Clifford Sobin: Bringing the Magic of Israel to Life

Review of a book about the communities along Israel's northern border in a way that keeps you reading as if it is a murder mystery or whatever else is your favourite casual reading genre

“Every time I head up that steep, twisting road that always takes far longer to navigate than anticipated, I look to my right two-thirds of the way up. There, a rough track leads through the trees to the first site of [Kibbutz] Hanita. My mind drifts, imagining what it must have felt like, surrounded by people who wanted to kill you, going out on missions designed to cause contact that would lead to combat, and led by the cream of Israel’s future leadership. There, history was made amid the now silent trees now gently swaying in the breeze.”

This is on page 103 of Clifford Sobin’s over 400-page book on the early days and recent lives of the modern Israeli communities currently largely evacuated because of daily missile attacks and threats of attacks and the seemingly inevitable “real” war against Hezbollah yet to come.

I bring that quote here because it reverberates within me — not only because I can identify with Sobin’s wonderment at what it must have felt like in those hills in contemporary historical times, but also because of the awe I feel, driving almost anywhere, hiking everywhere, awe at being in the very place where my thousands-of-years-ago-ancestors trod.

Sobin’s book is meaningful to me, turning places I have driven past on the way to somewhere else into living breathing communities of individuals with whom I would love to sit down to coffee and a chat as he did. And it is particularly meaningful now, when my smartphone vibrates and buzzes every day, often with missile or drone attacks on one of the places he writes about, making sitting down for coffee and a chat impossible for the foreseeable future.

I have a confession to tell you: I bought the book because, while I anticipated it not being an exciting read, I thought it would help me see how to incorporate interviews into a work in which I am currently engaged. It did not take long, however, for me to become as engrossed in it as I would have been reading a mystery novel, and happily reading it in bed in spite of its text-book size! How’s that for an endorsement?

The title tells the story in a nutshell: “Living in Heaven, Coping with Hell” and the subtitle pulls you in yet more: “Israel’s northern borders — where Zionism triumphed, the kibbutz evolves, and the pioneering spirit prevails.” Even with that, I did not expect to enjoy the book as much as I did. Learn from it? Yes. Enjoy? Well….

Just typing out the title and subtitle now brings tears to my heart as I imagine the devastation and loneliness of towns and kibbutzim emptied of people under the missile barrages and raging fires. Do you recognize any of these names: Kiryat Shmona, Metula, Majdal Shams, Ghajar, the kibbutzim (plural for kibbutz) Degania, Dan, Hanita? Sobin writes about these and more.

Part One of the book describes the north during the early days of the establishment of the foundations of the modern state, focusing on some specific communities. Part Two brings us into the lives of these communities now and introduces some key individuals who make life there work in spite of the difficulties.

In the 1930s, he writes:

… Jewish organizations once focused on purchasing land that had high chances of becoming productive changed to purchasing as much land as possible, especially in strategic locations, without regard to soil fertility or climate. (p. 92)

At that time, there were terrorist infiltrations from Lebanon and the leadership knew that settlements were required that could serve as bases for defence, as a bulwark against those who wanted to wrest the Galilee from Jewish hands. So they built the tower and stockade settlements up north as they did in the Negev.

Sobin describes the perilous venture of building those tower and stockade settlements, working against weather conditions that were not always friendly, against a treacherous topography, against marauding Arabs, and against the limitations of human strength that determined the number of hours they could work at a time. His description is so vivid I could picture it in my mind, almost as if watching a videoclip. Perhaps the fact that I am familiar with the landscape he describes helps me “see” it, but I think it is not just that.

In addition to thorough research, the book is based upon what he learned from interviews with longtime residents about their experiences building the communities and this is what gives the book its vitality.

But it is also prescient. Published in 2019, in recounting the fears of those along the northern border, it is as if he is prophesizing what happened in the south on Oct 7th. But it had already happened in the north! On 12 March 2002, “two terrorists crossed the border near Kibbutz Hanita.”

There, the fence laden with technological wizardry designed to detect intrusions failed because the terrorists had used a “trapeze ladder” to “sail” over the fence without touching it.

They went on to kill and maim Israelis in their ambush of normal people just going about their normal lives before being neutralized by the IDF.

And even before that, Sobin states how the 1974 attacks in Ma’alot, Kiryat Shmona, and Nahariya, for example, “remain in the DNA of those who live in the north…” Tell me how this could not be written about Sderot, Kibbutz Beeri, and more:

All three of those incidents share the same common denominator, people at home or at schools, asleep in their beds or lolling around in their rooms, feeling safe. At their most peaceful and secure moments, fear jolted them from tranquility, hot lead and jagged shards tore their flesh. Their lives were no more. And the lives of those that live near them and the lives of generations to come were forced to come to terms with the fact that people live nearby, just over a border subject to penetration, that hate and kill for politicial purpose or no purpose at all.

While I have chosen to emphasize in this review the scary aspect of life along the border because war and missiles are uppermost in my mind at the moment, this book is a book about life. It is a book about people. It is about the lives people made and continue to make during trying times, trying physically, politically, economically.

The artistry of Sobin’s writing opens up the whole far north of the country making me feel as if I almost know personally the people about whom he writes. I can imagine the looks I would get if I would greet them with a “hi” as if we are old friends.

I am sure that, after reading the book, and when it will be safe, many Israelis and tourists will more likely put far northern communities on their vacation and travel itineraries. All of us will be enriched by meeting the people there and those communities will, perhaps, feel less transparent than they have been up until now.

The war has put these northern towns and kibbutzim on the map. Sobin brings them into our hearts and souls.

p.s. Click here if you are considering purchasing the book (Disclosure: I make a tiny commission if you buy it from my link).

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