Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak

Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak
Continued from Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV


Last week, my son departed for a term in Israel with his high-school class. In honor of his trip I decided to complete the series about his great-grandfather,  my grandfather, Baruch Lavi, who started his journey to Israel in Magdiel, the same place where my son is now living and studying. In the last post in this series, I left my grandfather at Usha, a Tower and Stockade settlement in the northern Galilee. Because of ideological differences Usha began as two independent Kibbutzim, but  the conditions made it apparent, that there was not enough land or resources for two settlements. Luckily, the Jewish Fund, wanted more settlements, and my grandfather’s group, was to be relocated to a deserted hilltop near Natanya for their independent and permanent home for the Tel-Yitzchak group. Three and a half years after arriving in Palestine, my grandfather was finally about to fulfill his dream of building his own Kibbutz. This was a much smaller operation than Hanita (see Part IV). 

David Manela (a founding kibbutz member)
 building the tower on ground breaking day
at Kibbutz Tel- Yitzchak
(Photo from Kibbut Tel Yitzchak Website)

At the break of dawn, July 25, 1938, three lonely tucks, overloaded with equipment, approached the abandoned hilltop. The long neglected, arid wasteland, surrounded by the Poleg River marshes, awaited them. In anticipation, the kibbutz members, spent the night next door at Even Yehuda. There they found shelter and collected the building supplies, tents, food, portable barricades and parts of the tower. Among the young men and women pioneers who piled onto these trucks, were my grandparents. They were twenty-five years old. That night, they embarked on what turned out to be, the rest of their lives. This smal group of Hanoar Hatzioni members from Galicia, won a moral victory for their political ideology and the Zionist youth movements in the diaspora. The hot summer sun beat down as they worked furiously to complete their task before nightfall, when the surrounding Arabs villagers were sure to attack. Together they unloaded supplies and erected the tower. They created a chain, passing buckets of gravel to line and fortify the large wooden wall, the main defense surrounding the fledgling settlement. They did this, without British approval and rendered the Kibbutz an existing settlement, overnight, safe from demolition. Rome was not built in a day, but to the Arabs dismay, another Kibbutz was. 

Hadasah Rosevald
(1920-1938)

The early days at Tel Yitzchak were extremely difficult. The hill was bare, and the sun brutal. The members lived in tents or makeshift boxes, turned homes. The first cement building on the Kibbutz was the cow shed. The mud was deep and vehicles struggled to make their way without sinking in it. They lived in constant danger of attack. As a young girl, I wondered how dangerous it really was on the Kibbutz in those early days. Attacks on the Kibbutz I knew, in the heartland of Israel, seemed unreal, but they did happen. In one such attack, on November 5, 1938, only four month after braking ground, two shots were aimed at the guards, from about eight meters away. The guards returned fire. After they heard the Arab attackers retreat they discovered one of their own, Hadasah Rosevald, had been shot. Hadasa, also from Lvov, joined the Kibbutz in September of 1938. During the day, she worked both as the head of communal projects, and as the nurse since she completed a first aid course. At night, she was in-charge of communications. She operated the spotlight at the top of the watchtower which signaled messages to nearby Jewish settlements. She loved sitting by the campfire with the guards and participating in political discussions. As a important leader in the  Hanoar Hatzioni movement, she was returning from a meeting at the Tel-Aviv central office that night. The movement needed her at the central office and wanted her to move to the city. She refused! She believed in doing the hands on work and was proud to hold such important positions, as a woman, on the Kibbutz. That fateful Shabbat, Hadasa headed towards the post, bringing with her food for the watchmen on call. Only nineteen, she was found dressed in her city clothes, bleeding to death from a bullet-wound to the head. The following morning, grieving kibbutz members buried her, very close to the site where she was found. 

My grandparents in their back yard
under one of the trees the proudly planted
1991

How and when my grandparents met, I am not sure. I know my grandmother Rose Celnik (known as Ruja to all, and Shoshana in Hebrew), was among the founding members. She made Aliya from Tarnov, Poland with Hanoar Hatzioni around 1934, but when exactly she joined my grandfather’s group I am not sure. One of the things that impacted my grandmother the most, and that she loved to tell me about, were the malaria infected mosquitos which where endemic to the swamps in the area. As we walked through the green lawns of the kibbutz, she loved to point out, how when they first arrived, there was absolutely nothing there. On our monthly visit to the Kibbutz my grandparents would greet us as we parked under the tall eucalyptus trees. We could rely on them walking arm in arm receive us. The aged Eucalypti welcomed us with their unique aroma and my grandmother would recall nostalgically: “We planted these tree and many others to dry up the swamps. Back then there was mud, swamps and lots mosquitos” she would say, “and not much food.”

Basic food such as bread was in short supply on the Kibbutz early on. The orange grove was one of the first things they planted. Those oranges quenched their thirst and their satisfied their hunger when there was no bread to be found. At some point the Kibbutz built a bakery. They made enough bread to sell to neighboring villages. Benek (Baruch Sharoni), another founding member, rode the Kibbutz’s horse drawn wagon, on the dirt roads, selling fresh loaves of bread to near-by settlements. As he delivered the bread, he began exchanging books with the neighbors, and that is how the kibbutz's library was born. 

While war was raging in Europe and Israel was fighting for independence, all the kibbutz members were doing their part. My grandfather served as Muchtar, the contact person with the British. I find it funny to think of him communicating with the British, considering his English was very limited. Because of his official responsibilities with the British as a Muchtar, my grandfather was not among the Hagana members who worked in the underground munitions factory on the Kibbutz. Moshe Viser, now the Kibbutz's secretary still recalls Ben Gurion's visit to Tel Yitzchak pre-1948. Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister came to inspect the secret weapons factory. This clandestine factory eventually became part of the Israeli Army's Munitions Industry.

My father (bottom right) with his brother and parents
Around 1950

They lived every aspect of their lives according to their ideology. While they grieved the loss of their families in Europe they absorbed holocaust survivors who were arriving in Israel in droves, and they began having family of their own. My grandfather focus was the Hebrew language. He became a Hebrew expert, and an excellent Hebrew teacher. He taught Hebrew as well as geography at the local elementary school, where he eventually became the principal, educating children from various Kibbutzim and settlements in the area. His proficiency in the Hebrew tongue amazed me. He spoke better than most natives, without any detectable accent. He patiently corrected my Hebrew, constantly pointing out subtleties in the proper use of the language. There are many more stories I can share about my amazing grandfather, but this concludes the series of his early years in Israel, a part of his life which I've had to mostly gather on my own, since he was humble about sharing the details with us

My grandfather (Center) with a group of his students in 1977

Part IV: One Ancestor and Israel's Independence

Breaking Ground: Tower and Stockade Period

Continued from Part I, Part II and Part III

The previous posts about my grandfather's life brought us to the period in Israel's independence called the Arab Revult. My grandfather was living in Magdiel at the time awaiting land from the Jewish agency for their new settlement. But, at the beginning of the Arab Revolt, Jewish settlements came to a halt. One group, similar to the Magdiel group was scheduled to settle Tel Amal in Beit Shan Valley. Insecurity and lack of protection from Arab attacks postponed their ground breaking date. Unwilling to give up their dream, the pioneers of this group, came up with a creative solution circumventing settlement quotas imposed by Mandate law. They found a loophole: existing settlements could not be destroyed. They proposed to the Haganah (the Jewish underground) to build a guard tower and defense wall within one day. This would allow the young settlement to defend itself immediately. Though imposed quotas did not allow for new settlement, there was also an existing law which did not allow for disassembling of existing settlements. The challenge was to build a settlement overnight so it would be able to protect itself from unfriendly neighbors. Their success, on December 10, 1936, was the birth of the tower and stockade campaign. Fifty-two fortified agricultural settlements were established during this campaign which lasted until the end of the Arab Revolt in 1939. The establishment of a continuous territory populated by Jews, was to become the basis of the Jewish State, as it was declared by the United Nations partition plan.

From the Spielberg Collection, a rare silent film 

of the construction of a tower and stockade settlement 

(Kibbutz Ein Gev). 

To Arab dismay, and without British support, Jewish settlement continued. To build a settlements so quickly, the Haganah recruited reinforcements. For this reason, among others, Magdiel members—in a secret, undisclosed location—were sworn into the Haganah. In a candlelit ceremony, headed by the officer Eliezer Ziv-Av, my grandfather, took the following oath: 

“I hereby declare that based on personal voluntarism and my own free recognizance I am entering the Hebrew defense organization [Irgun Hahagannah Ha'ivri] in the land of Israel. [Eretz Yisrael]. I swear to be faithful all the days of my life to the Hagannah organization, to its constitution and to its duties as defined in its foundation doctrine by the high command.I swear to stand ready to serve the Hagannah organization, to take upon myself its discipline unconditionally and unreservedly, and, upon its call, to enter into active service at any time and in any place, to obey all its commands and to fulfill all its instructions. I swear to dedicate all my powers and even to sacrifice my life to defense and to the war for my people and my homeland, for the freedom of Israel and for the redemption of Zion.”

Note the typical uniform and the hunting gun of the Notrim. 

Why he never told me about partaking in this ceremony and enlisting I'll never know. Maybe he assumed I knew? I've concluded that he was among those who enlisted that night, thanks to the research I've done on the period and two photos of him guarding the kibbutz.

During this period of unrest, the Palestinian Police, composed of British, Arabs and Jews, was proved inadequate in the face of the surmounting violence. In response, the British authorities recruited two auxiliary forces. The Supernumerary Police which worked for the British, and the Ghaffirs. Ghaffir, an Arabic term left over from the Ottomans, means watchman. These armed guards were furnish with uniforms almost identical to the police and wore the typical Kolpak hat with a metal emblem (very much like the one my grandfather is wearing in these photos). These guards were paid for by the Jewish settlements and Jewish institutions directly. In general, they were subject to less supervision by the British, as they were employed by Jewish agencies. Equipped with hunting guns, they were permitted to enter territories between the Jewish and Arab settlements. The Haganah—still an underground illegal self defense force—saw the new Supernumerary Police as an opportunity to legally arm and train a Jewish defense force. The Jewish Agency, supported the enlistment of Haganah members, into this force, thereby creating the first ever legal armed force of Jews for Jews. By June 1936, the various armed auxiliary forces were uniformly called Notrim, and were paid for by the British as well as the settlements. Each settlement could hire extra security, on a case to case basis. The commanding officers were British and the privates were Jewish.  

My grandfather, guarding the Kibbutz dining hall
 at Tel-Yitzchak's first location in Usha.
1937

By 1937, there were some major ideological differences among the intellectual leadership of Magdiel Beit and little support from the main settlement of Magdiel. The original Hanora Hatzioni group split. A core group of die hards, joined by two others, from Petach Tikvah and Cfar Saba, formed the first Hanoar Hatzioni Kibbutz, Kibbutz Usha in the western Galilee. The ideological split which continued lead to an eventual compromise. The larger group, with a practical agricultural outlook, formed Cfar Usha. Simultaneously, only a few hundred meters away, a second settlement was formed by a smaller group of settlers. This group with a reputation for their high ideological standards, continued to refuse to join the Histadrut, the General Federation of Laborers in the land of Israel. They remained affiliated to the centrist Zionist political party which united the Zionist movements, called Brit Hatzioniyim Haclaliyim (The General Zionist) and formed Tel-Yitzchak. On November 9th, 1937, each group broke ground. They were allotted 900 donam (about 220 acres) of land each for fifty families. The built two independent camps, and the rest of the development was completed within a few months. Usha, located in the northern Galilee, was not strictly built in the tower and stockade fashion, yet it is considered part of this group of settlements. My grandfather held the responsibility of Gaffir at Usha, and manned the security post outside the dining hall. There was not enough work at Usha. Usha Members had to search for jobs outside the Kibbutz to help support the new development. My grandfather worked at several odd jobs such as a porter job at the newly completed Haifa port.

Loading Crates at the Haifa Port
(Baruch Lavi, bottom left corner)
1937

Haifa Port Workers
(Baruch Lavi, top row, second from the left)
1937

Hanita Breaking Ground 1938.

On March 21, 1938, my grandfather, was among five hundred young men and women, drafted to help raise the wall and tower of another Kibbutz, Kibbutz Hanita, also in the western Galilee. Fifty trucks carried volunteers and supplies. There was no road leading up to Kibbutz lands. They had to break a trail just to bring the trucks as closer. Finally, they walked the last strip, carrying the supplies on their backs the rest of the way. The one hundred men who remained on post that first night, were attacked by Arabs and two were killed.

To be continued in Part V: Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak