Sunday, June 17, 2007

Kibbutz life

So, months and months ago when I started telling people in NZ I was coming to Israel, at least half of the time people asked "Oh, are you going on a kibbutz?". And I would explain that no, I was going on a study-and-volunteering programme called WUJS, in a small town in the desert, etc etc.

However this past weekend, we did have a kibbutz experience - of sorts. We were lucky enough to spend a few days at the beautiful Kibbutz Ketura, deep in the southern Arava desert valley. But if you've start picturing me out picking dates or mucking out cowsheds, I'm afraid I'll have to disabuse you of that imagery. Our Kibbutz stay was purely educational. We did have to get up super-super early, but not to attend to agricultural matters. Instead, we had a Friday morning Desert Arts workshop. There were three options: Desert photography, Desert Painting, and Desert Midrash. I chose painting - over the last few months I have become deeply enamoured of the desert, and have been heard to lament on more than one occasion that I haven't any paints which I might use to feebly attempt to capture some of the indescribably beautiful lights and colours before my eyes. So a few hours with watercolour paints seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up. Unfortunately I remembered almost nothing my mum had ever taught me about working with watercolours, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience...

Ketura Dawn

The rest of our time on Kibbutz was very relaxing. Ketura is a religiously pluralist community with "egalitarian" Shabbat services, and it was very nice to experience a Ketura Shabbat. We had ample free time to spend at Ketura's AMAZING swimming pool, and we had a few other activities designed to give us an insight into Kibbutz life (for example, we did a simluated "Kibbutz democracy" exercise in which we debated and voted as "kibbutz members" on real issues that have come up in this or other kibbutzim in the past. Shortly before we left Ketura late Saturday evening, we had a tour around the whole kibbutz, which has an impressive agricultural industry including dates, dairy cows, and a world-leading algae factory! Our final stop was at the cowsheds, where we were lucky enough to discover one of the cows in the process of giving birth! Sadly she was not far advanced enough for us to see the whole birth, and although she was working fairly hard to push it out, we had to leave her with just the two hooves of her calf poking out into the world.

Lick!

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:29 PM

    Can we see a photo of your watercolour?

    ReplyDelete