50b
PARTISAN REVIEW
squealed in delighted terror. Their faces were as they should be in the
theater, as they probably were round the earliest camp fires, at all the
ritual dances. Their mouths were agape, their eyes bright, flickering
with fluctuating emotion at the dream brought to life, a little frightened
as though turned mad with so much wonder, blinking with tiredness and
then straining again at the elaborate fantasy.
They come from Yemen and their faces are deeply imprinted with
the East. Leaving, and when the tapping drum was in the distance, I
passed some Ashkenazi Jews, young bearded men in fur hats and long
coats, the garb of the old ghettos and Russian small towns where they
come from. In the moonlight their faces had a luminous pallor. They
were walking quickly, lightly and quietly singing a Purim hymn. Nearby
was the music from parties given by Germans and Americans in their
modern flats. Like the United States, Israel is on a small scale a
melting pot. It was odd to think that all these people were Jews.
There is a revolt against the stigma of the old time comfort-loving
European Jew. In the communal settlements (the kibbutzim), work
starts at four in the morning when the sun pinks the Galilean hills and
there is a misleading promise of coolness. At nine in the summer, the
sun has the searing intensity of flame focussed through a magnifying
glass but the intent ant-like work in the fields goes on until about four
in the afternoon when work stops and theirs is the daily luxury of a
cooling hot shower, the clean shirt, the armchair gossip, the minutes
with the children. Individualism and privacy are luxuries for the most
part foresworn and regarded as rather unpatriotic. In the smaller
kibbutzim where accommodation is limited, young unmarried people
often sleep in the same room and there is a conscientious atmosphere
of morality, of knocking at doors and averting eyes. Married couples
often live in bungalows, one room to each couple, so that it has to be
kept meticulously tidy and no undue relaxation is possible. Since the
rooms tend to be separated only by matchboard partitions, there is
the compulsion of having to live qui'etly and even the intimacies have
to be subdued, let alone such psychological necessities as whoopee or a
good quarrel. But there are encouraging signs of variations on the
original group principle which will allow greater individuality.
There is beauty in the attempts of the religious kibbutzim to link
modem life with the two-thousand year old religion. At Gan Yavne,
a religious kibbutz built on the shore near the Mediterranean where
stood one of the oldest Rabbinical schools (and where Jonah was
swallowed by the whale), fifty young men and women were gathered
round a long table while a bearded bright-eyed man expounded the
