I’ve always heard about the Kibbutzim (plural of Kibbutz) in Israel, but honestly knew virtually nothing about them or exactly what they were except some kind of collective farming communities. I recently spent a few days on the Ketura Kibbutz in the Arava desert of Southern Israel and it was so much more than I realized or expected.

Kibbutzim started in Israel around 1910.  In the most general sense, a kibbutz is an Israeli commune or intentional community. They are communal farms or projects staffed by volunteers who are compensated with food, housing, and a small stipend. The essence of work on a kibbutz is that it is voluntary. Everyone receives the same amount of money, regardless of the type of work or amount of hours spent at work. The members are thus motivated by conscience, responsibility, and a sense of bettering their own community, rather than personal economic gain. Though kibbutzim have undergone many transformations over the years and have never accounted for more than seven percent of the Israeli population, the kibbutz has immense cultural significance and remains a viable Israeli institution today.

In the early days, kibbutzim held fast to socialist ideals. There was no private property, not even tools or clothing, all work was shared, and land was owned communally. The bulk of the work was agricultural. Kibbutzim attempted to build a self-sufficient economy, but this proved unfeasible. Instead, they were supported by subsidies from charities and later from the Israeli government. Today, most kibbutzim are no longer strictly socialist, though they do retain many communal aspects. All kibbutzim, for example, are democratic.

Over time, it became clear that agricultural work was not enough to sustain the institution of the kibbutz. They began to industrialize. Today, some kibbutzim have even turned to the tourism industry. The kibbutz has a long history of political and cultural contributions to Israel as well. A disproportionate amount of Israeli government and military leaders, artists, and intellectuals have come from kibbutzim.

The kibbutz system has met with controversy over the years. Some groups have been criticized for elitism, while others have been accused of straying from their ideals. Nevertheless, Israeli culture would not be the same without the kibbutz. It is a specifically Israeli institution that has made invaluable contributions to the nation’s political, economic, and intellectual life.

Today there are roughly 260 Kibbutz communities around Israel (a country with a population of about 6 million people – less than the population of New York City).

At first glance, it seemed almost like a gated suburban community where everyone knows your name.  For two days, I couchsurfed with Roy, Tiki, their daughters Rotem and Shani, and their super friendly dog, Bamia (Okra in English), and their vocal cat, Pizza (Italian for pizza). Roy actually grew up in New Jersey, but came here after college and has lived here now for thirty years. Tiki’s family is originally from Turkey, but she has lived here all her life. This is their home and they are proud of their community. Roy is the business manager for the kibbutz and Tiki is a teacher and also recently took the initiative to build a petting zoo of mainly rabbits for the local kids to enjoy.

The Ketura Kibbutz has a few hundred people living on it. There are actually about 150 members, but when you add in the children and various volunteers that come during the year, the size nearly doubles.  Unlike many other kibbutzim, Ketura has not strayed far from its original ideals and has not privatized. To bring in money to the community and members, Ketura has one of the country’s largest date orchards and a dairy farm with hundreds of cows that are milked every day.  Now this looked like a nice humane place for a cow to live its life with a decent amount of room to roam. We even saw a baby calf during his first few hours of life and he was already walking around.

To sustain the kibbutz, Ketura has branched out into other fields. They have built an algae factory or processing plant – literally the only one of its kind in the world processing Astaxanthin, which is a natural ingredient used in cosmetics and some natural remedies. There is also a library, a hotel, a pool, and recreation facilities.

Residents here do not even own their own cars – there are shared cars that you can sign up to use. Those who live here share all of the work and in turn share equally all of the pay. Three meals a day are served seven days a week – all free as part of living and working here. You get a house with money for furniture, clothing, all your utilities are covered, your laundry done for you, a stipend for vacation, use of a store where many things you do not pay for and if your teenage child works for about a year on the Kibbutz, even his college tuition is covered.

But, wait, there is one more amazing thing here on the Ketura Kibbutz – Methuselah. It’s the nickname of a young Judean date tree, long thought to be extinct, which sprouted from a 2000-year-old seed, the oldest ever to produce a tree. And here it sits.  The ancient seeds were found 30 years ago during archeological digs on Mount Masada, the mountaintop fortress on the shore of the Dead Sea where King Herod built a spectacular palace. When the Romans conquered Palestine and laid waste to the Temple in Jerusalem, Masada was the last stand of a small band of Jewish rebels who held out against three Roman legions for several years before committing mass suicide in A.D. 73.  The seeds’ ancient age was confirmed by radiocarbon dating to be somewhere in the range of 60 B.C. to A.D. 95. If the tree is a female, it will hopefully bear fruit, the fruit of 2,000 years labor.

It’s interesting on this journey around the world as I bounce between countries that are clean and dirty; places where cars stop for people and places where people stop for cars; and countries where you can drink the water or others where you can not…unless you want to spend a lot of time in the toilet.

In the middle of the Middle East lies a country that is much more Western than most of its neighbors. There are palm trees, big cars, newly laid clean sidewalks, and a lot of people shopping and sauntering around in flip flops by the beach. Am I in Florida? Nope, it’s just Israel.

I have to admit, it is a unique place. I am Jewish, but I am not Israeli. Do I have much in common with these people? Some look like me. Some look like friends I grew up with in New Jersey. Many are secular and not religious just like me. While many also speak English, the official language is Hebrew and everything is in Hebrew…an ancient language that I only relate to the Torah and prayers.  I certainly never thought of Hebrew as an every day ‘want to meet for a cup of coffee’ kind of tongue.   But I guess that’s because Hebrew as a ‘common language’ is quite new.  Biblical Hebrew was not used for a couple thousand years and then was recently resurrected by one Ben Yehuda, a Zionist who returned to Israel, like many other Jews spread around Europe in the 19th century.  He started the movement of making the previously biblical language a secular common-day tongue that would enable Jews from all over the Diaspora to speak in one unified language.

An observation: this is a unique place. Nowhere in the modern world (except maybe some neighborhoods in Brooklyn) is there a place where the majority is Jewish. And there are Jews here from all over the world: Arab countries, the United States, South America, Ethiopia, Russia, Europe, etc.  I guess it’s the flip side of the United States, another country built by immigrants, but where the majority is Christian.   Some American Jewish friends of mine said I would just ‘instantly feel at home here’ and perhaps I did. But I didn’t know if it was because I was walking the streets with so many other Jews or if it was because, in so many ways, Israel felt like a town in southern Florida or a neighborhood in New York City. Hip, good looking, young people walked around in the latest fashions, chatting up a storm on their mobiles, and eating at outdoor cafes. It was life like I knew it…well, except for the machine guns.

It’s as old as dirt. Well, it is dirt primarily.  You may know it from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, but this is no movie set.  It is one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World.”

The “rose city” of Petra, Jordan is a vast, unique city of grand temples, tombs, and buildings carved into the sandstone rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled here more than 2000 years ago, turning it into an important junction for the silk, spice and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome.

Incredibly, this ancient site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812 when it was discovered by a Swiss explorer. And, get this:  this year, Petra will hold its very first Marathon right through the ancient city and into the mountains around it.

The difference between the fast ferry and the slow car/truck ferry was just $10, but about 3 more hours of travel time across the Gulf of Aqaba to Jordan.  And hanging out on the slow ferry with all the truck drivers on a Saturday morning was not something I really wanted to do. One guidebook said that the fast ferry runs everyday at 3pm except on Sunday.  Another one said it ran early on Saturdays. The owner of my beach camp in Nuweiba called what he said was the port and they said there was NO fast ferry on Saturdays, but the slow ferry would leave at 2pm. The book, of course, said the slow ferry leaves at noon. And to top it all off, the man said that the ticket window closed at 11am either way. What?? It was like an awful middle school math problem!

So just to be on the safe side, I arrived at the Nuweiba port at 10:30am to find out the Fast Ferry was running and would depart at 3pm just as my book said. So I proceeded to waste the next 5 hours wandering around the scruffy port area all the while schlepping my bag through litter covered, crumbling sidewalks and gutters. I sat in one café hoping to eat lunch, but was never served. The only other customers were a table of Egyptian men smoking shisha pipes. No one ever came to my table except a cute little girl who presented me with a ‘bouquet’ of leaves. I thanked her and she pointed to the ring on my finger that my mom had given me years ago. I guess this was the exchange she wanted, but I would not trade. I moved on to a second café and had some decent falafel on pita and read my Israel travel guide for a very long two hours.

Finally I moseyed to the port entrance. The signs were all in Arabic so luckily the security guards and policemen every 100 meters were pretty helpful. First I went through a security check where my bags were x-rayed. Then I was pointed into a large bright hall where I sat on a hard bench before going through immigration. After getting my passport exit stamps, I sat on a hard bench in a large dark hall.  Here I came in contact with the first westerners I’d seen all day. About twenty passengers sat waiting…a handful of them tourists. Next, we were herded onto a bus that had definitely seen better days. What was once a luxury coach with plush seats was now dirty, torn and tattered with broken seat arms and seat backs that no longer stayed in the upright position. When I finally boarded the ferry at 3:30pm (of course it was late), my ticket and passport were checked no less than five times and then I entered another world. It was as nice and plush as any big fast ferry I’d been on before. These kinds of ferries are kind of like business class in an airplane, but with much more room, larger comfy seats, a coffee and snack bar and general luxury compared to where I’d hung out all day.

It was a Saturday and also low season so myself and just the few others on board rode the huge empty vessel past Saudi Arabia on the East and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on the West up to Jordan under a full moon.

Tears welled up in my eyes as we hugged and said our final goodbyes. I stood alone on a small hill of rocks and sand with both arms in the air waving as their minibus drove out of sight. I was alone again.  And it was bittersweet.  I felt a tug of sadness to say farewell to my new wonderful friends, but also that old hint of excitement to be all alone in the world again ready to fend for myself and explore places unknown.

For the last two weeks I have toured around the country of Egypt. The pyramids of Giza, the temples of Luxor and the tombs at Abu Simbel were mind blowing.  I’ve slept on a plush overnight train, under the stars in a sleeping bag on a basic Egyptian felucca (sailboat), and in a wonderful small thatch hut on the beach.

One of my favorite stops was the small village of Daraw, not far from the banks of the mighty Nile. Our felucca drifted ashore on a small strip of sand and we hopped in a truck taxi (where we all sit in the back on two benches facing each other) and bounced down the dusty road into town. On the way, we passed fields of sugar cane, boys walking donkeys loaded down with crops, and little children who laughed and waved with glee as we passed. Daraw is a small town, most known for its weekly camel market where as many as 200 camels are sold and traded. Large caravans of camels are brought here through the dusty desert from Sudan. It was just a little slice of life and a small taste of real Egypt.

I have seen so much that I know it will take some time to sink in. But, as I have mentioned in the past, what made my trip here so memorable was the people I met along the way. I decided to do an Intrepid Travel tour through Egypt as after traveling alone for so long I like to take a break from time to time and let someone else do the planning and thinking for me. Plus, in a sometimes chaotic, sometimes strange place like the Middle East, I thought it was okay to let myself off the hook and splurge on a tour.

As I have experienced so many times over the last couple years, it seemed that my group was special.  And, again, traveling so close and intensely with strangers for several days, it is amazing how close you can become and how you open up to new people more than perhaps in real life in such a short time.  One woman, from Sydney, was smart, well traveled and easy going. Some time into the trip she revealed she’d been estranged from her own daughter for several years because her daughter was under a sort of spell from a cult she had joined. It was incredibly sad to listen to her story and see how powerless she was to help her own child. Another passenger was a funny, nearly always laughing guy who lived in London. In time, we found out he had been adopted as an abandoned fifteen-month-old baby in Vietnam just after the war.

He was found on the street and taken to an orphanage in Saigon. He narrowly made one of the last rescue planes out of the country – a 747 stripped of its seats in an effort to fit as many passengers in as possible – and was flown to Sydney, Australia.

“Apparently I was a determined little rascal and I wouldn’t let go of one of the female care worker’s legs from the orphanage. I wasn’t supposed to be getting on the flight, but even at that age I knew something was up and I wasn’t going to let go because my life depended upon it.”

He has no idea what happened to his family and was lucky to be adopted by a wonderful Australian couple. Growing up wasn’t exactly easy for him…and in many ways his life is a small miracle.

There was also an amazing mother/daughter duo from Toronto who I clicked with almost immediately. They were both smart and worldly and I loved them for that North American direct and sometimes sarcastic wit.  I really admired another great girl from Australia. She was hilarious, confident, open minded and ready to take on the world. Perhaps she reminded me of myself. I am sure I will see her and some of the others again.  We laughed, we shared our abridged life stories, we rode for hours and hours in tiny cramped buses and out-dated trains together through the magical and stunning landscape of Egypt. We celebrated the passing of another year together and we, in one way or another, will never forget each other.

After their bus rode out of sight, I padded barefoot out to the deserted sandy beach of our lovely and simple beach resort on the east coast of the Sinai Peninsula. For the last two nights, we’d slept in cute wood thatch-roofed huts on a mattress on the floor covered in a blue mosquito net. We relaxed by the blue waters of the Gulf of Aqaba and dreamed of what was across the sea in Saudi Arabia – it seemed so close, yet worlds away. It was a truly magical end to our time together in this ancient land of Egypt. Now I felt that pang of excitement again to get back on the ‘road’ of travel. An hour later I was in my ‘taxi’ truck heading for Nuweiba Port where I would hop a ferry to Jordan. I sat around the unattractive and scruffy port area in a smoky outdoor café where the Al Jazeera network blasted out of the big Toshiba television on a wooden shelf. The news showed image after image of protests of Israel’s invasion of Gaza all across the Middle East – yelling and chanting people, the burning of Israeli and American flags, bias promos edited showing Israel’s Prime Minister saying ‘every life was precious’ intercut with images of the death and destruction all over Gaza. Not the best timing for my adventure here as a Jewish American. All alone, I was a bit nervous, a bit excited, and ready for the next challenge.