Coming Full Circle

The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don’t really want, in order to impress people they don’t really like.
— Amos Oz

A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.
—Florida Citrus Commission

One of the casualties of the current war between Israel and Hamas (and all its allies) is the Israeli agricultural sector. Farmers in Israel rely heavily on foreign laborers (usually Thai or Chinese) to come and do much of the work on a farm, such as laying down pipes, planting, and picking the produce. Most of these foreign workers left the country by October 8th, primarily because Hamas murdered many of their countrymen and took others hostages. Hamas doesn't care whom they kill; the more the merrier. 

In any case, there's been nobody to do the work. Therefore, cadres of volunteers have sprung up around the country to help out as much as possible in order to save the produce. There are teams going out throughout the country planting, picking, weeding. Most of these volunteers don't know which side of a hoe is up, but hey. 

And so, when an opportunity arose on a day we were free, the husband and I signed up to spend a day picking oranges. An orange picked is an orange saved, I was told.

It couldn't be too difficult, I thought, after all, I've done it before and survived.
I know which side of a hoe is up. 
The first year I spent in the HolyLand, I was a volunteer on a Kibbutz. For the first six weeks or so, I picked grapefruit. In fact, just about the first words I heard on my first morning on that kibbutz was "Hey! don't throw the grapefruit!" (היי! אל תזרקי את האשכוליות). Apparently, grapefruit bruise easily, and the bruises show up as they ripen after they are picked. The ones we were picking were for export, and not fully ripe. 

I prepared for the day's work in the orange orchard by trying to figure out what clothes I had that were just the right amount of ruined and making peanut butter and jam sandwiches to eat. 

We took our car to the orchard, about a 40-minute drive away, where we met up with the other volunteers who had come to help out. A minibus had been provided by American donors so that more people could come, and there were close to 40 of us gathered waiting for instructions.
We were given crates and gloves and told to empty the trees of oranges, and fill up the large bins placed between the rows. 

As I entered the orchard with its neat rows of trees smelling of citrus, I was hit by the strongest sense of déjà vu I have ever felt. The odors and the sight of all the trees brought back vivid memories of heat and dust and youth and strength, and of, well, Zionism. Years fell away, and I was back in the glory of that Zionism, picking fruit, giving my all, building the Land. 

The 40 volunteers ranged in age from 12 to 81, but with an overall average age of about 60; men and women, religious and secular, immigrants and sabras, country folk and city dwellers. We had all come simply to help.
Everyone took a crate and gloves and began picking. Oranges were dropped into the crates, and then taken to the larger bins. Each tree held about 60 kg of oranges. 

It took two or three people about 20 or so minutes to clear a tree. 
We were able to empty four rows of trees in two hours. 

There were a few small differences between picking grapefruit in the Beit Shean Valley in the last century and picking oranges less than five km from Gaza in December 2023: 

• My Hebrew is now better;
• It was about 20 degrees cooler;
• Nobody yelled at me not to throw things;
• Orange thorns are much much smaller than grapefruit thorns;
• I had to provide my own water and lunch;
• The water I brought wasn't cold, but wasn't hot either, nor was it mixed with mud;
• Lunch was peanut butter and jam on pita rather than schnitzel and rice; 
• I also had to provide my own work clothes that I have to launder myself. 
• The farmer thanked us for coming and helping;
• The vast majority of the other volunteers were, um, youth-challenged; 
• The most glaring difference, of course, was that this time around, sounds of artillery and helicopters and other more general booms accompanied every move we made. (There were also sirens and incoming rockets a bit further to the north, but I suppose the sound of the attack helicopters covered those.)

I also realized, without a doubt, that I used to be younger. I was not 18 anymore. But I was definitely, beyond a doubt, still a Zionist. I felt like I had come full circle. 

Long ago, farmers (who were all either kibbutzniks or moshavniks) did not rely on foreign workers, but rather on their own people - whether it was paid local residents, volunteers (who, like me, came for the experience, or high school kids, yeshiva students, youth groups, pre-army kids etc.), or members of their own kibbutz who took turns doing the needed work. The idea was to build our own Land and be our own masters. It had been a heady time, and maybe I'm a romantic, but standing in that orange orchard, I was so grateful to have been blessed to have done and be doing my own teeny tiny part in building this Land. 

Towards the end of the day, I found myself talking to a very young man - maybe 16 years old. He said to me "this is such hard work! Aren't you tired?" And I answered him, "When I was about your age..." but I stopped that sentence and started again, "When I came to the Land", but I stopped again. What could I say so I wouldn't sound like an old lady? Third time lucky. "A few years ago," I said, "I picked grapefruit and that was much harder because grapefruit trees have thorns on them the length of your finger. I still have scars." But before I could pull my sleeves up to show him those scars, he looked at me and said "Well, I think they've engineered the trees now, so the thorns aren't as big anymore, and some don't even have thorns at all."

I looked back at him and could only think "we'll all have our own stories to tell our grandchildren of how we built this Land."

Because we aren't going anywhere.