refusal to take no for an answer, so she got on a bus to Merhavia to plead her case. The reception was any- thing but sympathetic. The kibbutz was dominated by halutzim of the Second Aliyah, Palestine’s most dogmatic and disdainful wave of immi- grants. Seeing themselves as the Chosen, the most dedicated, the stron- gest in mind and body, they disdained those who did not live up to their standards—and Golda and Morris, they were convinced, couldn’t begin to meet them. Everyone knew that Americans, especially American women, were soft individualists.
It didn’t help that Golda and Morris were married, tarring them with the dreaded brush of hopeless middle-class conformity. For the young kibbutzniks, marriage reeked of conventional gender relationships, reli-
gion, and property rights. They had hoisted the banner of “a rebellion against the bourgeois norms of Eastern Europe,” explained Esther Stern- man, an early resident. Sex should be a free and loving act between two people with “a purity of heart,” not a written contract.
The members’ dogmatism only intensified Golda’s determination. She argued, pontificated, and nagged. But when Merhavia voted a sec- ond time, she and Morris were again rejected. Still Golda didn’t give up, wearing the kibbutzniks down with constant visits and her own brand of dogmatism. On the third vote, they succumbed, giving Golda and Morris one month to prove their worth.
The community Golda fought so hard to call home was in an area of the Jezreel Valley that local Arabs called the Death Swamp. Surrounded by a cement fence dotted with openings for guns, Merhavia was a collec- tion of ramshackle frame barracks and a communal kitchen. The latrine, a quarter of a mile from the barracks, consisted of four holes in the ground with no partitions between them. No one ventured there alone because snipers from nearby Arab villages made a sport out of taking pot- shots at needy kibbutzniks.
Merhavia raised fruit and vegetables, and the kibbutz’s cows produced enough milk for community needs with a surplus sold to neighboring vil- lages and distributors in Haifa. The Jewish National Fund, founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement, gave members a regular income in exchange for the planting of trees. But the land was more marsh than soil, and where there was soil, it was filled with rocks. In the summer, work began at 4 a.m. because the barhash, swarms of tiny flies, turned afternoon work into a nightmare. Even with long sleeves and lavish coatings of Vaseline, field workers came in for lunch with insects plugging up their eyes, their ears, and their noses.
In late September, Golda and Morris settled into the spartan private room they were allotted. Their first morning, Morris was sent to dig rocks and boulders out of a field being cleared while Golda was assigned to pick almonds. “When I returned to my room in the evening, I couldn’t so
much as move a finger,” Golda later wrote, “but I knew that if I didn’t show up for supper everyone would jeer. ‘What did we tell you? That’s American girls for you!’ ”
Less needy of group approbation, Morris felt no such compunctions about avoiding the dining hall or the chickpea mush that was served at most meals, as soup, salad, or some sort of stew. Building a table and some cupboards out of orange crates, and hanging up strips of flowers on the walls to provide a bit of color, he fashioned a nest in their plain wooden room. His records were carefully organized, the windup gramo- phone set up and waiting.
All that was missing was a glass of tea, and for that he had to trek over to the communal dining room. Morris didn’t mind the physical labor, but he hated the communal dining room, just as he hated the communal toilet, the communal shower, and the communal laundry, which doled out the communal clothes. It wasn’t only the incessant togetherness that annoyed him. No one had
It didn’t help that Golda and Morris were married, tarring them with the dreaded brush of hopeless middle-class conformity. For the young kibbutzniks, marriage reeked of conventional gender relationships, reli-
gion, and property rights. They had hoisted the banner of “a rebellion against the bourgeois norms of Eastern Europe,” explained Esther Stern- man, an early resident. Sex should be a free and loving act between two people with “a purity of heart,” not a written contract.
The members’ dogmatism only intensified Golda’s determination. She argued, pontificated, and nagged. But when Merhavia voted a sec- ond time, she and Morris were again rejected. Still Golda didn’t give up, wearing the kibbutzniks down with constant visits and her own brand of dogmatism. On the third vote, they succumbed, giving Golda and Morris one month to prove their worth.
The community Golda fought so hard to call home was in an area of the Jezreel Valley that local Arabs called the Death Swamp. Surrounded by a cement fence dotted with openings for guns, Merhavia was a collec- tion of ramshackle frame barracks and a communal kitchen. The latrine, a quarter of a mile from the barracks, consisted of four holes in the ground with no partitions between them. No one ventured there alone because snipers from nearby Arab villages made a sport out of taking pot- shots at needy kibbutzniks.
Merhavia raised fruit and vegetables, and the kibbutz’s cows produced enough milk for community needs with a surplus sold to neighboring vil- lages and distributors in Haifa. The Jewish National Fund, founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement, gave members a regular income in exchange for the planting of trees. But the land was more marsh than soil, and where there was soil, it was filled with rocks. In the summer, work began at 4 a.m. because the barhash, swarms of tiny flies, turned afternoon work into a nightmare. Even with long sleeves and lavish coatings of Vaseline, field workers came in for lunch with insects plugging up their eyes, their ears, and their noses.
In late September, Golda and Morris settled into the spartan private room they were allotted. Their first morning, Morris was sent to dig rocks and boulders out of a field being cleared while Golda was assigned to pick almonds. “When I returned to my room in the evening, I couldn’t so
much as move a finger,” Golda later wrote, “but I knew that if I didn’t show up for supper everyone would jeer. ‘What did we tell you? That’s American girls for you!’ ”
Less needy of group approbation, Morris felt no such compunctions about avoiding the dining hall or the chickpea mush that was served at most meals, as soup, salad, or some sort of stew. Building a table and some cupboards out of orange crates, and hanging up strips of flowers on the walls to provide a bit of color, he fashioned a nest in their plain wooden room. His records were carefully organized, the windup gramo- phone set up and waiting.
All that was missing was a glass of tea, and for that he had to trek over to the communal dining room. Morris didn’t mind the physical labor, but he hated the communal dining room, just as he hated the communal toilet, the communal shower, and the communal laundry, which doled out the communal clothes. It wasn’t only the incessant togetherness that annoyed him. No one had
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