Growing up in a religious Kibbutz in Israel

I grew up in a religious Kibbutz south of Tel Aviv. When thinking back to those days one thing that sticks out is Shabbat. Everything stops and I mean everything. No cars, no turning electricity off and on, no cutting toilet of paper, no talking about money, no working, wearing your special cloths for Shabbat. Can you imagine everything stopping in Seattle?! No noise.

Our synagogue

So what is left then? What left is quiet. Eat, Pray, Sleep and read the weekend newspapers, and then you take a stroll in the kibbutz paved paths eating and spitting sunflower seeds everywhere, it was a pleasure spitting those sunflower seeds everywhere don’t ask me why. You can try it yourself sometime. Shabbat was peace. Putting the work week behind you and focusing on the important things in life, food, prayer and sunflower seeds..

Now visiting “my kibbutz” on my Israel expeditions is a whole different story, bitter sweet kind of thing, but my soul is happy to go back there and roam at night in the familiar paths of my childhood, saying hello to trees I have climbed as a child and to people who vaguely remember my face. Being taken on a tour by my 7 years old nephew who shows me around in “his” Kibbutz, watching the sunset together, he is showing me all the places I grew up in as if it is all his, what a chutzpah.

So, this is an early Shabbat Shalom,

Boaz Pnini

Bridges 2 Israel

PS. An afterthought; The one time when I do feel somewhat like that peace in Seattle is when it snows and everything must stop, and all is quiet, it is somewhat similar.

The silo we climbed as childeren