From left to Right: Dorit, Tali
By Visakha Priya dasi
The Hebrew word kibbutz (kibbutzim in the plural) refers to a voluntary democratic community based on the principles of communal ownership of property, social justice, and equality. Kibbutzim started around one hundred years ago, when a group of idealistic young Zionists, many of them from wealthy landed families in various parts of the world, traveled back to their ancestral land, the biblical land of Palestine, with the idea of building a whole new kind of society. One such idealistic person was Tzechka Brauer. Born in Poland, she joined the movement there, and at the age of eighteen she came to Israel with a group of other youths to start a kibbutz. That kibbutz was named Gan Shmuel, “Garden of Samuel,” and it still exists today.
In the early days of the kibbutz movement, kibbutzim were based on agriculture and all kibbutzniks(members) worked in some section of the kibbutz economy—orchards, factory, dairy, fishponds— or in one of its maintenance units. Routine jobs such as dining room duties, laundry duties, etc., were rotated among members. As time went, kibbutzim branched off into industry. Gan Shmuel in particular became a big manufacturer and exporter of fruit juices.
Although a few kibbutzim were—and still are—religiously centered, Gan Shmuel was atheistic from day one. And not just atheistic actually, but thoroughly anti-religious—to the point of having barbecue parties purposely on Yom Kippur. (Yom Kippur is a strict religious fasting day for Jews, whereon all regular activities, including traffic, are suspended). As far as Gan Shmuel residents were concerned, God was irrelevant, a crutch for the losers, not for intelligent independent people like themselves who (seemingly) had full control over their lives.
Tzechka was a powerful, charismatic person, and she soon became one of the prominent leaders in the kibbutz. She married, and in 1924 gave birth to a daughter named Yael. Yael grew up in the kibbutz, where she married her husband, Betzalel Lev, who came from Tel Aviv. In those days there was no army, and so, when he finished school, Betzalel joined the kibbutz. He and Yael had three daughters, including my friend Tulsidevi, also known as Tali.
Tali was born in 1952 in the kibbutz hospital, and right away she was put in the nursery with all the other babies. Mothers would come to breastfeed their children and then returned to their separate residences, leaving their babies in the care of women assigned to the task. The idea behind separating parents from their children was that both men and women “should be free from the burden of looking after their children” in order to fully concentrate on their work at the kibbutz. Children would visit their parents’ homes daily from 4 pm to 8 pm, but they never lived there, except when they were ill. The concept initially arose from sheer necessity, but later on it became an ideology. Getting back to baby Tali, she would still be hungry at night sometimes, and in the absence of her mother, another compassionate soul breastfed her until she was weaned.
In those days the children’s section of the kibbutz was completely separate from the other sections. From the nursery to the kindergarten and all the way up to the end of their school years, children were put together in groups. Between the age of 2 and 3 they were in groups of 6. As they grew up, the groups became larger, comprising up to 20 children. By the time Tali was two years old she was put in a group that included another little girl born in 1952 at the kibbutz: Dorit Rozenzweig. Also from Poland, Dorit’s parents managed to survive the Holocaust and came to Israel in 1947 to join the kibbutz.
There was an intercom in the children’s quarters, and at night a child in need was supposed to stand in front of it and speak up. But Tali, who always worried that something terrible might be the cause of her parents’ not being with her, had her own method to attract attention: she would stand in a strategic spot at one of the dormitory’s windows and scream relentlessly until someone personally came. Her parents would be dragged regularly to the dormitory in the middle of the night, until, after a long time, the community decided that Tali’s parents could take turns staying in the children’s house at night. Generally, however, there were no special privileges for anyone, be it clothes, food, lodging, conveyances or appliances.
The children did everything together: cleaning their classroom, the kitchen, the dormitory, and other areas; feeding the animals—goats, rabbits, peacocks; and working in the vegetable garden. Each group took its turn doing those tasks.
Dorit was a thoughtful little girl. She too spent her nights crying, especially from the age of 8, when her precocious intelligence started posing existential questions: “How will it be when I am no longer in this world?” she pondered. The question kept her awake at night. She was told to count 1, 2, 3 to fall asleep, but it didn’t work. “How is it possible that something will be without me?” “What does it mean ‘not to be’”? Thinking thus in the dead of night, she silently cried and, like Tali, was afraid of death.
As the girls grew up they were confronted with the consequences of the kibbutz ideology regarding gender equality. Being “equal in all respects” boys and girls had always shared the same facilities, including dormitories and bathrooms. But upon reaching puberty some of the girls rebelled against the system. It took a long time for the kibbutz authorities to acknowledge and approve their request that they not be forced to take their morning shower along with the boys.
In accordance with the ideology, military service also was for everyone. Thus, upon completing their studies, Tali and Dorit did their compulsory two years. Dorit, who knew Arabic, served in one of the intelligence units and Tali in the army’s book-publishing unit.
Having completed her military service Dorit came back to live at the kibbutz. At the same time, she studied philosophy and mathematics in the university. And the same questions which had haunted her childhood returned stronger than ever: What is the truth? Who am I? What is the purpose of my life?
Dorit always felt obliged to her parents and to the kibbutz. Yet, she knew that in order to find the truth she had to go elsewhere. And so, after three years in the kibbutz, she moved to Tel Aviv and got married. One evening in 1978 Dorit and her husband saw a television program featuring Murari Chaitanya Das, a Hare Krishna devotee who had just become the ping pong champion of Israel. He was openly speaking about his experience of Krsna consciousness and Dorit was impressed. On the beach the next morning her husband saw a Hare Krishna devotee and stopped him, thinking him to be Murari Chaitanya. The devotee, Locanananda, told him that their spiritual leader was presently visiting Israel and invited him to come to a public program where the guru would speak. So they went, and Dorit listened attentively. The guru’s words inspired her to start practicing Krsna consciousness. Her husband went along with it.
After a short time, some unscrupulous would-be devotees cheated them monetarily, and they turned their back to Krishna consciousness. By Krsna’s mercy they came back when Bhagavan das, the leader they had previously heard from, visited Israel again. And because his headquarters were in France, they moved to France. For the next two years Dorit stayed in different European countries – France, Italy, Belgium and Spain – doing sankirtan with Bhagavan’s disciples. Her husband chose another path which she did not agree to follow.
Back in Tel Aviv in 1980, Dorit undertook the translation of Srila Prabhupada’s books in Hebrew and lived in the Sankirtan House. I first met her in 1982 at the Nouvelle Mayapur rural community in central France where Srila Prabhupada installed the beautiful deities of Krishna and Balarama. She was one of the glorious devotees being praised at the festival that year. Her name was now Devahuti and she was completely absorbed in the mood of sankirtan.
Meanwhile, just before Tali completed her military service, her father died. Out of respect for her mother, Tali spent one month with her in the kibbutz. But her heart was not in it. Kibbutz life was not what she was hankering for. In fact, for many years, she had been feeling oppressed by the environment and lost her sense of identity. So she moved to Tel Aviv, where she met Gad Charny, the son of an American-born Jewish poet and a sculptress mother. He was preparing to go to London, and she joined him there in 1974. He was studying industrial design at the Royal College of Art and she studied sculpture at another college. She came back alone in 1978 to work on her art exhibition and lived in Gad’s father’s empty house in the artists’ village of Ein Hod for two years. One day, walking in the streets of Tel Aviv, she spotted Dorit amongst a group of strangely clad people singing and dancing and distributing magazines. Realizing it was a religious group Tali felt embarrassed for her childhood friend and carefully avoided her. She was very upset to see Dorit, whom she had always deeply appreciated and felt a lot of respect for, wasting her life in this way.
In 1981 Gad and Tali got married. Soon after, their first child, Alina, was born. They settled in Tel Aviv, he as a professor of industrial design, she as a fulltime mother. Their son, Iddo, was born five years later. When the children were a little grown up, Tali again became active professionally, doing stage design for a few years with Alina on her back, stylish hairdressing during Iddo’s kindergarten hours, and textile printing at home, to name just a few of her varied occupations.
As a college professor at Holon Institute of Technology, Gad would periodically go on sabbatical and travel abroad with the family. One year they toured the USA and Mexico for 7 months. Another time they roughed it up in Laos. And they also went to India a few times, as Gad would also teach there every now and then. Inexplicably, Tali became attached to India. Although she was not able to live there because of the noise and filth–to name only a few reasons–she was not able to leave it either. One thing that struck her was that Indian people had a different attitude to life: they were simple, warm, and not acting as if they were the center of the world. Of course, she had many objections. She couldn’t believe in God and felt that in any case Judaism was superior to Deity worship. Her outlook was sarcastic. To her, Hinduism was just folklore, and she couldn’t bear to go into temples full of rice and water, getting smeared with red powder, and so on. It was a cultural reaction, but it was superficial. Deep down she was intrigued.
In 2004, after more than 30 years of not seeing each other, Tali and Dorit coincidentally met at Gan Shmuel while visiting their sick mothers. Tali asked Dorit what she was doing, strongly wishing in her mind—almost “praying”—that she would have given up her Hare Krsna connection. Dorit, who by now had been re-initiated by His Holiness Tamal Krishna Goswami as Varsabhanavi devi dasi, replied that she was running yoga philosophy classes in Tel Aviv. At that time, Tali was reading about the Dalai Lama and other spiritual materials. But she was looking for something deeper and more meaningful and decided to join Varsabhanavi’s classes. Unexpectedly, from the first class, she never looked back and felt at ease—even with the Hare Krishna kirtan that had once upset her so much. In the same way Arjuna, realizing the greatness of his friend Krishna, became his student, Tali began to see her childhood friend as her revered teacher.
From the time Varsabhanavi returned to Israel in 1980 until the time she and Tali again met at Gan Shmuel thirty years later, her life underwent many changes. To begin with, when Bhagavan das left ISKCON in 1986, the Sankirtan House in Tel Aviv disintegrated and the GBC in charge left the country with his followers. So there was no GBC or temple president, and she found herself on her own, trying to raise funds for printing Bhagavad-gita As It Is and the book KRSNA in cheaper editions. Although she was greatly disappointed by the fall of her guru, she was grateful to be situated in Krsna consciousness and for the ability to strictly follow that path. In 1986 she married Gunavatar das, a disciple of Srila Prabhupada who also served the Hebrew BBT, and the two of them continued their services as a team. She met His Holiness Tamal Krishna Goswami in 1989 and became his disciple on Nityananda Trayodasi 1991 in Vrindavan.
His Holiness Tamal Krishna Goswami fully supported the book distribution program, and as a result a number of Israeli-born devotees were made. Perhaps because of the unusual way in which most of them had been raised, a number of them suffered from severe emotional traumas and Varsabhanavi had a hard time dealing with them.
Tamal Krishna Goswami pushed Gunavatar to go to University and study there. His strategy was that devotees should learn to coexist with the establishment rather than try to conquer it—in order to ultimately conquer it. As Srila Prabhupada said, “In like a needle, out like a plow.” Of course, such strategy requires one to be firmly situated in the mode of goodness.
In 2000, H. H. Tamal Krishna Goswami spent hours with Gunavatar and Varsabhanavi, probing into their motivations and forcing them to reevaluate all their concepts of Krsna consciousness for the purpose of making them better preachers and bringing them to a higher level of spiritual existence: “I am not a devotee because it’s the right thing to do but because I love Krsna.” Toward the end of that year, Gunavatar and Varsabhanavi, along with some of the devotees they had made in Tel Aviv, moved to the now-growing township of Harish, not far from Gan Shmuel. Delighted by the move, Varsabhanavi’s parents bought her a house there.
Since then, despite severe hardships, their little community has been slowly but steadily growing to fifty devotees, including children. They meet weekly for vibrant, joyful kirtans, classes, and prasadam. The divorce rate over the last fifteen years is a steady zero percent. During the week (which in Israel starts on Sunday and ends on Friday evening), Varsabhanavi teaches Bhagavad-gita in cities, towns, and villages such as Tel Aviv, Nazareth, and Ein Hod (an ancient Arab village which has become an Israeli artists’ colony and the home of Gad and Tulsidevi). Gunavatar teaches in colleges and universities. Both husband and wife are the father and mother of the community and command great respect and love among them. The community now boasts 23 initiated devotees and around one hundred congregation members outside of Harish.
Along with Gunavatar and Varsabhanavi, a few families have been visiting India regularly, especially to attend the VIHE Govardhan and Japa Retreats. On one such occasion about nine years ago I met Tali. Then, in 2010 in Vrindavan, she approached my spiritual master, His Holiness Giriraj Swami Maharaja, for spiritual shelter. Her husband was very supportive. She got initiated on Skype a couple of years ago, and this year in May, they sent me a return ticket to visit them. I was there for almost five weeks. Dare I tell you? After nineteen years of steady residence in Sri Vrindavan-dhama, I lost my heart in Israel!
The story of how it happened is another one altogether. Suffice to say for now that my heart was not won by a single person but by the whole community.
Sankirtan yajna ki! Jaya!
Srila Prabhupada ki! Jaya!
Gaura premanande! Hari Harish bol!
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