together. They didn’t bother getting married until the summer of 1941. Perhaps

together. They didn’t bother getting married until the summer of 1941. Perhaps because this was less than nine months before I was born, my mother always remained vague when asked their exact wedding date. My parents were an unlikely pair. My mother — bright, lively and energetic — was a doer, who believed passionately in the grand social experiment of kibbutz life. Having helped her mother raise her siblings in Warsaw, and with a natural affinity from children, she became the main authority on issues related to childbirth and early childcare. She actively partook in the kibbutz’s planning and politics, and reveled in its social life. My father was more detached both politically and socially. He was more contemplative, less assertive, less self- confident. Though he agreed broadly with the founding principles of the kibbutz, and wanted to play his role in making it a success, I could see, as I grew older, that he was often impatient at what he saw as its intellectual insularity and its ideological rigidities. Though it didn’t strike me at the time, he was not a large man. As a result of his childhood illness, he never grew to more than five-foot-four. Still, he was a powerful presence, stocky and strong from his work on the kibbutz. He had a deep, resonant voice and wise-looking, blue-gray eyes. It was only through Uncle Meir that by the time I was born, he had moved on from driving a tractor to a more influential role on the kibbutz. Meir worked for the Palestine Electric Company and when Mishmar Hasharon installed its own electricity system, the PEC was in charge of the work. Meir trained my father and put him forward as the kibbutz contact for maintaining and repairing the equipment. He was well suited for the work. He was a natural tinkerer, a problem-solver. He was good with his hands, and his natural caution was an additional asset as the kibbutz got to grips with the potential, and the potential dangers, of electric power. Once the system was installed, he became responsible for managing any aspect of the settlement that involved electricity: water pumps, the irrigation system, the communal laundry and our bakery. My parents were courteous and polite with each other, but they never showed any physical affection in our presence. None of the adults did. This was part of an unspoken kibbutz code. Not only for kibbutzniks, but for all the early Zionists, outward displays of emotion were seen as a kind of selfishness that risked undermining communal cohesion, tenacity and strength. Because I’d known no other way, this did not strike me as odd. Besides, I was a quiet, contemplative, bookish and self-contained child. Only in later years did I come to see the lasting effect on me. It was be a long time before I became comfortable 23 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011494