Wednesday, September 5 - Outside of Tel Aviv

This is our next to the last day of looking into the lives, beliefs, deaths, and aliyah of the Jews of Poland. Yesterday we dealt with the urban story of the Jews who came from Poland to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv. Today we are traveling to the Carmel and Sharon regions and finding the stories of those who settled in the rural regions both before and after World War II. If I thought yesterday was hot, today was even hotter! It was stifling, very humid, and in the mid to high 90's.

We started today's journey at Giv'at Haviva, an educational peace center where we were met by a fantastic woman, Lydia Aisenberg. She gave us an introduction to the work done at the center, bringing Arab and Jewish youth together.


She is a kind, funny, knowledgeable, dynamo of a woman with whom we longed to spend more time. The sun was so hot that we only viewed a few parts of the campus, including the peace tree that is carved on the grounds.

Our group in front of the peace tree:


We then met with Professor Eli Tsur who introduced us to socialist and educational models that the Polish Jews brought to Israel.


We toured the exhibit of the early Zionist scout movements that brought young people to Israel to work the land. Below is a Zionist Scout flag with the scouting trefoil in the center, the Magen David around it, and the laurel wreath around them both. The exhibit is undergoing renovations and is not air conditioned, so we sweat some more.


From there to lunch at Tishbi winery where we eat outside under a grape arbor with huge fans blowing on us. Did I mention that it was hot??? At this point my brain is fried, my ability to process information is gone, and I'm feeling very sick from the heat - and I certainly wasn't alone.

The afternoon stop is Kibbutz Merhavia. We are met by Raphi who tells us the history of the Kibbutz. I would recount the history, but the fried brain cannot remember it, except for the hardships the early settlers encountered. The land was mosquito infested swamp land; the Turkish government at first refused to accept the deals that had purchased the land; the neighboring Arab communities were hostile to the settlers; etc. The Kibbutz was built on the site of an old Crusader fort, complete with moat. The original stones were used for some of the buildings.



Again, we are all melting in the heat and unrelenting sun. But Haim won't quit - he has one more stop for us. Under the final syllabus for this course, we were not supposed to have gone to Kibbutz Merhavia, but instead were supposed to have heard the story of the K'far Hassidim from the third generation of Rabbi Yehezkel Taub. Unfortunately, Rabbi Taub's grandson died a few days before Haim left Israel for Poland. So the Kibbutz provided an alternative way to understand the rural Polish immigration to Israel before the war. But to bring closure for all of us on this rural settling of the land, we go to Rabbi Yehezkel Taub's grave, along with the fresh grave of his grandson.

Chaim teaching at the Rabbi's grave:



Rabbi Taub had come to Israel in 1925 with his Hassidic followers from Yablonow, Poland and settled in the hills of Sheikh Arbrekh and Hartieh where they established three communities and began draining the swamps along the Kishon River. They broke from established Hassidism in not waiting for the Messiah to come, but rather in moving to Israel to become farmers. Again, I learned much more, but the brain cells that the sun destroyed have not regenerated.

We do not arrive back in Tel Aviv until after 8 PM, more than 12 hours after we left. Although each piece of the puzzle we put together today was important, it was too much, too hot, and too exhausting. A final view of the sunset as we rode back to our hotel.




I will most likely not be able to post tomorrow, so here is what we will be doing. We are going to Jerusalem to visit Yad Vashem's Valley of the Communities where we will do an exercise on the communities our own families came from. From there we will head to Hebrew University (home of our Melton Seminar) to meet with Professor Eleazar Shafrir, retired faculty member, who will give us a lecture on "Israel: From Past Challenges to Challenges of the Future." We will stay on at Hebrew University for lunch and a study session on S.Y. Agnon and Israeli culture after the Holocaust. This will be followed by a meeting with Professor Gad Yair of the Sociology Department on "Reflections on Loss and Rebuilding: A View of the Shoah and Israeliness." A final wrap up, a few bites at the final dinner and then we're off, part way through the dinner, to the airport for our flight home. There is NO rest for the weary!!!!


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