Page 72 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Winter 20

I found a traveling companion and then way I can begin is to say that it’s like living
partner two years later, and we’ve cemented in a community, which owns thriving
a bond for the past 25 years. The relationship branches that give the members a monthly
with Marion is still as fresh and enjoyable as salary or pension, and we have a very
it was when we first met. reasonable budget and standard of living. It’s
like being shareholders in a thriving limited
Meanwhile my family has expanded, and
now it is 3 sons and wives, 10 grandchildren company, and the shares include some quite
and 5 great grandchildren. Not many people serious sums as dividends from a well-
in the world can say truthfully “I have 5 earning factory.
doctors in the family!” Yeah, you read that I’m 86 years old and enjoy good health and
right. My second son is a doctor and am still quite active, gardening, cooking and

professor. His second son and wife both got writing. I commute every year for 6 months
their MDs, last April. His older brother and to be with Marion in California, and she
wife both got PhDs in medical forensic comes to me for 3-4 months in Israel.
science and are training to be pathologists.

The seniors and retirees on our kibbutz are
particularly well looked-after, and this was
very noticeable during the lock-down and
isolation period. We all had a young couple
seconded to us personally, and they visited
every single day and checked up on us, went
shopping for us and ran errands.

As far as finances are concerned, the
community thrives from everything we kept
after selling all the branches outside the
kibbutz: the bananas, orchards, orange
groves, cotton fields and cattle range grazing
rights and the beef herd. Inside the kibbutz
we continue to maintain the factory, chicken
houses, the garage, metal shop, half a dozen
small branches, the children’s houses (now a
going financial concern) and the dining-hall,
which also does a number of tourist buses
every week. Of course, the really big income
comes from the factory, which sells filters
and filtration systems to 36 countries around
the world.

When I’m asked to describe what it’s like
living in a privatised ex-kibbutz, the only

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