Sukkot, generations, and togas

I suppose first I should sum up my week. Basically, I was tired a lot. That's why I didn't do any posting during the work week; at the end of each morning there was pretty much no chance of me doing anything productive for the rest of the day. We dug out some pretty big areas to the west and north of the church, and most of the dirt was filled with big rocks to move. I think we were all pretty tired; if Joel from the kibbutz hadn't been there to help us with those rocks, they'd all probably still be in the ground.

But I'm feeling better now. Yesterday was another day of total and complete relaxation. There wasn't even any pottery for me to work on, since the pieces we had excavated were still unwashed. We have to wash pottery as a group, you know.

So anyway, last night was the feast of Sukkot. Officially I think it's a harvest festival that commemorates the Hebrews' wandering in the wilderness for forty years with Moses. At Ein Gev, Sukkot is really a celebration of the kibbutz and its community. There was a big outdoor dinner and some kind of ceremony in Hebrew. But the coolest part of Sukkot happened later, on the shore. It was this gathering for "stories and songs." About forty-ish people were gathered there, and in front was an older man and three teens with guitars. They led several songs. Someone there explained to me that each song celebrated or represented a different generation. Each song either was popular in a certain time period, or dealt with a theme or issue faced by a certain generation. In between the songs, the man or the teens would call on different people to tell stories. It was all in Hebrew, but a couple people could help me with the basic gist. One man, for example, told us about Sukkot in 1948, when Ein Gev was continually under attack from the Syrian army and the festival had to be celebrated while wearing camouflage.

I didn't stay for the entire time; an evening of stories in Hebrew can only do so much for me. But I was amazed, blown away, at what I saw. The people of the kibbutz were deliberately keeping the communal feeling going. Ein Gev was founded by a small and close-knit group of dedicated farmers, and only a few are still around. But they are preserrving that deep sense of community by making sure that each new generation feels a part of it-- teens, younger adults, middle-aged parents, gray-haired older people like the man in the front, and very old men and women like the man telling the story, the members of the founding generation. Everybody there listened intently whenever anyone of any age had the mic. When the songs came, often the mic would go to whoever knew the song best so they could lead. Everyone was listening, laughing, feeling together. The young people wanted to learn from the old ones, and the old people truly wanted to teach the young ones. I especially liked the fact that it was the young people who led most of the gathering. It was as if the younger generation were reaching out to the old, saying, "Talk to us." I could see there that this kibbutz is something very special, that the commune is not held together by a dining hall and funny money and kibbutz-owned cars and group laundry. It is held together by the unity that started with the founders, which they pass on to each new generation.

Now I see a similar thing at the family camp I have attended and worked at, Arcadia. There you see people of different ages and generations playing and talking and eating together. There is an intense interest in the camp's past that comes from the sense that older campers are a key to the camp's unity. But that is just a summer camp. People love it, but hardly anyone spends more than a few weeks there each year. This kibbutz is these people's home and life. And it is a home and life where everyone around them feels a part of one large extended family. Across the sea, the lights of Tiberias shine yellow and orange in the night, and I am reminded that this kind of closeness is happening in a world where most people live in large, anonymous towns and cities; most people don't know that there is another, much more personal kind of community. I wonder if there is a way that everyone could experience the kind of togetherness I see in the people here.

Then after we left the song and storytime, we went off to the kibbutz's pub for the apparently annual tradition of a Sukkot toga party. I was the only American to wear a toga, but there were plenty of people from the Polish team and volunteers for the kibbutz there with not only togas but also leaves twisted up on their heads. It made all the girls look like Statues of Liberty. Now the kibbutz sheets are all a soothing shade of pink, so my toga was very pink and not very Roman. But most people there had nice white togas. Now where on earth did they get white sheets? I asked myself. Oh well. I had a wonderful time dancing in my pretty pink toga.

Well friends, it's lunchtime and I'd better go. By the way, I've been reading Acts all morning, and the Christian community it describes sounds an awful lot like this one, only with assurance of eternal peace. Hm. It makes you think.