Kibbutz Memories:
When we lived in Miami we held on to our child’s hand tightly whenever we went out. As soon as they were old enough we taught them to hold Mommy or Daddy’s hand and to always keep us in sight and to never ever wander off.
All playtime was supervised. If you took your child to a park or a playground, you watched as they played. You stood guard. The rule was you didn’t let your child out of your line of sight, and if for a moment you did happen to get distracted and you couldn’t see your child - you immediately subdue that instant rise of panic and fear - you get up and walk around, trying to locate him by line of sight before resorting to calling for him in an ever rising worried voice.
So it was quite a shock when we arrived at Kibbutz Ketura to see how much freedom, even the three, four, five year olds had, and how much the parents gave them. There were children everywhere: riding bicycles, running, shouting, playing soccer, basketball, going in and out of peoples houses. Both my wife and I were quite taken aback and yet my children, 3 and 4 year old boys (at the time), took to it immediately. Almost too easily.
It was far easier for them to let go of our hands then it was for us to let go of theirs. For several weeks after our arrival I would feel that old sense of panic if I didn’t know where they were or if I couldn’t see them. We could feel in a way, them escaping from our hold. At dinner in the dinning hall we would be lucky if we could get one or two bites into them because they were in such a hurry to leave the table and go outside and play. Even after being on kibbutz for three years we still had that problem.
We knew within our first few days on Ketura we had to teach our children new boundaries. This was drilled into us when just a day or two after our arrival, our oldest son Adar, got up before everyone else, put on his clothes and walked to the row of houses in front of ours and entered the house of a four year old boy he had upon arrival. The other boys mother later told us that Adar walked to her son’s room, saw that he was still asleep so Adar went into the living room and sat down. The Mother, who was in the bathroom at the time, heard a bit of commotion, and called out hello. Adar answered: “I’m here.”
In the meantime, I had woken up and went in to look at our children and saw that Adar wasn’t there. Kibbutz houses are very small so it only took a few seconds to see that he wasn’t anywhere in our house. I felt that rising panic, uncontrollable and irrational and came to the immediate (rational) conclusion that he had been kidnapped. Somebody came into our house in the middle of the night and took our oldest boy. Then something told me to stop, go outside and check at Omer’s house, Adar’s new friend, and sure enough there he was, sitting on the couch, thumb in his mouth.
It probably took a good half-year before we became more settled with their new freedom and they became used to it also. Confined to the limitations of apartment living, our children burst forth, becoming bundles of energy racing around the kibbutz, tiny rockets that couldn’t be stopped. Although at times frustrating when we had to try and rein them in, I appreciated the fact that they were able to laugh and play and run around to their hearts content.
Although it still bothered me the few times that I couldn’t find them. In fact, it became one of the major criticisms I had of the kibbutz-yes the children had much more freedom there. Yes, it was much safer when compared to living in the city. However, kibbutz was still not a 100% safe environment and there definitely as an atmosphere of complacency and at time neglect when it came to the safety and welfare of the children.
In many of my conversations with parents on kibbutz they rarely acknowledged this or took it as a fact of kibbutz life.
That is why I am pleased with our decision to move to Reut. It is a community of duplex houses and paths and, at least, some quiet streets. Our children have many friends and as time passes and they learn how to conduct themselves in the city, we are giving them more and more freedom. Adar and Nadav, now aged 7 and 6, go to friend’s houses that are one to two blocks away. As they get older, their territory will, of course, expand.
We will teach them how to conduct themselves as children in the society at large. I came to believe that they should not be raised in a bubble. Yes, society does have its dangers. This morning’s newspaper had an article about a father who was sitting on his apartment balcony watching his seven year old daughter play in the public playground next to their building. He noticed a man approach his daughter and offer her candy. The father rushed out of his apartment, flew down the stairs to the playground to find his daughter missing. Thank god he found the two a minute or two later-the stranger with his pants open trying to convince the father’s daughter to let him take pictures of her.
Some might say that this is an argument for raising your child in a more protective environment. I came to the conclusion that this could also very well happen on kibbutz. Ketura was not a 100% closed environment; people came in and out of the place all the time. There was a guesthouse; there were students, etc. No place is safe. What you can do is, as this father was, be watchful, be attentive, and educate your children about strangers and their motiv