Grandma's army

My second husband had 17 grandchildren. One of his sons had six children, three of whom became pilots in the IDF. What is so special is the fact that the first one in the family to do so was their daughter, Tamar Ariel, who    made history – being the first Orthodox Jewish female pilot.    Coincidentally my own grandson, Yair (of whom I wrote about in the beginning blogs), joined the pilot course on the same day and they both made it. From the original number of potential pilots who start the course only  1 0-15% succeed to the end! There was always something exceptional about Tamar. Before committing herself to the long and gruelling pilot course, she served two years in a National service programme. National Service is an alternative voluntary programme for those that cannot or do not wish to serve in the  IDF. The majority who receive an exemption from the obligatory army service are girls from the  religious Zionist s...

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...

It was only in my teens that I became aware of a country called Israel. Someone introduced me to a Zionist movement - and that was the major turning point  in my life. I eventually joined a training farm in England run by the movement . My goal was to eventually become part of an agricultural community in Israel. My farming experience in England was centered around the cowshed where I had become very proficient in milking cows. I emigrated at the end of 1954 but, by the time I was able to join a moshav in 1960, I was already married with two small children aged three and one-and-a-half years old. Neither my husband nor myself knew anything about farming but we were both determined to become pioneers. The moshav, which had just been founded, was located in the northen Negev. We had no financial means but were helped by the government who wanted to develop the country, especially the Negev. It was like a barren wilderness with nothing but bare land. Today, it is a...