One of our focus trips when travelling overseas was to go to Israel and work in a Kibbutz , as many of the young Kiwis and Aussies did when travelling. Mainly because of the “new Jewish State” as an outcome from WW2 and the Holocaust.
Both Karin and I had read many books on the death camps and the migration of the Jewish people to Palestine post WW2. (One of these was by Leon Uris).
Karin had applied to join the “Bridge over Israel” after completing her final year of school but was declined due to her age. She was Jewish by descent.
Anyway, after working in shearing and pubs in England and Wales we booked our tickets to Israel. What a journey for that time. We had to go to Stanstead Airport. The security was mind boggling, with Israeli security forces, guns and all checking every passenger before boarding a flight direct to Tel Aviv.
Arriving in Tel Aviv at 10.30pm local time we came out to the main airport terminal to discover that all the buses to Tel Aviv had finished and only option was taxis!! We were harassed by Palestinian taxi drivers telling their colleagues that they were booked to take us to Eilat (about 1000 km from Tel Aviv!!!!!) We told them all to get lost and stayed the night in the airport. The next morning, we caught the bus to Tel Aviv and eventually ended up at one of Karin’s family for a few days.
We found our Kibbutz experience didn’t appeal as it was all about picking fruit. They asked what we could do, and we advised that we grew up on a dairy farm. They placed us in a Moshav Shitufi (a family based collective) which meant that we had our own accommodation and had all our meals with a host family. They were South African Jewish migrants, so we weren’t living with 100’s of young British and Antipodean travellers. We lived with the locals who really looked after us and took us all over Israel. We milked 360 cows 3 times a day and I also milked 1200 sheep twice a day.
While working in the sheep milking shed (the Dere in Hebrew) I asked how they shore their sheep. They advised that they placed them in the rotary turnstile and would take them out one by one, tie their legs so they wouldn’t move and shear them. I offered to show them the way in which the Kiwis shore their sheep, via the Bowen method.
So, after breakfast one fine sunny day a crowd gathered to see this kiwi show them how to shear their sheep without tying them up. I shore the first one in under 3 minutes using narrow gear, it really caught their interest. They then challenged me to shear 5 in 15 minutes. Accomplished that with ease.
Afterwards I offered to bring my gear back to Israel and shear all their sheep plus the sheep on Moshav’s around the Bakar Valley in Israel (near the Sea of Gallilee, Hagalil in Hebrew). However being a collective farm, they wouldn’t spend the money and the offer was declined.
Many months later when in Europe we met up with another volunteer from the Moshav collective in Holland and he said that one of the workers thought he knew how to do shear the sheep and after trying one or two gave up, too hard!!!
We had a wonderful experience including every bus trip there was normally a terrorist incident before or after our presence!!!
Anyway, back to UK and work in bars then…….
Europe on $10.00 per day .... (next post)
James Davey
September 2023
Both Karin and I had read many books on the death camps and the migration of the Jewish people to Palestine post WW2. (One of these was by Leon Uris).
Karin had applied to join the “Bridge over Israel” after completing her final year of school but was declined due to her age. She was Jewish by descent.
Anyway, after working in shearing and pubs in England and Wales we booked our tickets to Israel. What a journey for that time. We had to go to Stanstead Airport. The security was mind boggling, with Israeli security forces, guns and all checking every passenger before boarding a flight direct to Tel Aviv.
Arriving in Tel Aviv at 10.30pm local time we came out to the main airport terminal to discover that all the buses to Tel Aviv had finished and only option was taxis!! We were harassed by Palestinian taxi drivers telling their colleagues that they were booked to take us to Eilat (about 1000 km from Tel Aviv!!!!!) We told them all to get lost and stayed the night in the airport. The next morning, we caught the bus to Tel Aviv and eventually ended up at one of Karin’s family for a few days.
We found our Kibbutz experience didn’t appeal as it was all about picking fruit. They asked what we could do, and we advised that we grew up on a dairy farm. They placed us in a Moshav Shitufi (a family based collective) which meant that we had our own accommodation and had all our meals with a host family. They were South African Jewish migrants, so we weren’t living with 100’s of young British and Antipodean travellers. We lived with the locals who really looked after us and took us all over Israel. We milked 360 cows 3 times a day and I also milked 1200 sheep twice a day.
While working in the sheep milking shed (the Dere in Hebrew) I asked how they shore their sheep. They advised that they placed them in the rotary turnstile and would take them out one by one, tie their legs so they wouldn’t move and shear them. I offered to show them the way in which the Kiwis shore their sheep, via the Bowen method.
So, after breakfast one fine sunny day a crowd gathered to see this kiwi show them how to shear their sheep without tying them up. I shore the first one in under 3 minutes using narrow gear, it really caught their interest. They then challenged me to shear 5 in 15 minutes. Accomplished that with ease.
Afterwards I offered to bring my gear back to Israel and shear all their sheep plus the sheep on Moshav’s around the Bakar Valley in Israel (near the Sea of Gallilee, Hagalil in Hebrew). However being a collective farm, they wouldn’t spend the money and the offer was declined.
Many months later when in Europe we met up with another volunteer from the Moshav collective in Holland and he said that one of the workers thought he knew how to do shear the sheep and after trying one or two gave up, too hard!!!
We had a wonderful experience including every bus trip there was normally a terrorist incident before or after our presence!!!
Anyway, back to UK and work in bars then…….
Europe on $10.00 per day .... (next post)
James Davey
September 2023