A New Beginning
New life in Our Ancient Land New Life in Our Ancient Land
United States years later, she had recordings from Kibbutz Yagur.) The conductor of the choir was the brother of Moshe Shertok (Sharett, in Hebrew), the future foreign minister and second prime minister of Israel. As I was already fluent in Hebrew, I had a very easy time in school. Most of the other kids picked up the language quickly because they were bright and had an intense interest in learning. People at the kibbutz were quite intellectual and we read constantly; our library had over thirty thousand books, all in Hebrew. We read classics like Tolstoy, Sienkiewicz, and the French writer Romain Rolland. I loved to read, and I got a good education. Our teachers were skilled and well-qualified. The kibbutz accepted tuition-paying outside students, some of whom boarded at the kibbutz. Under British rule, there was free ed- ucation at the elementary school level, but not for the upper grades; I helped arrange for a sixteen-year-old girl, Rivka, who was from the city and could not afford high school, to live on the kibbutz and get her diploma. Usually, however, we did not interact with the paying students or the other kibbutz children. For one thing, we attended classes at different times. Also, we had different back - grounds and interests. Our relationship with the sabras was good but not close. People at the kibbutz generally got along with each other. Interpersonal disputes were rare. In the eight years I lived at Yagur, I was never aware of any quarrel that had to be settled by the au- thorities, nor any situation where someone physically attacked someone else on the kibbutz. The only problem I recall was when a man refused to go to his assigned job and was punished by not being assigned work for a week. He was so embarrassed that he did not show up at the dining room that entire period of time; his wife brought him food back to their room. The kibbutz commissary was run on an honor system; every- thing was free for the asking. If you said you needed seven packs of cigarettes for the week, you were given seven packs of cigarettes for the week. If you said you needed toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap,
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