I returned to the kibbutz once, in February 1974, before I left Israel for good. My naive intention was to kidnap my children. Even though less than half a year had passed since my departure, neither of my children knew me any more. They were happy like children immersed in structured play with others often are. They were friendly to me, because at the kibbutz everyone is friendly. Every single individual trait had been successfully rooted out of them. They could have been anyone’s children.
My ex-husband didn’t want to see me. The other members of the community were terribly nice to me, though. They knew that I’d end up leaving with my tail between my legs. They knew that the three-year-old mechanical Malka and her older brother, mechanical Moti, were operating exactly according to the rules programmed into them. Everyone felt so comfortable they didn’t hesitate to invite me to stay a few days longer.
They made up a bed in the guest house—in the same room where they put up teenage summer workers from Europe. How much is it possible to demean a person?
I left early in the morning without saying goodbye to anyone. On the table in the dining hall I left a letter addressed to the monster named Methuselah. It was the most angry, bitter letter I’ve ever written. It was my J’accuse letter to the collective of tyrants who pretended to live in true equality. They took away my children. They brainwashed my husband. In the letter I vowed revenge. I will now read a translation of the letter:
Monster Methuselah!
You all have names I could call you by: Ditsa, Zmira, Dovid, Moshe, Chaim, Gal, Dani, Eliahu, Ester, Josh, Yehudit, Libbi, Rachel, Tuvia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But why would I bother? You are part of a machine. Tiny workers in an anthill. There is nothing uncompelled in you. Monster Methuselah: hopefully you won’t be too offended by the name I’m cramming you all into. We did live together for seven years, after all.
Dear Monster, you may be aware that sometimes you show symptoms of sickness beneath your placid surface. I’ll give an example. In the fall after the Six-Day War, one of the organs who operates under you, an organ named Lea, met some of her friends from the army in Tel Aviv. First she broke down in a clothing shop. Then she couldn’t decide what to choose from the menu at a restaurant. She came back from her trip in tears. She refused to rise from her bed for three days, so crushing was her experience of freedom.
You abandoned the doctrines of Judaism, but you replaced them with new dogmas. In the beginning I believed that clear, detailed rules were necessary to accomplish the greater good, so you, Methuselah, could flourish and offer your members the best of everything. So none of your members would turn capricious or egotistical. For a long time I refused to believe that in reality you only wanted to subjugate and enslave. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever have a serious discussion in this country about whether a child can suck her thumb or not!
No area of life went untouched by the rules you created and the ludicrous adaptations they required. I understand this, though. Without them, you wouldn’t exist. You would die, Monster Methuselah, if we acted according to our own will using our own brains.
Do not kill. To my mind, this is a sensible rule. (Of course it doesn’t apply to you. You are bloodthirsty and sent Noam, Yoel, Gidon, Yosken and Ben-Zion to the front to die.) Do not own anything—OK, so we share everything equally. But this is not enough for you, Methuselah. You also want us to divide our emotions equally. You forbid me from loving my children, because you think I love them “too much”. According to you, I love them wrong even though I’m their mother, so of course I know how much they need me!
Methuselah, you are a sadist, a psychopath, a narcissist, a criminal, and a murderer. You smoked me out using the greatest possible emotional violence, because I didn’t obey you. You harnessed all your members to attack me: my husband, Dovid, who had helped me recover from my difficult disease. The nanny, Zmira, whose energetic personality I thought I liked at first. My friends Ditsa, Moshe, Chaim, Gal, Dani, et cetera, et cetera. I can’t comprehend how all of them, even Ditsa, turned their backs on me.
Yesterday they were all smiles. I saw them dancing like marionette dolls: they look happy even though they’re full of anger and despair.
I’m leaving now, and I won’t be back. You won, so keep my husband and make my children your own. But I will never forget. You destroyed me, Methuselah, but I will use the rest of my life to take revenge, to destroy everything that reminds me in the slightest of you. Goodbye.
Sincerely,
Shlomith-Shkhina
And what have I done since my years at the kibbutz? I’ve rummaged through the soul of Judaism, identifying the side effects of Semitic culture and making them into art. I have subjected my body and personality to masochistic interventions, convincing myself that they have made me powerful.
Now I’ve drained myself to the point of death in order to reach the heart of it all, a space from which only one way out exists: surrender, healing, and enlightenment. I’ve thought of this moment countless times. I imagined that right now, in the final seconds of my lecture, I would experience the ultimate catharsis of my life. An enlightenment I could communicate to you, my dear listeners, and which I could carry with me for the rest of my life the way some carry a rosary.
But I don’t feel anything.
1 SINGER, D., & GROSSMAN, L. (EDS.) 2005: AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK 2005.
