Finally Bettelheim let loose with both barrels. “A relative emotional flatness may be just the selective factor that determines who stays on in this relatively simple, undemanding environment.” And as if to soften the blow of this claim, somewhat apologetically he added, “Although the second generation of kibbutzniks do not create science or art, are neither leaders nor great philosophers nor innovators, maybe it is they who are the salt of the earth without whom no society can endure.”
Never before had the father of 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt, received so much hate mail, fully a fifth of which hinted at Mossad exacting revenge on him.
Although later revelations about Bruno Bettelheim’s personal history give reasons for a wide range of doubts—he fled to the United States after using his connections to get out of the Buchenwald concentration camp, pulled a degree and work history in child psychology out of a hat once in the New World, maneuvered his way into a surprisingly long career as a helper of disturbed children, and then was accused of violence and sexual abuse and took his own life—the conclusions he drew about the kibbutz movement weren’t complete bunk. At least Shlomith’s experiences supported Bettelheim’s claims about the ramifications of the kibbutz ideology, the spiritual banality, the callousness, and the unquestioned group discipline. And it’s also true that someone who lives on a kibbutz and doesn’t trouble her head with critical questions is probably happier than one who goes out to conquer the world.
However, Shlomith was not interested in lukewarm, evenly distributed happiness. When she encountered her first MASS DEATH OF IMAGINATION right after moving to Israel, she didn’t understand yet what was going on. The Six-Day War in June of 1967 aroused questions in Shlomith, but she banished them deep into the recesses of forgetfulness. She threw herself into the emotions of the community, which was as easy as breathing. Not until later did she unearth the questions again. The numbers were chilling: four percent of the population of Israel lived in kibbutzes and about the same portion fought in the army, but fully twenty-five percent of those who died in the war were from kibbutzes. Five young people from Methuselah died, which was an incomprehensible number given its small size. What happened in those battles? Why did Noam, Yoel, Gidon, Yoske, and Ben-Zion foolishly push their way to the front and put themselves in the line of fire?
Shlomith had embraced Ditsa, Noam’s mother, as she wept after seeing her son disappear into his grave wrapped in shrouds from head to toe. Five dead, a five-fold measure of sorrow, and Shlomith couldn’t help remembering what Ditsa had said to her before the war, just after Shlomith arrived, when she was still curious and full of unrestrained enthusiasm. “Do you really think we believe they’d choose the kibbutz if we didn’t specifically train them to?”
Father Kibbutz always knew best. Little kibbutzniks shouldn’t think too much. Little kibbutzniks should relax and enjoy being spoonfed codes of heroism and a sense of duty, and heaped servings of energetic functionality. Sometimes, in extreme circumstances, someone might run into the path of a bullet, but when you thought of the whole, this sacrifice was insignificant.
Isn’t that right, Ditsa?
Isn’t that right, Noam, Yoel, Gidon, Yoske, and Ben-Zion?
These are the questions Shlomith digs up after Malka’s birth. She digs up Ditsa and scrapes away the layers concealing the rhetorical question this woman posed to her for some reason during her first month at Methuselah: “Do you really think . . .” Layer by layer Shlomith scrapes bare June 1967, Noam and his four companion’s funerals, and all that agony, and the lump inside her grows. It grows and grows and bursts when Malka turns two years old.
At first Shlomith tries to be careful. Demurely she asks whether she can spend more time with her children than the last two hours they’re awake each day. But that isn’t possible. The central committee won’t give permission. Soon Shlomith is slipping into the infants’ house when no one is looking to see her daughter—in the morning, at midday, at completely inappropriate times. She plucks up her courage and sneaks into the nearby toddlers’ house where Moti and the other children his age are and where Malka and her group will be moved in the coming weeks. She peeks into the rooms and watches them at play, but she’s careless and gets caught; then “the problem” is discussed at the next general meeting.
But Shlomith has looked deep into her children’s eyes and seen a glimmer of light that has yet to be extinguished from Malka’s gaze. There’s only one option: Shlomith has to save her children. At least Malka.
“Do you want Malka to end up in Neve Ze’elim?”
Another new day’s evening has come, and the nightly display has begun on the porch of the white stucco house. Zmira shouts herself hoarse, resorting to the theatrical pathos of ghetto life, which shouldn’t exist in her any more after thirty years of life at Methuselah. But Shlomith has an exceptional ability to get on people’s nerves. Shlomith is insufferable, and that’s why it’s completely possible that her daughter will end up in Neve Ze’elim, an institution for disturbed children located in Ramot HaShavim. This is what Zmira believes, and so does Dovid, who, with his last shreds of melodramatic emotion, the ones Methuselah hasn’t managed to root out yet, bellows:
“Malka is my child too, and I say enough is enough!”
Shlomith-Shkhina looked sadly at the boy from Vanity Fair. “For all practical intents and purposes, I was driven out of Methuselah. I did everything I could to take my children with
