Family Affair / The Hirschfelds By Avner Avrahami and Reli Avrahami Izuz Highway 40: Heading south, Ehud Banai singing in the background, sounds of silence. We pass Tlalim Junction and turn left at Nitzana. The narrow road slices through an arid plain and ends at a bus station. There is nothing more terminal than this. We're early. We walk around. Touring the community: Basketball court, children in yellow, blue engineless Peugeot, stacks of planks, heaps of steel rods. Nothing is thrown away here. Our hosts are waiting for us. Advertisement The cast: Eyal (34), Avigail (34), Naomi (9), Yotam (7), Raphael (5), Tzofnat (3), Nessia-Sela (one year). The home: On a private, verdant lot, with a garden, scarecrow and a white 1998 Land Cruiser beneath a lean-to. The family lives in a mud-plastered trailer and two additional structures, next to which is a mud-brown bus (originally a Dan bus from the No. 9 line), and a small igloo, also made of mud. Mud-plastering: An ancient form of construction, more recently a favorite of guardians of the environment. The home (cont.): The trailer and the additions (110 square meters) are for residential purposes, while the bus, which seems to have an Afro hairdo, is divided into two: It's both a toolshed and a B&B (well-equipped, NIS 450 with breakfast and dinner). The igloo can house one person ("or a mother and a child"). We cross the mat-covered wooden porch and pass through a screen door to enter the house, whose walls are painted orange. To the left is a living room and kitchen; to the right are the bedrooms. We make for the living room. On the floor are mattresses for guests and a wood-burning stove, next to which is a computer (new), a bookshelf (holding a Bible with commentaries), a pile of CDs of singers from the Bratslav Hasidic tradition and a large blue armchair (made by American Comfort). The kitchen, which is open, contains a large stove, spices in jars and a sack of flour ("We buy from the Bedouin"). On to the bedrooms. The bedrooms: Naomi and Yotam are in the room on the left side (bunk bed); Raphael, Tzofnat and Nessia on the right side (small separate beds). The parents sleep farther along, in the spacious addition, and the children drift into their room at night. Now to the backyard. The backyard: In the pen are three brown goats (Nubians) and a billy goat, in the coop are five red chickens. The week before our visit there were seven, but a fox devoured two of them. Also in the immediate neighborhood is Koko, the family's white Labrador, and two cats. On to the classroom. The classroom: A separate entrance leads into a room containing a blackboard and chalk, a low table, matching chairs, posters (of the seasons), a world atlas and an impressive library. This is where Naomi, Yotam, Raphael and Tzofnat go to school, and where they are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, Bible, Hebrew and English by their parents. In short, this is where the Hirschfelds spend their mornings. "The children were created at home, born at home and will be schooled at home" (Eyal). Avigail adds that this will also become their high school. Everything can be found on the Internet, she says. She herself is connected to home-schooling sites. Education Ministry: "We have authorization." W Livelihoods and occupations: Eyal is a tour guide (jeeps and on foot). His one-day excursions, which cost NIS 1,200, are geared mainly for Christian tourists and focus on the Kadesh Barnea region ("They are thrilled to be close to the Exodus from Egypt"). He also does all the necessary heavy work in the house (construction, carpentry, electricity, plumbing, mechanics), teaches his children ("I also learn from them"), is studying Arabic for his pleasure and rents out an apartment in Ashkelon ("an inheritance"). Avigail's occupations: Takes care of the children, cooks, bakes pita, designs home-teaching programs, is responsible for the B&B, keeps the books for the community and milks the goats. Milks the goats: Twice a day ("in the season"), 10 minutes per milking. Each goat gives a liter of milk a day. Pitas: On the front porch is a round metal baking device filled with stones from a creek. This "stove" comes from Ramallah, but can also be purchased in Tzur Hadassah, a community west of Jerusalem. We sprawl (on the mattresses), partake of refreshments, luxuriate. Eyal's bio: Born 1972 in Rehovot. His mother, from France, is a Holocaust survivor ("She was hidden in a convent"); his father, who passed away, worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and established a biotechnology plant. Eyal did his army service in the Golani infantry brigade (company sergeant), in the territories and Lebanon. Afterward he bought a Vespa, worked as a delivery person in Tel Aviv, then trained soldiers in Congo-Brazzaville ("for an Israeli company"). He then did a diving instructors course in Honduras, and after returning to Israel in 1995 headed for Sinai, where he taught diving at Dahab, where he met Avigail. Avigail's bio: Born in Pretoria, South Africa, 1972, to a secular Christian family. Her parents are divorced. Her father, a car salesman, was born in Holland; her mother is South African (half Boer, half English). She was named Clara ("I changed the name, because it didn't suit the Negev"). After high school she started to study physiotherapy, but felt that it wasn't really what she wanted and set out to see the world. After doing Europe she went East, waitressing for eight months in Tokyo bars, and then going on to Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. She then returned home, got quickly bored, flew to Canada and finally reached Dahab (via Syria and Jordan), where she did a diving instructor's course; she became an instructor and met Eyal. The meeting: 1996. Eyal was hired as a diving instructor over the objections of the staff. "They had a poor opinion of Israelis," Avigail says. What happened was very much of a surprise for her: "A week later I found myself entangled with this Israeli." Eyal says he had his eye on her from the start ("I locked in right away"). They lived for a year on the beach and went to see the world. In Mexico they worked on a mountain ranch, "at a certain stage the children came," and then they got married there. The wedding: December 1997, Sierra Madre del Sur. The owner of the ranch read out something, a recently married Israeli couple who happened to pass by made them a huppah (bridal canopy), and another Israeli recited the traditional Seven Blessings. Avigail, who was in the final stage of her pregnancy with Naomi, called home and told her mother, "I am married and I'm expecting in a week." Eyal informed his mother, too ("She took it hard, but that's reality"). Births: Naomi was born in a teepee in Mexico; Yotam and Raphael in the Ashkelon place (with a midwife); Tzofnat and Nessia in Azuz, at home, without a midwife. Avigail gave birth to them on her own. On her own: Eyal prayed and Avigail cut the umbilical cord herself. She was not afraid ("There is faith"). She says you can feel that the baby is healthy. After the birth she washed up and made breakfast. Doctor: They have been to a doctor once, when Tzofnat cut her finger and had to have stitches (at Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva). In cases of colds, flu, etc., they pray and it passes. Eyal: "And what doesn't pass apparently should not pass." Ultrasound: Only in the last two pregnancies, and "then only because they were obliged to do it for administrative reasons." Daily routine: Eyal and the children get up at 6, Avigail at 7 (because she gets up at night for Nessia). She makes oatmeal; he studies Arabic and the children do their tasks. The children's tasks: feeding animals, watering plants, spreading manure, folding laundry and organizing dishes. Afterward everyone eats cereal and they go to the classroom. Studies start at 9 and finish at 12:30. Time for lunch. Lunch: Avigail makes pita (on the porch) and salads. Then come enrichment groups in Kadesh Barnea (a nearby community). Naomi has just started learning the violin. Sometimes friends visit, sometimes they visit friends. Evening: At 6 P.M. there's a hot meal with spaghetti, rice and cooked vegetables (chicken only on weekends). Avigail then washes the children, who go to sleep at 7:30. Eyal and Avigail then surf the Web, play a little guitar and study Torah. They don't watch television, but have definitely heard of Ehud Olmert. Belief: Eyal and Avigail believe in God, in divine grace, in the next world, in reward and punishment, and in paradise for believers. Eyal wears tzizit (a fringed undergarment worn by Jewish-Orthodox men), but no head covering. Avigail wears a shavis - a head covering for Jewish-Orthodox women ("A sign that I believe and a sign that I am married"). Eyal prays at home ("from the heart"), does not work on Shabbat and feels that he is able to defend his "moral sovereignty" (even during reserve duty in Gaza). The spiritual transformation: In the mountains of Mexico. "It was a process" (Eyal). Romance: "To drive into the desert on a moped with a bottle of wine." Disagreements: "Overall, we are a pair of doves," Eyal says, "but many times we can't keep things locked up inside." Missed chances: "I should have gone to a vocational school and studied a little mechanics, a little electricity and a little carpentry, and not wasted my time in a regular high school" (Eyal). Dreams: Eyal - "They will be fulfilled only in the next world"; Avigail - to be a midwife; Naomi - to be a mother; Yotam - to be a father; Raphael - to be a pilot. Happiness quotient (scale of 1-10): Everyone - 10. The place Izuz - A community in the Negev, 11 kilometers from the border crossing terminal (to Egypt) at Nitzana, 13 families, 50-60 people, established in 1985 on the site of the Nahal paramilitary brigade outpost of Be'erotayim.

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