Half of the time I hate Kibbutz Ketura and want to leave and half of the time its pretty fascinating – I’m always playing the “anthropologist” in my head. Many of the volunteers are perminant wonderers, others are just looking for a temporary distraction, and yet a third group is running away from their personal pain. (Some other guy is going to law school in the fall – guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted to step outside my world temporary, before the beginning of quasi adulthood of graduate school and loans).
I hope to understand what it is like to inhabit different spaces, and also see my space a new, and I’ve certainly been working on it. All night people just sit in a big circle and talk about what seams like absolutly nothing – that no is fasinating.
Kibbutz Ketura is four hours from Tel Aviv, pretty much in the middle of the dessert. You can see the dessert mountains on all sides – its gorgeous, and yesterday I went to the cow pen, and the babies mooed at me.
On shabbat, I went to their shul – and despite all the differences in community structure, they have a lot in common with Conservative jews living the burbs of New Jersey. The service was poorly attended, and incredibly spiritless. Prayer acted out as tradition cannot be sustained, no wonder no one wants to come. Prayer has to mean something today – it is not something to be ONLY ritualized and reproduced because our ancestors did so. The website sounds a lot more religious than the reality.
In reality, I tried to start a mariv minyan, and no one came, absolutely no one, even though there is at least 200 people who could have come. This is especially fascinating since in the evening people just sit around and chill.
If you are interested in coming to this kibbutz, I’d be happy to tell you more about it,
Hi, I found this while looking for information on kibbutz life, I’m thinking of doing it later this year and this kibbutz sounds real interesting. Some things I’ve heard of kibbutzim is that volunteers get exploited and they’re just viewed as hired hands and not involved in the community much, what’s that like at kibbutz ketura? What sort of work did you do there? What sort of work is it generally?
Hi Anna,
Would it be correct to say that your time at Ketura has left you disillusioned and bitter (that’s the way it looks to me, at least)? Please don’t judge us too quickly, or too harshly, just as you asked for kindness from those who read your blog. If you are willing to do this, I’d like to respond to some of the things you wrote:
Serving Israel:
I’d maintain that you are serving Israel. You are working on an isolated agricultural settlement in the harshest, least populated part of Israel. Your work, though perhaps “low skill and minimum wage”, plays a part in allowing Ketura to function, which enables us to feed our families, educate our children, pay the people who work for us (I’m not referring to the Thais, more on them later) and who would otherwise be out of a job, send our children to the army and pay our taxes, through which the whole country benefits. Your work also supports many endeavors of the kibbutz, like our Arava Institute, which provides a meeting ground for Jews and Arabs, or the new solar power electric company we are trying to get off the ground. Sure, it’s easy to loose sight of the big picture when someone is asking you to fill up the cottage cheese or when you are tired and wet from the dishwasher and can’t wait to go home. It’s too bad you seem to feel exploited and downtrodden. This is a life that gives people a lot of dignity, but you have to live here longer and be more or a part of it to appreciate it. The work you do is given to you because you are only here for a short period of time. If you were here longer and if your Hebrew were up to par (which it might be), there would be other opportunities available.
Your work in the dining room is appreciated. Believe me, we have all done it, and we know it is not easy.
Beautiful Houses, Thai workers and How we treat the Volunteers:
Thanks for the compliment about the houses. Actually, they are pretty small and modest by Israeli middle class standards. We have worked very hard for what we have and have sacrificed on our own private material well being in the course of building Ketura. It’s unfortunate that you chose to judge us as some sort of plantation owners that sit on the porches of their beautiful houses and exploit their workers. As for the volunteers, the deal is clear cut – we give you room, board and a small stipend and the occasional trip and party and you work an eight hour day (Anna, can you really tell me you work in the dining room from 8am to 5pm six days a week?). By the way, did you speak to the volunteers coordinator about getting food from the diet tray? I am sure that this option is not limited to members. I’m really sorry you feel so disenfranchised. I wonder with how many of the members you have actually come into contact. Unfortunately, there are no members working in the dining room right now, as there usually are. If you are going to be here for a while longer, ask your volunteer coordinator for a kibbutz family- that might be a good idea.
As far as the Thais are concerned, we don’t pay them at all – we pay their contractor, who pays them. If they are paid “peanuts”, then why do so many of them travel half a world in order to work here? The money they earn here is actually a desirable income, especially when the alternative is unemployment back home. I wish there was not hired labour here, but we don’t have the manpower to run our date orchard (which is our most profitable enterprise, by the way, not the algae factory). You got a better solution, let me know.
Ketura as a Truman Show:
I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Anna, but I don’t feel morally superior to anyone else because I live on Ketura, and I am sure I am not alone. My life here has its disadvantages and disadvantages like anyone else’s. How can you blame us for selling our goods in the marketplace in order to support ourselves? Would you rather we stand at the bus stop on the road, flag down passing cars, and give away our dates and milk and fish and algae and guest rooms? Do you know of many people who behave this way? Would that satisfy your idea of what socialism is? By the way, our biggest client for our algae is medical research, not the skin care industry, which is investigating the use of our product in anti cancer treatment. Is this hypocritical of us, too? I don’t understand why you are so hard on us, especially when you point out that we are one of the last non-privatized kibbutzim (believe me, it’s not an easy thing to pull off). Our foreign workers don’t live in shacks and while we appreciate the work of the volunteers, believe me – we do not rely on your labor. If you were not here, we would do it ourselves, as we have done before. Anna, have we really earned all of your criticism in your short time here? True, ideals lose their luster from up close, but you yourself said that you hate idealists! I have to say that that’s exactly what you sound like – a disappointed, idealist.
I have spoken directly but do not mean to attack you and apologize if you found anything in this post hurtful. If you want to respond, give your email address to your volunteer coordinator and she will give it to me. I truly hope the future holds better days for you on Ketura. Goodnight.
- Well Meaning Kibbutznik
Hi, I’m a Ketura member too. First of all, I’m confused about how to leave a comment on Playing a Girl. Can someone clue me in?
What XanaduDragonfly describes is partially true. I actually am not comfortable with the whole volunteer thing, and even less comfortable with the foreign laborers. Yes, we have in some sense just recreated “the outside world”, and I’m not going to try to defend it.
However, even though the volunteers hardly mix at all with the members, they do mix with our kids, and I’ve even met a few through my kids, so there is contact. Not only that, the other day my own daughter lectured me for my separatist attitude toward the Thais, telling me they’re just lonely and want contact with people outside their small group. I was proud of her compassion.
She also marched in the Pride parade in Jerusalem, which was what I originally wanted to comment on. Way to go, Playing a Girl, for telling it like it is: “This way of life is neither quaint nor cute”. I also liked what you said in other posts, but in order to get there, I’d have to go back in my browser and I’m afraid of losing this comment. Help!
About our shul: So you’re saying your shul in the Jersey ‘burbs is more spirited? Ours goes in waves, as do most congregations. Get us on a Bar Mitzva, baby-naming, or *oafroof*, or on a holiday when Hallel is sung, and you’ll see a different picture. Sure, Saturday mornings in the summer are slow. I’m sure they are everywhere.
Sorry your attempt at Maariv failed. Realize that the members are overwhelmingly parents, and post-dinner time is family time. Moreover, I’ll not apologize for chilling, with or without my family, after a day of work. Not only that, but we Keturans don’t feel we owe anyone Maariv attendance, unless it’s for someone’s *yartzeit*, when we do come through.
XanaduDragonfly, Ketura is my home. It has its flaws, but I don’t feel obligated to apologize for them any more than you do for the flaws of the Jersey ‘burbs, or wherever you grew up. And I’m willing to bet that wherever you grew up has a Web site too, whose description may be less than accurate or up to date.
Now, can anyone tell me how to comment directly to Playing a Girl? I found what s/he said about FAS interesting.
I just got back from volunteering on Ketura, was there for 5 months so i guess i volunteered with you, XanaduDragonfly… When i first arrived on Kibbutz in february, i hated it. I was waking up at the crack of dawn, it was freezing, and i was getting paid absolutely nothing to do some pretty boring jobs. Then a fellow volunteer clued me in on reality. We are VOLUNTEERS. We are there to give our time and man power to help out the kibbutz. we have decided to do this. I knew that I was not going to have a cushy, well paying job, but that I would likely end up cleaning either cow-poop or human-poop. There were days where I worked from 7 AM till 10 PM, and while this was the exception, it was what they needed from me, and the members worked just as hard as I did. The kibbutz sees hundreds of volunteers come and go, and I can see from my experience that many of them are there for a vacation, to party, get a tan. If i were a member, I would be weary of the volunteers, as they are. But I can tell you that when a volunteer shows that they are there in the better interest of the community, and not in their own better interest, the members are warm and friendly. To try and befriend all of the volunteers is impossible for the members. In a response to Miriam, I dont think you should at all be uncomfortable with the volunteer situation. I was happy to help out, I loved my time on ketura, and i hope to come back and volunteer again. I am in every sense a zionist, and i am proud to say that i was able to volunteer on one of the only non-privatised kibbutzim left in the country. I agree that it is extremely difficult, which of course is why other kibbutzim are privatising. I have the utmost respect for the members, as building a community that functions as well as it does out of nothing but sand and rocks is an absolutely incredible feat. I love knowing that whenever I’m in Israel, I will have always have somewhere to go that feels like my second home. I’m sorry that you were so unsatisfied with your experience on ketura, because for me, it was the best 5 months of my life, i met some great lifelong friends, and i grew more as a person than i ever thought imaginable.