Goshen resident spends time on kibbutz to learn about Israel, its people

Staff

Published Sunday, November 30, 2008

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then William Sanders has a million or more of them to share.

He leaned in close to the computer screen as he scrolled through his photographs –- hundreds upon hundreds of them – carefully selecting just the right ones to tell his story.

And what a story Sanders has to tell.

For two months this summer, he labored on a kibbutz – sort of a farming commune – in Israel’s Arava desert just north of Eilat.

Kibbutz Yotvata was the way for Sanders to realize a dream that he had carried in his mind and heart for more than 10 years.

His first trip to Israel was with his parents and as a tourist. For some reason that he can’t explain or maybe doesn’t even understand, that trip so impressed the young boy from South Alabama that he had to go back. But not as a tourist.

“I wanted to go back to Israel and live among the people,” he said. “I wanted to experience the culture as a part of it.”

When he graduated from Auburn University in the spring of 2008, Sanders had two goals, to land a job and to visit Israel, but not necessarily in that order.

“I started looking for opportunities to visit Israel and working on a kibbutz was my best chance,” he said. “I could live and work among the people, get room and board, make a few dollars and have a chance to travel in the area.”

Sanders couldn’t ask for anything more. He arrived at the kibbutz in the heat of the summer and, if he’d had his “drutters,” he would have rather been there during the growing season.

Sanders grew up on a fourth-generation farm in Goshen and knew that the growing and harvesting seasons are the best seasons on the farm. Taking apart and repairing irrigation systems for the better part of two months was not a job that he would have chosen, but that’s the job he got.

“When I first arrived at the kibbutz, our volunteer leader took a little time to explain what the kibbutz is all about,” Sanders said. “She boasted that this was a free society and people are encouraged to live their lives as free thinking individuals. That may hold true during the member’s free time but, on the job, it’s exactly the opposite. You know the saying, ‘You can work hard or you can work smart.’ Well, if there is a saying at a kibbutz, it would be ‘Work exactly as you are told with absolutely no deviation from the accepted operating procedure.’”

Sanders cited several examples of where his on-the-farm experiences could have saved the workers time and effort, but his suggestions were thwarted.

“Once we had to load some crates onto a trailer. The crates weren’t heavy, but there were a lot of them,” he said. “The guy I was working with could have pulled the trailer right up next to the crates, but instead he parked about 100 feet from them. When I asked him why he didn’t pull closer he said because he would have to back the trailer to get out. The guy was 18 years old and he had never backed this kind of trailer. I explained to him how it was done and told him that it was pretty easy as long as he went slow. Without blinking he told me, ‘No, I have not received training on how to do this.’ He had a government issued license to operate a tractor, but he wouldn’t dare attempt a

simple maneuver without specific instructions from one of his superiors. A job that could have been finished in about 30 minutes took about an hour and a half.”

Those were the working “conditions” that Sanders found himself under. After a short time, he understood how things worked and fell into line with the workings of a kibbutz.

“Most of those I worked with were from South America and Korea and all of them spoke English to some degree so we could communicate rather easily,” Sanders said.

“We lived together in a very small two-bedroom house – seven of us. We went to work each morning at 5 o’clock and worked eight hours. It was very hot up to 130 degrees and dry. They encouraged us to drink, drink, drink. If you didn’t, you could easily have a heat stroke.”

The workers had Saturdays off but Saturday is the Sabbath so there was nothing going on.

“We usually just sat around outside and talked,” Sanders said. “I learned a lot from the other workers about their attitudes toward Americans and, for the most part, they like us. And, I think in that region they are trying to extend an olive branch to each other in various ways. Working on the kibbutz gave me an opportunity to experience Israel in a unique way and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

Sanders saved up his time and took several short trips while working at the kibbutz.

The highlight of his trips was the one to Petra in Jordan – the Lost City of Stone.

“Petra is absolutely the most amazing place I have ever been,” Sanders said. “It’s a entire city carved in stone and it stretches for miles. The cliffs are extremely high and difficult to climb but the vistas are amazing once you reach the top. It’s strange that this city has more than 2,000 years of history and it took a Stephen Spielberg movie (Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade) to make it famous.”

Sanders took a few days after completing his work at the kibbutz to travel around the region.

The Sea of Galilee, the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, the Western Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock in the old city of Jerusalem and the Jordan River are all sites that have made a lasting impression on William Sanders.

After hitch-hiking the region and staying at hostels with people he had never seen before and will never see again, Sanders found himself back at Kibbutz Yotvata and ready to head for South Alabama and home.

His last impression of his experience at the kibbutz was the seeing sun coming up over the mountains in Jordan and knowing that a new day was dawning in his life that has been made better because of his experience there.

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