Between Friends is a brilliant collection of eight short stories by Amos Oz. Set in the generic "Kibbutz Yekhat" in Israel's zealous, scrappy early days, the stories are poignant vignettes that stand alone but also flow along the timeline of the kibbutz. The writing is uncluttered, spare and direct; its strength lies not in flowery language but in the compelling descriptions of basic human emotions. The stories conclude without closure; yet we feel the powerful emotions as the protagonists wrestle with the basic issues of life.
"The King of Norway" tells of Zvi Provizor, the kibbutz gardener who has appointed himself the bearer of bad news. He reads every paper and listens to every news broadcast, and then informs the others ("did you hear...?") of the most recent tragedies: earthquakes, plane crashes, volcanoes. Yet to Zvi this is a crutch he uses to support even the most basic conversation; he seems incapable of a relationship deeper than the latest headline:
"Never in his adult life had he touched another person intentionally, and he went rigid whenever he was touched."
In the titular "Between Friends" we agonize watching a father try to deal with the affair his young daughter is having with her teacher, who also happens to be his friend. "Father" is a gut-wrenching tale of a young boarder at the kibbutz - a Sephardic Jew unlike the other, Ashkenazi, residents - who journeys from the kibbutz to visit his institutionalized father. His visits are not considered consistent with kibbutz principles:
"Rivka said, `We have to encourage him to break off contact with [his family]. They pull him back.'
David said, `When we came to this country, we simply left our parents behind.'"
"Little Boy" is another heartrending story, this time about five-year-old Oded, an outcast bedwetter, and how the members of the kibbutz deal with him (not well, in general). Despite his problem, Oded is forced to continue to sleep in the children's dormitory - no exceptions! - and suffer the inevitable teasing. His mother maintains a strict approach, being opposed to coddling the child. Only his sympathetic father is capable of seeing things from Oded's perspective, but in the end he is powerless to raise the boy as he knows he must.
The realities of life on the kibbutzim of Israel's early days provide a relevant context; life was spartan, a radical collectivism predominated, yet the urges of individuals continued to rise. Yotam, in "Deir Ajloun," is not happy at the kibbutz and has a golden opportunity to leave to attend university in Italy, funded by his uncle, who alienated the kibbutzniks by leaving himself years before. Yotam would prefer to leave with the blessing, not the condemnation, of the others; deep down, however, he knows the principles of the kibbutz prohibit any individual activities which are not for the greater good of the collective. Nina, sympathetic to Yotam's dilemma, delivers a crucial insight:
"'In ten or twenty years,' Nina said, `the kibbutz will be a more relaxed place. Now, all the springs are tightly coiled and the entire machine is still shaking from the strain. The old-timers are actually religious people who left their old religion for a new one that's just as full of sins and transgressions, prohibitions and strict rules. They haven't stopped being true believers; they've simply exchanged one belief system for another. Marx is their Talmud. The general meeting is the synagogue and David Dagan [one of the kibbutz leaders and the teacher from "Between Friends"] is their rabbi.'"
The book closes with "Esperanto," the story of Martin Vandenberg, a radical among radicals, who wishes to teach Esperanto to the others. In Martin's view, once mankind adopts a common language "there will be no more wars." Even his students realize the naiveté of such a belief. In a symbolic representation of the future of the kibbutz movement, upon Martin's death the person closest to him realizes she knows not a single word of Esperanto.
Oz lived on a kibbutz most of his life and knows full well its strengths, weakness, foibles and peculiarities. Taken in total these stories provide an unflattering view of kibbutz life. One can admire the strength of conviction and self-sacrifice of these pioneers who were instrumental in building the State of Israel. But one can also see the seeds of the relative decline of the kibbutz as a part of Israeli life. Although there are more residents of kibbutzim now than ever (driven in part by relaxing the collective approach and allowing residents to work off of the kibbutz and keep more of their income), kibbutzniks now make up less than 2% of Israelis, less than half of what it was in the 1950s.
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Eric Lee
A sensitive, accurate, and somewhat sad account of kibbutz life
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 2, 2019
J. Nichols
Between Dreams and Reality
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 6, 2014
Dr Certain
Charming and insightful.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 20, 2015Phillips Lindsay
Written with great simplicity it conveys the complex and intimate feelings of ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 17, 2015
