters that are amazing girls. I went with my friend marni and crashed on the weekly hospitality offered by rotating members of the community. Marni said these women were really cool and so we agreed to pass on the picnic lunch we had planned together and went instead to their house in Old Katamon.
I ended up sitting next to one of the girls - Meytal. We got to talking about her school, her activities, my school, and in the twists and turns of our conversation she learned that I was looking for an opportunity to find a cheap way to volunteer my time for a few days over sukkot – de festival of de booths. So I found out about a family that was in need of some help. They live in Shekef. It is a small moshav (community) near Kiryat Gat. Kiryat Gat is on the way to Beer Sheva and is about an hour drive from Jerusalem. They were one of the families affected by the disengagement last summer from Gaza. No matter what my political leanings are or were toward the disengagement I have heard some sad stories about people not receiving what they were promised from the government in many cases. While this family was given land they weren’t given any guarantee that they could stay there and probably will have to move in the coming years. They are farmers and are establishing their new hot houses. They grow grapes for eating, for export and they also grow cherry tomatoes and bell peppers for export. They are having difficulties establishing their hot houses and so two frinds and I went to Shekef to help.
We left Jerusalem at 5AM for Shekef and arrived after a few windy hours on a few buses at Shekef. We got dropped off on a street corner and called our hosts for a ride to the hot houses. After only a few minutes hanging out playing with a resident dog on the corner our ride came and we were brought right to work. We were given work in the cherry tomato hot house. We spent the day until 5pm pruning the tomato vines. Farming – hard.
On the way home we got to spend a bit of time with the Thai workers (there are MANY of them in Israel and especially working in agriculture – they took over after a lot of Arab workers couldn’t get to work anymore after the intifada started – I think that’s the story anyway). The guy who drove us, one of the owners if the hot houses, called them “Thailand” which my friends and I found a bit off at first, but then they seemed to call themselves that and it was a firm reminder to me to look and look and look and probably never to judge because I can’t understand the intricacies of this place no matter how hard I try.
Thailand were dropped off first at their rooms and then we were taken to another area of the moshav to sleep. We had a whole little trailer/house to ourselves. The houses all around us were very new and there was building going on everywhere – all of the people living in this area were new arrivals after the disengagement. All of the homes looked the same. There was a gate around the community. I wouldn’t chose to live in a place like that in the states if I could help it, kinda odd to choose to be in one now but such is life I guess. Anyway the digs were great and we even had a shower to wash the yellow-green (depending on the light) pollen that was caked onto our clothes and bodies – seriously, it was even snowing from my eyebrows with pollen.
The guys who were hosting us told us over and over about their makolet (corner store-ish), or one might call it a bodega if you were in NYC or a dep in Montreal, etc. So, we decided to check out the local hot spot. Curious thing number 2: there was an entire aisle in the makolet of Thai products. You could hear more Thai than Hebrew or Arabic. It is just funny to think about the original ideals of many early Zionist thinkers – that labor should be Jewish, self reliance perhaps.
We ate ice cream, food, and milkies (a strange Israeli pudding-whipped crème thing) and laughed our way home almost walking off a cliff…an adventure indeed.
Up at 5AM. Drive to hot houses. Eat. Pray. Work all day. Make funny home videos during our breaks. Collect the victims of our work – the tomatoes that fell off the vines as we pruned. Take bus home. Feel good that we helped – even if just a little.
This was instillation one from my sukkot break. Number 2: Sukkot (festival of booths baby!) in Jerusalem!
Much love from a little woman.
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