The Kibbutz Life

Sotah — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:52:52 +0000

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,

Sotah » kibbutz

The Kibbutz Life