Grandma's army

For the last two thousand years at least, since the Jewish People had no homeland and were subject to the whims of their host countries, they were not allowed to own land and were very restricted in their livelihoods.  They only started working on the land again when the first pioneers emigrated to Israel in  1882 which was known at the time as Palestine, a name given to the area by the Romans. The original names, from bible times, were Judea and Samaria. Which brings me back to the moshav in the Negev where I spent 40 years of my life. All our children helped out on the moshav from a very early age and learned the value of hard work, developing a strong “work ethos”.  What is most surprising however is that,  somehow, my oldest son Azriel “inherited” love of the land. He knew he wanted to be a farmer from a very early age and, in order to study agriculture he went to the U.S., after his army duty, in order to make enough money to attend the Faculty of Agri...