Last Thursday, Israel was struck by another deadly suicide bombing. The death of each Jew brings great pain to us all, but when the victim is not distanced by six degrees of separation, that pain becomes much more real (leaving us in a dysfunctional mental state for a time).
My roommate, Esther, (here at Ulpan Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu) was a friend of the sixth person to die from the Tel Aviv bus attack. A 19 year-old boy from Scotland, Yoni Jesner, lost the struggle for life just prior to the beginning of the Shabbat and Sukkot.
"It is not fair" were the only words that we could mention, it was all that we could think. NOT FAIR!
How could we enter our sukkah and fill it with the happiness necessary to fulfill the chag's mitzva? It all seemed wrong, but we don't control the timing of events such as these and these were the circumstances we were put in. So we shared the happiness and the twist of sadness to the whole day, together, and tried our best to console Esther, who was deeply affected and visibly shaken up.
The next day, as Shabbat neared an end and we all sat in the sukkah talking, Esther called for our attention in order to share a pearl of wisdom that she had been mulling over.
Happiness, she explained was not what we normally pictured in our heads; it is not carefree, or the smiling joy we see on TV, acquired through possessions or entertainment. Through her tears, Esther, (a 20 year old new immigrant of one month) smiled and declared that happiness is what we feel when, regardless of our circumstances, we know that we are doing the right thing, it is the by-product of our actions.
As she said this, it rang true to all of us sitting there. We went on to sing in the sukkah, and then to prayers.
As I thought about what my friend said, I realized that never in my life have I been so happy, in that sense. Part of this is because I am for the first time, surrounded by an entire community of people that live this sort of happiness. The kibbutzniks here at Sde Eliyahu are creating, producing and contributing to something much greater then themselves. They are certain of the "rightness" of what they have built here and that is felt in every aspect of the life here. Over 100 students, volunteers and new olim get to share in this as well.
I feel so fortunate to be a part of this, and can't imagine living without this feeling now that I have experienced it. Right now I have the privilege of learning/ working in the fields, under Mario, a 78 yr. old kibbutznik, who came here at the age of 16 alone, from Italy. He was the first to introduce organic farming to Israel, over thirty years ago, and has developed it into a huge and growing industry.
Yesterday he said to me, with the smile that never leaves his face: "Of course I am always looking around me, overwhelmed by the beauty of this place and how much we have been able to do here; but I am driven to keep working every day because there is so much more to fix and so many people who do not see that this is the right way. But this is what we are here to do."
I looked around at the hazy Gilboa and Gil?ad mountains, the green fields and Mario's wrinkly face and calloused hands and knew he was right, feeling I would always remember this moment. We then continued to rip out all of the weeds by their roots, as they would otherwise choke out all of the good that we had planted.
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Miriam Edelman is a new immigrant living on Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu