24/8/98

Seedling in the desert

    I met  Yehuda Shatil when we shared a hospital room. His story sounded interesting: he'd spent his adult life on a desert kibbutz. Sixty years he'd been there, he and his wife Shoshana, detached from the frenetic developments north of the Negev.
    I promised some day to visit Ruhama.  
    How little time there is nowadays, as we surge toward the future, to remember the unsung nation-builders, the Yehudas and Shoshanas, who dedicated their lives to creating the Ruhamas.
    What could he have imagined, this small Polish immigrant, when he left the teeming cities for the hopelessness one always feels in a desert? That this distant, forlorn spot would ever thrive?
    He, and his young wife, and others like them, did not stop to ponder things, to rationalize: they were both starry-eyed and blind. People are not made like them anymore, because there is no need. 
    The first shovel disturbed the sands here in 1911, and Ruhama became the most southerly Jewish outpost. In 1917, a day before the British invaded Palestine, the Turks invaded Ruhama, evicting the settlers. Beduin waylaid the site. The Jews rebuilt in 1920, the Arabs leveled it during the 1929 riots. The Jews, stubborn as ever, returned in '32, just in time for another wave of Arab riots in '36, which forced the settlers to abandon.
    The Jews came back yet again, with chickens, cows and children. Now they came under siege by 2,000 British troops, seeking -- but not finding -- the great cache of weapons hidden there for the Hagana in 1946. The British, too, ransacked the tents and straw huts of the luckless settlement. Then came the War of Independence. Strengthened by Holocaust survivors, but weakened by the evacuation of its women and children, Ruhama braced for the expected onslaught of the Egyptian army, which had sliced through the Negev. The Egyptians bombed and strafed the kibbutz, but did not invade, moving up along the coast instead.
    With that, the world finally gave up trying to conquer Ruhama. 
    Today, you can't see the desert for the trees. A first-time visitor cannot help but gasp at the shock of greenery. Where once there were no birds, lush lawns roll out across the grey-brown sand. If from acorns great oaks grow, such oases arise from seedlings -- in Hebrew, shatil.    
    Yehuda Shatil witnessed Ruhama's dramatic history, and he enjoyed telling the tales to his three children. He loved a good story, the funnier the better. Saturday nights, Yehuda would concoct a tremendous salad, gather 'em 'round, and keep the laughter going.
    Yehuda was slight of stature, but a dynamo. He was magical, charming. He was prickly, but he won everyone over. He was a monumental example to the younger generations of Ruhama: even as an old, old man he continued working, even if it was boring factory work, because he always believed that a Jew should roll up his sleeves and get cracking.
    He loved labor, but he loved having a good time too. He could tuck into a fierce debate and walk away exhilarated, for the intellectual and ideological highs it gave him. He thirsted for knowledge.
    He loved his land, his little Ruhama, his Shoshana, and he devoted himself passionately to all three.
    Yehuda lived life hard. He was never still.
    Three months after I met Yehuda, when I called to announce I was coming, Shoshana answered the phone.
    "Can I speak to Yehuda, please?" I said.
    There was a pause.
    She asked quietly who I was. I told her: we had shared a room together, we had promised to meet again sometime...
    There was another pause.
    "I'm sorry. Yehuda passed away. Yesterday."
    I went to see Shoshana. In deep grief, she was pleased to talk about those six decades, about their dream of coaxing life out of the desert.
    A few weeks later, Shoshana suffered a breakdown. Yehuda was the life within her, and he was no more. Shoshana is now in hospital, struggling for a reason to stay alive.
    Here in Ruhama lies Yehuda Shatil, where the grass grows.

UPDATE: Shoshana Shatil never recovered. On the second anniversary of Yehuda’s passing, while family and friends gathered for a memorial at the cemetery, Shoshana, in hospital, died.