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Kibbutznik 1948 diary longs for 'purity of that generation' By Eli Ashkenazi Tags: Galilee, Kibbutz  Ruth Gefen-Dotan of Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar in the Upper Galilee says her pen is like an extension of her mind and hand, and she does not see herself using a computer. "Who knows, if I had used a computer, perhaps I'd have a blog today." In today's terms, 60 years ago, Gefen-Dotan was a blogger, and a very popular one. Her journal was published every two weeks in Bamaaleh, the newspaper of the Histadrut's youth organization. It chronicled the first year of Israel's existence from her perspective. "The journal was about my feelings and personal experiences," she says, debunking a central myth of those years: "The movement educated us to be part of a group, but not to give up the personal part." Advertisement One day in March 1948, for example, she missed a childhood friend very much. "It's hot and pleasant outside, but if Uzi were here, we would have taken a walk together. We would have talked (when did I see Uzi last? Only two weeks ago and to me today it seems like an eternity...)" she wrote. "If Uzi were here we would simply stand, holding hands like children, and it would be good .... And where is Uzi now? To see you just for a second? To feel your touch for a minute in my life, just for a minute and no more! What was that? After all, I promised Uzi I wouldn't act silly from longing." Gefen-Dotan was born in Givatayim in 1924, and educated in the Labor Movement. At age 13, she began studying at the Levinsky Teachers Seminar and became a kindergarten teacher at the kibbutzim of Ashdot Ya'akov in the Jordan Valley and Alonim in the Lower Galilee. In 1946 she was sent "by order of the movement" to teach at Kibbutz Beit Hashita in the Jezreel Valley. In 1948, she was asked to replace a fourth-grade teacher who had been drafted. At 22, a mother of two (her husband's son and their son), she still found time to write her journal. She had been writing for Davar Leyeladim and Davar Hapoelet - the children's and women's editions of the newspaper linked to the Histadrut labor federation. Her parents, she recalls, met Moshe Mossinson, the editor of Bamaaleh, at a Habima Theater performance. "He told them he was going to be passing through Beit Hashita and would ask me to write for the paper. That's how it started," she says. Gefen-Dotan says Mossinson asked her to write the journal so it would be authentic: "This was an accepted genre at that time, like writing letters." The language was "not high language, except for poetry quotes." But she is amazed when she looks back. "I can't believe I wrote it. The innocence. The language. The quotes. A kind of purity of that generation," she says. In one installment she wrote of a friend who had fallen in battle. "Our comrade Yair is no more. Our Yairkeh, friend of my spirit ... Yairkeh ... you'll no longer show up at the club and reach the high heavens with your bass voice," she wrote. "And when we walk down the street and a girl who was once among our friends and is now stuck up comes your way ... stinking of city perfume, you will not 'step on her foot by accident' and you will not laugh the Yairkeh laugh in her face. That mischievous Yairkeh laugh that everyone who knew you loved unconditionally." Sixty years later, Gefen-Dotan refuses to elaborate on who Yairkeh was." On Passover 1948, she described the Haganah's conquest of Haifa. "It was strange to see the men and women comrades in their holiday clothing and carrying their weapons. But this strange combination also spoke, saying other days will come, they will come .... This night will certainly go down in history. The tale will be told of the comrades, tired from their day's work and their night's guard duty, how their eyes lit up and all tiredness fled from their faces at the Voice of the Haganah's call to drink a fifth cup of wine to Hebrew Haifa," she wrote. "Haifa the port, the blood and suffering of the deportees to Mauritius and Cyprus; Haifa, the city of Herzl's vision .... Yes, there are moments when a person feels the beat of history's wings. And I do not know whether I dare say that I have heard this beat." Gefen-Dotan says she is not nostalgic. "It was not paradise. My dreams where that there be ice cream and a toilet in the house. There was indescribable poverty. I do miss the people who died, and the language, the culture, the behavior. I don't miss that you couldn't tell the children fairy tales - Sleeping Beauty - for example, because it wasn't the socialist reality. I don't miss that you couldn't hug your children." The columns were to have been published in a book in 1951, but that was the time of the great ideological split in the Kibbutz Movement, and Gefen-Dotan and her family moved to Ayelet Hashahar. Sixty years after Gefen-Dotan wrote her journal from her tiny quarters at Beit Hashita, she sees the kibbutz giving up egalitarianism and the burning ideology that guided her youth. "The kibbutz is falling apart, but we remain a few people with good hearts, and there is help and care," she says. The greatest pain, she says, is "the sobering thought and fear that despite the heavy price, we will not see peace." Related articles: Earthquake damages rare artifacts - and no one knew Yad Mordekhai Reconstructed Battle Site The Palestinian Rothschilds Bookmark to del.icio.us   Under probe Olmert stays focused on work despite new allegations. Taxi Hamas Hamas police cars serve as taxis in fuel-starved Gaza.

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