looked a lady from St. Petersburg high society, leave her home as a young girl, go alone to a far and desolate country and spend a lifetime of incredible hardship? What made Grysha, a young student somewhere in the Ukraine, leave everything and become a common laborer in the malaria-ridden valley of Ezreel? For me, they represent Zionism at its best. They were among the founders of the kibbutz at the end of World War I. For the first twenty years it was a life of sheer poverty, of back-breaking work, of unending sacrifice in a remote outpost surrounded by often hostile Arab villages, without even the smallest luxuries such as one's own clothing or any kind of privacy.

By the time I got to know them, the kibbutz was already quite well off, however, shaded by green trees, with its standard of living approaching that of the city. But, unlike most kibbutzim, this one refused to make the slightest concession to a better life. The food remained frugal, more as a matter of principle, I suspect, than out of necessity. Grysha was still working ten or twelve hours a day, doing all manner of manual labor. Nadia was still the kibbutz nurse, as untiring in her work as she was in the Twenties, when she would be seen riding on a cart bringing a woman in labor to the hospital in Affulah. Their first son, a youngster unusually gifted in music, followed in their footsteps. One day he put his violin on top of the cupboard never to touch it again, knowing that the kibbutz needed tractor drivers, not musicians. Their daughter, who could not stand kibbutz life, drifted into town and later married a Scandinavian U.N. observer. Having her leave the country to live in Europe must have been a shock to her parents. The death of the youngest child seemed somehow preordained. One would expect the son of such a couple, brought up in this atmosphere, to be in the front line, storming the Syrian fortifications which had tormented the kibbutzim along the frontier for so many years.

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