Becoming a farmer – 1981

Having just turned 18, I sat in a plane from Bonn to Tel Aviv for the first time. I had spent the previous months accompanying famous German actors in a theatre as a stage musician, working in a steel factory making working platforms for coal mines, and was otherwise interested in electronics. I had the talent to be a flautist, but my teacher warned me that being a musician was not all fun. His advice was very valuable. I kept my enjoyment of music by deciding not to become a professional musician.

The next day, after I landed in Tel Aviv, I went into the city centre, afraid to speak to anyone because my English was extremely bad and I didn’t know any Hebrew. It was the first time I had seen palm trees against a crystal blue sky. People of all backgrounds were walking relaxed in the streets. The reflection of the sun off the white buildings was intense, the air hot and steamy. Drivers honked impatiently in the streets for all sorts of reasons. The design of the shops reminded me of the 60s. Falafel with hummus and pita tasted very good and I am still addicted to it. I walked through the Bauhaus quarter to the beach, where the sun was shining on the Mediterranean and people were enjoying the refreshing sea. Later I walked slowly back to the centre, marvelling at the variety of interesting faces of the passers-by. An elderly woman in Dizzengoff Square asked me in German, “What city are you from in Germany?” I was very surprised to be addressed in my mother tongue. “How did you know I was German?” I asked back. “Well, the way you walk…” the women replied, smiling, inviting me to sit next to her and continuing, “Tell me where you are from and what life is like there today”. A most interesting conversation followed, the first of many I had later. She had a number tattooed on her arm. She had survived a German concentration camp. We didn’t talk about it.

Many young people from all over the world worked in kibbutzim at that time, living in modest accommodation in a kind of hippie style. We could do whatever we liked as long as we did our work and obeyed the rules. We had partner families, were included in all the cultural activities and were taken on occasional leisure trips around the country in an old school bus equipped with good food, kitchen utensils and camping equipment. I will never forget when someone from the kibbutz went up north to harvest a Christmas tree and the kibbutz prepared a decent Christmas dinner for us. We were really made to feel at home. Only now, four decades later, do I realise how precious that experience was, to have lived a social utopia in reality. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Having a good sense of music, I first worked in the recorder factory of the kibbutz and went through the first steps of becoming a tuner. It was interesting to learn about the production of different types of recorders. The working atmosphere was very pleasant and informal. Lunch breaks were taken in the nearby dining hall, where the community met for communal meals. The kibbutzniks, who worked in the fields and orchards from dawn to dusk, were highly respected for their hard work. Sometimes we had to help them at peak times, such as when they were picking cotton or citrus fruit. My interest in agriculture grew considerably while working with them, and I asked to be transferred from the recorder factory to the farm on the weekly roster. Irrigation was my new job. I worked for many months as part of a decent team, operating irrigation equipment on all kinds of crops. It was great fun and fulfilling, especially as a tractor driver. I learnt to adapt to the rhythms of the days and seasons, which affected crop selection, irrigation scheduling and the application of cultivation methods. It was the first time in my young life that I felt truly satisfied with what I was doing. Only later did I learn that the dignified work culture of the kibbutz contributed greatly to this satisfaction. What a contrast to today’s neoliberal work culture!

One early morning I was towing a carrot harvester to a distant field. A lorry driver from Gaza was already waiting to drive in parallel and load the harvested carrots. But there was no jeep to bring the harvester operator, who had to make sure that the rotating belts of the machine that picked the carrots were always in place. After talking to the lorry driver for a while, I contacted the kibbutz on the walkie-talkie and asked what had happened to the picker. “Haven’t you noticed? We are at war! All the reserve soldiers were drafted into the army last night”. I apologised to the truck driver. We said goodbye and drove back to where we came from. It was the outbreak of the first Lebanon war on 6 June 1982.

Farming had to be maintained in the absence of conscripts from the kibbutz. Sprinkler irrigation was replaced by water-saving drip irrigation. Cows had to be milked and fields cultivated. Suddenly we, a few volunteers, were responsible for running the agriculture of an entire kibbutz. What a job for an 18-year-old boy! It felt good. We were given a crash course in dimensioning drip lines with hydraulic calculations, started installing the freshly delivered drip equipment and improved our skills through practical experience. The war was short. Soldiers from the kibbutz slowly returned from Lebanon, some of them severely traumatised, not talking to anyone, working like robots, not coming to the dining room, hiding in their rooms, unable to socialise. I hadn’t been interested in Israeli-Arab conflicts until then, but this was real. We were working together in the fields in completely new circumstances. The kibbutz threw a party to celebrate that we had helped to save their crops. Something drew me to the Lebanese border near Rosh HaNikra, where I stayed for two weeks. It was safe. There was no tourism, only the army on land, in the air and at sea. I saw the faces of soldiers returning from Lebanon. I will never forget them. War serves only one purpose, mutual slaughter. I decided to become a conscientious objector.

I returned to Germany about a year after I left, still not sure what I wanted to do in the future. I had to prepare for an examination to see if I was serious about being a conscientious objector or just pretending, which I passed. Then I had to apply for community service, which every conscientious objector had to do instead of military service. At first I helped people living on the streets and applied for a volunteer job with Action Reconciliation and Peace Service in Berlin, which I eventually got. I also worked on two farms to get an impression of German agriculture. I also started reading books, something I hadn’t done seriously before. A former kibbutz volunteer recommended E.F. Schumacher’s (1973) “Small is beautiful. A study of economics as if people mattered.” I read it from cover to cover, taking notes, unaware that I was holding one of the most influential books of the last century. To be honest, I understood very little at that age. However, I found one argument very compelling: that work becomes fulfilling when a person finds a good balance between physical and mental work. I realised that farming was the ideal way to achieve this balance. I decided to become a farmer and have never regretted it.