Last update - 00:00 13/07/2007
Family affair:The Tuvia commune
By Reli and Avner Avrahami
The cast:Yael Kornstein (19), Sivan Peled ("just about 19"), Ayelet Dalomy (18), Tal Ivry (19), Shimrit Oded (21), Gal Orman (19), Noga Frost (19), Matan Ofer (21), Nadav Anin (didn't want to take part in the conversation).
The home: Be yond a wooden gate and a concrete sidewalk, next to an animal corner with a goat that sports a fashionable goatee, nestled amid ivy and piles of leaves, is a faded, gabled structure with one screen door and another blue one. Next to the entrance are a bicycle, shoes and a washing machine; beyond it is a living room, kitchen and three bedrooms. The first is occupied by Yael, Sivan and Tal (with the "love bed"), the second by Nadav and Matan (with a guitar and an electric piano), the third by Noga, Ayelet and Gal ("This is the aesthetic room"). Shimrit doesn't live here: She has a trailer of her own because she is part of the National Service program ("But she belongs to the commune").
The story: All of them (apart from Shimrit and Matan) are doing a "year of service" before being drafted, and live in a building adjacent to the dorms of their wards in the "Tuvia Community."
The Tuvia Community: A boarding school with 52 youngsters, most of them aged 6-13, a few who are older (up to 12th grade). Some of them chose to live here (with their parents' consent), others find themselves here by court order; all of them are "at risk to some degree." They spend the first part of the day in the central building or in classes outside the kibbutz and during the rest of the day are scattered in mishpahtonim ("family homes").
Family homes: Five buildings on the kibbutz where the boarding-school kids live in close quarters with their foster families. The "year of service" crowd is also divided among these homes (usually in pairs), and each of them is busy, together with another (salaried) counselor, managing the daily routine of the youngsters from wake-up until bedtime.
Contribution: Each communard works 8-9 hours a day - helping with meals and homework, cleaning up, organizing social activity, transportation, combing (to find lice), wake-up, bedtime (including massages) and more. They will finish their program, sponsored by the United Kibbutz Movement, in August.
Home leave: Once every three weeks for Friday-Saturday, and one day off a week.
Subsistence: NIS 400 a month from the movement ("like soldiers").
Who's who: Ayelet is from the community of Atzmon (in the Galilee). Her father is an electronic engineer; her mother, a physiotherapist in the Clalit HMO. She is the middle one of three children and will do her army service in a city-based paramilitary Nahal unit in South Tel Aviv ("something therapeutic with children"). She knew she would do a year of service since 9th grade, when she attended school on Kibbutz Sde Boker ("I felt that the year would help develop me").
Gal: From Kibbutz Ein Gev, on Lake Kinneret. Her mother (South African by origin) works in the kibbutz restaurant; her father (from Argentina) is a reception clerk at the Caesar Hotel in Tiberias. At Harduf she works in a family home of nine children ("I knew it would enrich me"); in the army she will be a mashakit ta'ash (service-conditions noncom).
Sivan: From Kfar Sava. Her father (from Russia) is foreman of a precision mechanics plant; her mother (from Morocco) is a kindergarten teacher. Sivan has five sisters and a brother. She works in the "teen house" (with Matan and Shimrit). In the army she will be an instructor in the Armored Corps. She likes dancing and after her military service plans to study modern dance. She will not, however, take part in the "Born to Dance" TV reality show ("I don't believe in it").
Motivation: "At the end of high school I was totally wrapped up in myself and in dancing, and I felt a need to break out and do something for others."
Matan: From the community of Kamoun, in the Galilee. His parents are native-born. His father works in a factory that manufactures CDs; his mother is in charge of absorption of new members in the community. He is the eldest of three children. He did nine months of army service until being released ("because of boredom") and joining the commune. He plays the piano and plans to study composition at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. He feels he is doing something meaningful at the moment, in contrast to the months he spent in uniform ("There's no comparison").
Being with girls: "The best and the worst: there is a lot of love and pampering, but also hair and tampons in the bathroom."
Shimrit: From the village of Mikhmoret. Her father works in a mattress store in Hadera, her mother is "head housemother" at a naval boarding school. She is the third of four children. She preferred National Service over regular army service ("I realized that a uniform doesn't suit me"). After she completes her tour of duty (next January), she will save up money (by working in catering) and then travel to India ("and after that I will find my beloved").
Tal: From the "lookout community" of Mitzpe Harashim in Galilee (the rainiest place in Israel), the eldest of three daughters. Her father, from Switzerland, is a clinical psychologist ("He speaks seven languages"); her mother, from Israel (though of Argentine descent) is a psychotherapist at Sieff Hospital in Safed. In the army she will be a teaching noncom for soldiers with problematic backgrounds, and after the army plans to go on a "tribal trip" to Africa ("something anthropological").
Year of service: "I felt I had a great deal to give to children and that it would also contribute to my personal development."
Noga: From Kibbutz Kabri. Her father, who works in the kibbutz plastics factory, is a well-known figure in the Galilee (dubbed "Hamilyahu," from ham - hot - and the name Eliahu, "because he always feels hot"). He is a character who always wears shorts, speaks biblical-ese and knows every square inch of the country. Her mother teaches yoga and biology (at Kabri and in Nahariya). Noga will be a service conditions noncom in the army and afterward will study ("probably") sociology ("after 'the trip'"). The year of service is doing good things for her, she says, apart from the good things it is doing for the children.
Yael: From Yavneh, the youngest of three children. Her mother is a senior officer in the Israel Prisons Service and an industrial and management engineer ("involved with prisoners' jobs"); her father is a partner in a water-heater factory in Romania and a tour guide in Eastern Europe and South America. She will be a teacher-soldier in the army and afterward plans to study art in Japan, before perhaps being admitted to Bezalel Academy of Art and Design back home ("if only!").
Harduf: "I wanted this experience. It's a different atmosphere with no one being here for the money."
Daily routine: They get up at 6 ("each with his own mobile-phone alarm"), brush their teeth, drink and eat nothing, and head for the family homes ("without makeup or anything, we barely wash" - Sivan). At 7:30 they will have a cup of tea (herbal) with the children and send them off to their buses (those who attend school outside Harduf). At this stage they turn to cleaning up and cooking.
Cleaning up: Laundry, washing the floor, cleaning the toilets ("It's the kaki of our kids" - Yael).
Cooking: Almost everything is organic. They prepare quinoa, millet, buckwheat (kasha), whole rice, wheat, lentils (for the little ones) and also blintzes, pizzas and "sausages in pajamas" (puff pastry) for the big ones.
Daily routine (cont.): The children get back at 1:45, 15 minutes before lunch. Before eating everyone holds hands and says an anthroposophist blessing.
The blessing: "For sun and dew, for fruit and leaf, too, for all the work, by day and night, for our food that with love we eat, let us thank the Lord - bon appetit!" There is then a pause and the children start to eat after a moment of silence ("The kids really respect it").
Afternoon: Help with homework until afternoon snack with sweets (tahini cookies, carrot cake, fruits), after which everyone is free to visit the animal corner or the vegetable patch (lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower) until the "bedtime shift" (6 P.M.).
The bedtime shift: The children enter their houses, wash and "pajamatize." In the meantime supper is organized (in each building separately) in the form of omelets, malawah and tea (mint, chamomile, verbena), ahead of the "evening circle."
The evening circle: They sit in a circle, one of the children lights a candle and places it in the center (next to seashells and conches), and the children tell about their day and then sing, say a blessing ("Night descends, quiet, dark ..."), say "good night" and get into bed.
Anthroposophy: "It's like a first girlfriend, who shows you the way, but whom you won't marry in the end" (Tal, quoting from her manual).
Israel: The group feels it is doing something for the country.
Unruliness: Plenty ("They throw shoes and glasses of water at us"). There is also cussing. The year-service group says they learned to cope with pedagogical problems on the job ("We arrived knowing nothing" - Yael). Lights out is at 9:30, and all the counselors return to the commune. If they have the strength, they talk, drink (beer, wine) and sometimes head for the pub in the town of Tivon, in the boarding school's Subaru.
Television: Nonexistent ("The children also have gotten used to not watching").
Romance: There are no internal romantic attachments within the group. Only Yael has a boyfriend, and he is from outside.
Weddings: "There will be some, but not in a banquet garden" (everyone).
Privacy: "There is no such thing with us. All the clothes are everyone's" (Sivan). But if someone brings a guest, "We make a room available." In any event, Yael's bed is always free ("That's the love bed"), whereas Tal's bed is off-limits ("That's the holy bed").
Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Gal and Noga - 8; Ayelet - almost 8; Shimrit and Matan - 7; Tal - 9; Yael - 8.5.
The place
Harduf - A kibbutz near Shfaram, which is not far from Haifa, established 1982 by followers of the anthroposophy movement, known for its special education system and its organic food industry.