Netzer Hazani: in the new house
A beautiful view can be seen from the house of Anita and Stoi Toker in the settlement of Netzer Hazani in the Shefala, but Anita continues to call the place a house and not "the house".
And she is convinced that one day she will return to the original Netzer Hazani, the settlement she founded in the 1970s in the north of Gush Katif and from which she was evacuated in the summer of 2005, during the disengagement plan.
"I'll be the first in line to come back," smiled the 77-year-old Toker when we stayed at her place.
"The wound of the deportation has not healed. I don't feel pain or anger, but I do feel a strong longing. I don't know when, but I'm sure I'll be back."
Will we have to occupy the strip again?
"You are not an occupier, you are the owner of the house who came to order the Arabs who live there and also to let me return to my home, because Jews have lived there for generations. I have nine grandchildren who are serving in the army, some of them in my midst, and I do not want them to be killed, God forbid, but I want there to be order in the country".
"The house we left is part of the promised land."
Anita Tucker, photo: Moshe Shay
The replacement Hazani offspring has been standing on the land for a total of ten and a half years and includes 130 families, most of whom came from Gush Katif after the evacuation.
At first, Anita says that they thought of staying close to the Gaza Strip, but it was the members of the Nahal Sorek regional council who convinced them not only with a piece of land, but also that this is a council in which all seven localities in its territory are of a religious nature.
"They said 'plan the new house,'" says Anita.
"People didn't feel like going to an architect, so the head of the council first built kindergartens and daycare centers so that the children could study here and drove the parents enough times for us to feel a sense of belonging, and I still miss the sea, the dunes and also the ideological section. The house we left is part of the promised land."
Anita and Stoi immigrated to Israel from the USA in the late 1960s. At first they settled in Be'er Sheva, but they wanted to be pioneers and together with nine families founded Netzer Hazani, the first of the settlements in the Gaza Strip. "We grew tomatoes there for export," recalls Anita, "in the first year we exported Five tons of crop, six tons in a second.
I loved life and also the relationship with my Arab neighbors.
I went to Gaza to do some shopping and in Khan Yunis I put the baby with the jade, and I didn't think twice.
I learned from the Arabs that if you are strong they respect you, and if you are weak they step on you."
Anita says that after the Oslo Accords, deterioration began and three members of the settlement were murdered in terrorist attacks, and she still did not think of leaving.
"I kept going to the packing house in Kfar Darom with the goods, because that's the house. Who lives in the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem is afraid now? Maybe so. I'm not."
Did the sights in Hawara remind you of other days?
"It hurts, but it further emphasizes the importance of the unity of the people and life in all parts of the country. It is clear to me that there was weakness in the Hvara region, and when we behave with too much respect for our enemies, we are stepped on. When we do not behave strongly, these things repeat themselves, and it seems as if we are beating ourselves up. self destruction".
So burn houses?
"I understand the settlers, they felt that their lives were in danger, but this is not the way. We need to let the state show its strength. We will win only when the state tells the truth. By the way, I know my daughter and Miriam Naumburg, the grandparents of those murdered in the attack, from Gush Katif. They Lived in Neve Dekalim. My daughter also spoke after the murder about calmness and unity, and if you ask him - he would like to return home."
Anita remembers the evacuation in the summer of 2005 in detail.
"I didn't pack, because I said I would give the Holy One another chance to repent," she laughs.
"That day, my daughters opened a long table, spread a beautiful tablecloth and prepared breakfast. Outside I saw 15 Air Force officers walking towards us. One of the girls pushed them inside and said, 'Sit down and listen.' You'll have to leave.'
Would you give up your home for true peace?
"Peace is when two people live together without a wall in between. We don't have to hug every day, but we do live next door. I'm ready to give up and live next to them. I ask where are all the humanitarians who don't care about the people who live there. After all, most of our acquaintances in Gaza were murdered, because they thought that they are partners.
If we had stayed it could have been the Riviera.
The same in Judea and Samaria, the ordinary person wants to live his life and leave him out of politics.
Today they are being incited."
Anita speaks from her heart, but makes sure to smile.
"On the day of the deportation, I was angry, but when I realized that this was my country, I said that no one would take it away from me, and then I made a switch. On the first independence day after the deportation, we didn't know whether to hang a flag, and then the administration of the settlement handed out photos of the beach lilies from a picking block and a written section."
In the passage, which hangs in her house, it is written "What is special about the seed of the beach lily is that it is wrapped and protected by a layer of cork. When the seed reaches the sea it will not be destroyed, and will be carried by the waves to a safe beach, where it will grow again. We, the residents of Netzer Hazani, who continue and march together against all odds , while making personal concessions out of a sense of mission, we pray that we will continue to feel protected and wrapped in the love and care of the Lord of the world, and thanks to this we will grow in a safe coast again."
I asked if she was not afraid that today's controversy would be more destructive.
"We are all motivated, but it will pass," Anita is convinced, "I have a relative who I saw on Facebook that takes his children to demonstrations and I tried to correspond with him. He didn't want to. A Zionist, but motivated. I have no doubt that the situation can be saved. God willing, there are enough enemies From the outside they make sure that we unite. One of my grandsons serves in the Golani. Who is with him in the unit?
Gani Tal: not on the equator
Dekla Fox-Yeshua (43) is also from Gush Katif Mponi and lives in the Gani Tal settlement, which was also transferred to the council area in Nahal Sorek.
She, unlike Anita, does not miss.
"Much better here," she said when we met.
"The last years in the Gush were a horror. And when I look back, as a mother of children, I understand that it was suicide. Our ages were less affected, but many of our parents got cancer and suffered from high blood pressure. Even I, despite everything, can't look at pictures from those days. I'm honest suffocated".
Dekla says that many of the evacuees did not return to farming, but she and her father Guy are among the few who chose to continue.
They have avocado plantations, and for the past seven years they have been the pioneers of coffee growers in Israel.
"I always laugh, but I am a fourth generation of coffee addicts," she said, "In the 1950s there were attempts to nationalize coffee in Israel that failed. Seven years ago we had a small plot and said we would try. We connected to the avocado irrigation system, and we knew that the important thing is that coffee is not allowed Being in direct sunlight, his big problem when he leaves the equatorial region."
They started with 30 coffee bushes, a variety of the Golda type, the same one that in the 1950s they managed to partially naturalize.
After four years, when the first crop was harvested and roasted, Dekla took the produce to Assaf Rips of "Unico", a coffee establishment from Kibbutz Yagor in the north, who would give an initial opinion.
The specialist was favorably impressed.
Slowly, the people of the Ministry of Agriculture began to gather around Dekla to try to see how the field could be developed.
From individual bushes, the cultivation expanded and today covers three dunams, with six different varieties growing on the side that are in the acclimatization stage.
You can find saplings from Uganda, Rwanda, Brazil and Colombia.
"We want to see which one will produce the largest amount," she explains.
"The next step is for the entire cluster to ripen together. Otherwise, the picking is manual, selective and expensive. We want to pick with a shaker, like with olives. Brazil is the only flat country in the world that grows coffee, and it has succeeded in mechanizing the picking. Understand that coffee is primitive and grows in villages are remote, and today, with the changes in the weather, the villagers find it difficult to cope. Those who do not fertilize properly and do not have strong varieties, will not have coffee."
Dekla has a small cafe near the plantations.
The occupation of coffee turned from a hobby into a profession for her.
"It's exactly the same range of tastes as wine," she says.
"I'm still not a great expert, but it's an acquired taste, and in Israel the development started during the Corona virus. People sat at home and started talking nonsense. By the way, these are men, a lot of hi-techists. I go to coffee workshops and I'm always the only woman."
How is the Israeli coffee?
"Tel Aviv is very advanced compared to the world. Our coffee, for example, is tastier than Italian, because the problem in Europe is that they are stuck - the same blends, the same roasts. In Italian coffee, the roasting reaches more than 200 degrees, which is like putting ketchup on food. Today, coffee is a world New, and surprisingly, the countries that drink the most coffee are the Northern Europeans, the Nordics. There, the roasting is light, 180-170 degrees, the coffee is high quality. If we drink it to death, we won't feel the taste."
Dekla's institution is in demand.
While we were there it was closed, but quite a few people arrived and were disappointed to find the door locked.
"The problem is that when you succeed then suddenly everyone grows and the price drops," she laughs.
"The Thais call our settlement 'Avocado Gardens', because everything is avocado and all of Israel grows avocados. There was a flood and you can't make a living. We started coffee as a hobby, and I hope we will succeed. We are under pressure for coffee to disappear from the world, and without it we probably won't survive."
Hefetz Chaim: No longer anti
The Nahal Sorek regional council celebrated its 73rd birthday right now, in Bez Bader, but the first settlement in the area is earlier.
The group that founded Kibbutz Hefetz Chaim will soon celebrate its 90th birthday.
Hefetz Chaim was the first ultra-orthodox kibbutz in Israel.
"These are not the ultra-Orthodox people we know today," explains Havi Zeliger, 78, who was born in a kibbutz and still lives there today.
"They were people of faith who wanted not only to learn Torah, but also to work. They raised us on the verse 'And I gave grass in your breast to your cattle, and you ate seven.' 'I accept' and go to the farm to feed the animals."
The Hafetz Chaim group was founded in September 1933, during the swearing-in ceremony for the death of Rabbi Israel Meir HaCohen, known by his nickname "Hafetz Chaim".
Seven guys from Bnei Brak, members of Agudath Israel, who decided to establish a form of settlement named after the rabbi in which they would also work the land.
These were ultra-Orthodox immigrants from Germany.
"The ultra-Orthodox from Germany were the most liberal," says Keren Hamiel (41), Khoi's daughter.
"They were a closed community that was in contact with the outside world. They were anti-Zionists and always get angry when I mention this, but until 1948, when the state was established, the term 'anti-Zionist' did not refer to settlement in Israel, but to opposition to the Zionist movement as a secular movement, one of whose goals was To turn the exiled man into the new Jew, and they could not give a hand to that."
The ultra-Orthodox farmers had to deal with halachic problems, such as the Shmitta year and milking on Shabbat.
"If you don't milk the cows on Shabbat, you cause them grief," Keren says.
"There was a rabbi and scientist here, Yosef Bacharach, who said that there was a milking machine that was abandoned at the Institute of Agriculture in Rehovot, and maybe he could find a solution. He came up with an electronic solution and consulted the rabbi, who said that it sounded logical. He contacted the Swedish scientist who made the machine and agreed that it It is possible. It worked excellently and was copied all over the country, and works more or less in the same way to this day. Unfortunately, Bacharach did not get to see his work. He was killed in the War of Independence in 1948."
Over the years Lahui was disturbed by the stigma attached to the ultra-Orthodox and the lack of knowledge of history.
She began collecting items and photographs from the history of the kibbutz to establish a museum for the history of the settlement, and was joined by her daughter Karen, one of her ten children.
The museum is now in an old shack, and it is supposed to move to a new, central location in Hefetz Haim.
"The museum is a dream," says Khoi, "I have collected things since I was a child and I want to tell a story. After all, the order of the day was like this at the time: morning prayer, work, at noon there were those who had a break so they went to study, went back to work, and in the evening there was not a day when It had lessons. You can combine Torah with work."
"The museum is a dream."
Hui,
Keren: "This is why we want to establish a museum. Today, whoever you call ultra-orthodox, will say 'parasite, living at my expense'. You didn't know that thanks to them there are milking machines and agricultural developments. 'Poalei Agudat Israel' was established to take care of the ultra-Orthodox worker. I did a degree in history, And in the final thesis I discovered the story of the kibbutz and I also found that Rabbi Meir Karlitz scolded them: 'The only bad thing is that you don't know how to tell what you did for the state.' It's the first time that I empathize and understand their difficulties. I always point to the fact that they are the bad guys in the settlement story. I realized that now I have a mission."
Hefetz Chaim is no longer an ultra-orthodox kibbutz.
Over the years, and after quite a few identity crises, it became a religious-national kibbutz.
Although women have to wear a headdress and skirt and the men wear a kippah, some of the conditions for admission are military service for men and national service for women.
The word anti is no longer associated with Zionism there.
"I'm not ultra-Orthodox, I'm a woman of faith," Khoi defines herself, "I have my own way. The kibbutz has changed its face and the flexibility suits me. Honestly, I'm not that attached to a synagogue. I like to pray at home. Like Yaakov, my husband, Says: '50 shades of religion'".
Beit Halkia: A writer is born
For years, Khoi has owned an animal farm in Hefetz Haim, which is visited by animals from all over the country, and has a large and popular animal corner.
When she feeds the animals on Shabbat, she knows that she will be visited by Yankee and Motty Zorger, his 10-year-old son, who arrive on foot from the neighboring homestead.
Muti was born different.
In his early years he did not look straight, and until the age of 3 he had a very limited vocabulary.
He was mostly a violent child.
In the first diagnosis they found nothing, in the second they told Linky and Hadassah that their son was on the spectrum.
"Even before the diagnosis, I knew," says Hadassah.
"It was very difficult for me. I know someone so old that when he was a child his late mother raised a hand on him. To this day he says that she did not love him, and when they told me I said 'I only love Muti and I will not end up in the situation of those mothers. After all, how can you love a violent child and doesn't call?'
Every day I read a book of Psalms that he would be a normal child."
Hadassah and Winky are an ultra-Orthodox couple.
They turned to the former head of the council, Eli Escozido, and said that there is no media garden in their vicinity that is suitable for their son.
Within a month, a model garden was opened in the nearby settlement of Yad Binyamin.
From a child who ate from a baby's bottle until the age of 4 and a half, the child began to speak and communicate.
Moti Winky, photography: Moshe Shay
When the kindergarten period ended and it was necessary to continue to a school setting, the parents were supposed to send their son to an ultra-Orthodox education accompanied by aid, but Yanki and Hadassah decided that they would do everything for the benefit of their son, even if it would cause eyebrows to be raised among the people of the community.
"We decided we were going to commit suicide," says Yankee.
"I went to the rebbe in Bnei Brak who said, 'You focus on education, because this is a diamond that needs to be polished.
Never mind a knitted cap, secular.
Religion is not interesting at the moment, you give it the upper hand."
Moti was accepted into a regional religious-national school that combines regular and special education, and today he is a fourth grade student.
"In the last meeting with the team, the teacher said, 'We are working with him on lowering the level of discourse, because it is very high. And by the way, he writes books,'" Yanki says.
"The teacher gave me a few pages, but I was stressed, I didn't look. After a week, Hadassah called me and said: 'Come, Muti brought the books he wrote. You have to read.'"
Yankee looked at the two books - "Capricorn and Squirrel" and "Hero for glory" - that his son, who until recently rarely communicated, wrote and illustrated.
It turns out that Moti approached the teacher and told her stories that came up in his imagination, and she said that he had better write them down.
She also explained that every story should have a place, time, plot, characters and resolution, and he wrote according to the instructions.
A friend of Yankee's from Jerusalem digitally scanned and printed the books, and with the almost finished product, Yankee asked to meet the head of the regional council, Shay Reichner.
"I told him, 'You must publish this as a book, we will distribute it to all the children of the council,'" says Reichner.
"As a parent who has read books to his five children, Moti's are superior to most of them."
Muti is already on his way to finishing his third book.
He now has the fourth and fifth in mind, and they will be posted on the page soon.
He is writing a book that talks about the attitude to Shona.
Every book must have a message.
But his parents are in no hurry to publish his works.
They are waiting for confirmation from the teaching staff that Moti is ready to deal with the exposure.
For all the meteoric progress, he is still a special boy.
"I still have trouble understanding what progress he has made," says Hadassah.
"I believed he was a genius, even when he wasn't talking to me, but I didn't believe it to that extent."
Benny Ram: Kosher Thai restaurant
A book could be written about Ilan Yedai (51).
He was born in Bnei Brak to a traditional family, studied at the Reali School in Haifa, served as an officer in the armory, was released and graduated with a bachelor's degree.
In the late 1990s he went on a trip to the East.
He arrived in India, from there he moved to Thailand, and in the north of the country, in the city of Chiang Mai, in a local cosmetics store, he became interested in Nat, the flight attendant who offered products for purchase.
The two went out drinking and continued to walk together.
Ilan apologized that he had to return to Israel, but continued to be in touch and was pleased when the Israeli start-up company he was recruited into sent him on a long-term assignment in Bangkok.
The company did not last, but Ilan stayed in the East with Nat.
Yedai, who worked in Thailand in the field of jewelry, married his girlfriend in a civil marriage and they had two children, Talia and Elad.
Only then did he begin to fear assimilation.
"We decided that we want to return to Israel to convert," says Ilan.
"We talked about it even before the marriage, and it was clear that if we established the relationship it would happen. My wife said she was interested."
The conversion was not easy, and certainly the absorption in the country, but the couple insisted and during the process Ilan and his wife became stronger in religion.
Nat and Ilan decided that they wanted to find a house in a quiet moshav, with priority to the south, preferably with a traditional character, and found themselves in the moshav Bnei Ram.
In 2011 Nat was already a convert who answered to the name Naama.
"We had a company that dealt with transferring salaries to Thai workers, and most of the activity was in the south," says Ilan.
"We were looking for a place with a supportive environment and community. We wanted to get out of the city to a quiet place."
The company prospered, but after two robberies the couple decided the risk was too great and the business closed.
Ilan tried to open a personnel company, which also closed its doors.
The couple thought about where to go next and decided to return to the old dream - food.
"I liked the culinary theme in Thailand, but we were afraid to enter the field," he says.
"It seems difficult and Sisyphean, but at the meeting we entertained friends, Naama opened a table, and they were so enthusiastic that it made us think that maybe something could be done after all."
Naama was not a cook when she arrived in Israel, so she and Ilan went to Thailand to get professional, and of course everything must be kosher with a stamp.
"A central sauce in Thai cooking is made from oysters and we have alternative sauces, an equally good solution. You can see these solutions in Thailand in vegan restaurants, or in the months when the religious observe vegetarian food."
The "Thai" restaurant in Bnei Ram opened about a year and a half ago with deliveries, then when they started demanding - they set up a table at home.
Today there are already five tables, and soon they are preparing to increase.
"This food is less well known among the religious population, but today most of our customers are secular, people who have been to Thailand and loved the food. The target audience is much more diverse."
Ilan, who comes from a Yemenite family, speaks Thai fluently.
At home if he is given leg soup, or tom yum soup, he will probably choose the option from the Far East.
"Crazy," he laughs.
"If you had told me this is what would happen to my life, I wouldn't have believed it. Completely delusional."
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