Every indexed document

he was frequently back in Poland training

along with her 13-year-old brother Itzik and her little sister Henya

the rest of her family found themselves inside

joining the anti-Nazi partisans. All three would survive the

that only now was her life truly beginning.

she’d embraced and had come to define her. I know that she felt

they would learn not just about agriculture

learning the rudiments of how to farm and the rigors of simple

like so many of the other young Jews around her

community and a sense of safety amid the

though without citizenship because they had not been born

under the nationalist general Josef Pilsuldski. The Godins

the Bolshevik Revolution had toppled the czars. Poland

she came to see Mishmar Hasharon has her

was one of the early kibbutzim. These collective farming

the hamlet north of Tel Aviv where I spent the first 17

establish and safeguard our state. Yet even as a small child

and my own: between the Jewish ethical ideals at the core

and neighboring Arab states sent in their armies

and it was three years later that Israel