The Harvest Festival

Now's the festival of Harvest

In we take large piles of produce

 

In the field there's no more reaping

In in the vineyard - no fruit picking

Just celebrate that Autumn's here

While gathering crops just sing and cheer

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Now's the festival...

 

To the farmer in the field

Have peace and rain and soil that yields

And all field workers everywhere

May your song of harvest fill the air

 

Now's the festival...
What a holiday – be merry

Children, let us sing for joy

Our Sukkah has a guest let's boast

Our father Abraham we shall host

 

One and all we shall celebrate

Lulav, Hadas Etrog we take

Let's rejoiced as we all hold hands

And together we will dance

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What a holiday – be merry

Children, let us sing for joy

Our sukkah has a guest let's boast

Our father Yitzchak we shall host

 

One and all we shall celebrate...

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A Hammer a Nail

A hammer a nail

We'll take rapidly

A Sukkah we'll build

Both girls and boys you see

 

We'll take some boards

And Branches on top

And decorations

Watch us set them up

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Hey stem, hey reed

Let's place you above

Above the planks

Right on the Sukkah roof

 

Rush, rush, be quick

No time to delay

Tomorrow evening –

is the holiday
 

Fill our Granaries with Grains

Fill our granaries with grains and our vineyards - with wine

May our houses be blessed with children and our cattle multiplied

Hey! What else do you ask of us - our homeland

What else do you ask yet?

Hey! What else do you ask of us - our homeland

That is lacking as of yet?

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The Ongoing Tale

And once again the great stormy summer was over. The sounds of the crops and the singing cows have been silenced. Gardens fell apart, fields were exhausted. The commotions were pushed to the margins, and the end of things meets up with their beginnings, and in the air saturated with the sweetness of Tishrei, the sounds of life emerge from an unknown depth.

 

The ingathering. You face the expanse of bread and fruit. And your ears are attentive to the passersby and to the arrivals. Across a sun that sets early, beyond the piles of dust in the fields, the other face of existence rises, and you take an account of yourself, of man and of the world. With the end and with the beginning that returns. And your account proceeds to the silence of the stone that recalls.

 

Great fatigue and depth of vision. You see eyes captivated, set in a site of twilight, the lifeless eyes of friends, the yearning eyes of the first and last, of the old and the young, whose love is poured over these clods.

 

Ingathering. Harvests of fruits and sweet crops. The ingathering of the resonance of life that's here and that of the passageway. And the good twilight wind rustles the ongoing tale through the thorns of being and ceasing to be, of the illuminated and of the sunken.

 

Exodus 23

14 Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me. 15 Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of spring, for in that month you came out of Egypt. No one is to appear before me empty-handed. 16 Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the first fruits of the crops you sow in your field; And the Holiday of the Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.

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Bending the Majhoul Tree

I have completed a day of labor. My clothes are wet. My head is pounding. My muscles - aching. By the time we get to the kibbutz with the device, all shall dry up and be forgotten. The next morning. There is no time. The pace is not good enough. But what are we doing wrong? Let us learn from the best. Just watch how Kamai works and absorb a bit. We begin. Yesterday it felt more difficult. The pace is getting better. Our muscles still hurt but that's part of the fun. Our fingers already have cuts from the wires. But our thoughts are all concentrated on the next hand, on what fits it best, in its perfect angle. And it succumbs. A day of work comes to an end. Our clothes are wet. Our heads pounding. Our muscles aching. By the time we get to the kibbutz with the device everything shall dry up and be forgotten.

We have completed a nucleus day. My muscles - aching. My brain - exploding. Thoughts fly in all directions. I contemplate the activity that had not succeeded, the one that had succeeded. Was the message clear? And the conversation with the member of the youth group? Did the matters I discussed with her remain in her head as things she had told me that bothered me to the extent that I could not fall asleep?

When I'm asked what I'm doing with my life, I always get confused. I am a farmer in a kibbutz of educators. An educator in farmers' plantation. Am I primarily an educator or primarily a farmer? It does not matter. At the end of the day I remain with the same question and the same desire to get up the next morning and become a better person.

(Shalev)

 

 

Ingathering

Lyrics: Itamar Prat Melody: Naomi Shemer

 

Collect the deeds
The words and the signs 
Like a blessed harvest too heavy to carry 

Gather the bloom 
Which rewarded the memories 
Of a summer gone before it's time to end.

Gather all the sights of her beautiful face 
Like the fruit and the grain
The earth is gray under the stubble 
And it has nothing more to give you.

And there is no longer a stem dreaming of its stalk 
And there are no more vows or prohibitions 
Only the promise of the wind that the rain shall fall on time 
It will manage to honor its dust by the end of Tishrei.

 

And at the end of summer shall his – your furrows stand, and gaze at the naked stalks; alone without the fruit of their love. The taste of the harvest excitement, the movement of the scythes and the smell of the grain are fading away a bit, running out of your fingertips. At the end of a year of labor, across the field of your life, a tremendous sense of weight and a great emptiness, very great.  Under the sun, nothing is new.

The parable of education as cultivating soil; In which seasons is it weighed, in which seed cycles is it measured? The educator and the fruit, the man of the land and the youth club member, interchangeably and over again, in the dance of plowing - sowing - harvesting. And the rain – is blessed? And the years – in rest? The furrows are long, and they end in longing.

G-d, teach me the blessing of rain, and the dances of harvest. Teach me simple songs about bread and the song of harvest, so that I recognize anew every day under the sun, so that I learn to rejoice in my toil.

(Nimrod)

 

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Deuteronomy 16

13 Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. 14 Be joyful in your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. 15 For seven days celebrate the festival to G-d your Lord at the place G-d will choose. For G-d your Lord will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.

 

Hallelujah

Lyrics: Jacob Galpaz Melody: Meni Gal

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A man returns and his harvest of the day

Is modest and meager

And on his back – the troubles of week days

Are piled up like a tower.

And across him he suddenly sees

The two eyes of his daughter

And then he sings with them together

The song Hallelujah

 

Hallelujah, and this is the song

That arises from all sides of town

When a man and his daughter's eyes

Sing Hallelujah

 

A man builds his buildings

Of breath and of cards

Every day he works so hard

Every day they fall apart

Above, the sun rises high

He collects the cards again

And sings Hallelujah

 

Hallelujah, and this is the song

That arises from all sides of town

When the man gathers all his cards

And sings Hallelujah

 

Spread out are the days of the Lord

He recognizes my way

And all my songs – are just like prayers

That are sent far, far away

And when I reach my route's end and die

Silently, I'll lock my life

And a new song of youth revived

The song Hallelujah

 

Hallelujah, and this is the song

That arises from all sides of town

And it is new, of youth revived

And it sings Hallelujah

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Leviticus 23

33 And G-d said to Moses, 34 Say to the Children of Israel: On the fifteenth day of the seventh month will be the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days to G-d.

 

39 But on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you will have gathered the crops of the land, celebrate the festival of G-d for seven days; the first day is a day of Sabbath rest, and the eighth day also is a day of Sabbath rest. 40 On the first day you are to take branches from a beautiful tree— palm fronds, a branch of a thick tree and brook willows —and rejoice before the G-d your Lord for seven days. 41 Celebrate this as a festival to G-d for seven days a year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for your generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters 43 so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am G-d your Lord.

 

Date Picking – in Numbers

To date, 134.8 tons of majhoul, consisting of of 487 pallets and 47780 trays have been delivered. Most of the fruit are damp: 287 pallets and only 75 pallets were sent in ready-mode. Nonetheless we heard "Hey You" 33 times during the date picking.  Yesterday the last plane of Nur palm trees containing 39.5 tons (about) on the ground was sold.  The agronomists who examined the water we used for irrigating the plantation before the fruit picking said they were good for one breed – Denis fish. Assessors visited the plantation twice throughout the fruit picking season.  Everyone was excited about the girls.   Most of the palm trees were sold in the Gaza Strip and this was how we contributed our share in breaking the siege. This year, 390 meat dishes and only 50 vegetarian dishes were eaten during the fruit picking season. The picking took a total of 669 working days, which means that if I would have done it alone it would take me a little less than two years. The work was done in 6937 hours and despite the Hebrew labor, Thai workers spent 2683 hours on the job. The work required 1200 liters of gasoline and 1740 liters of diesel fuel, all of which was calculated before the fall of the price of oil. The picking was done by 34 Israelis, 10 Thai and one Arab, and we gathered all the majhoul in 29 days and picked off the fruit of all the Nur palm trees in 8 days, and this was the shortest fruit harvesting period in recent years. Although it was fun and exciting. Amen. We look forward to better years and also with regard to demand.

(Gadi)

 

May All

Lyrics: Berthold Brecht Melody: Shlomo Gronich

 

 

May all

Belong to all

Who shall enhance it

The boy to the motherly woman

So that he grows

The wagon to the good coachman

So that he leads it well

And the soil, to those who irrigate it

So that it gives off fruit in their season

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Behold - The autumn was almost forgotten.  Work is always plentiful. The summer vacation ended with all its projects, and the fruit harvest season began. Our ingathering characterized by long working days, things I had promised to complete that I had not yet finished. We had barely over a year and a new year has already begun. Our hands are full of old and new tasks. Within the commotion there is yet more commotion ...

So, who has time? Who pays attention to trivialities? Who finds in his daily routine the patience to observe the change of season? The change of colors?

It begins when the sun seems too lazy to rise in the morning and rushes to set every evening. It continues in a casual wagtail who stops to rest in the orchard, on the kibbutz. At night you can hear bands of cranes passing above and calling out loud. And suddenly clouds! In the valley there are no clouds in summer, in the valley the summer is long. I've already forgotten that it could be different, cool, pleasant, cloudy! That it may be - not summer. Now too, the flies have arrived, pesky, maddening, reminding us via heir terrible path of that which had almost been forgotten, the arrival of autumn.                                    (Naveh)

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Wagtail

Lyrics: Ehud Manor Melody: Mati Caspi

 

 

A heavy heat wave lingers outdoors

And here I sit

And it stands near a puddle

Looking a bit nervous

I call out chirp, chirp, chirp

I look into its eyes

And it makes brisk movements

With its head and tail

 

A wagtail, A wagtail, rests near me my Lord

It stays put my Lord, it stays put my Lord

Lord

Across my window

 

I place some crumbs

On the window sill

And I wait and hide

Behind a blind.

It nears in circles

And with small hops

Yet suddenly it changes its mind

And flies to the neighbors.

 

A wagtail, A wagtail, rests near me my Lord

Has left me, has left me my Lord

Has left my window.

 

I yell at it -  you rascal

Get back you will remember

Suddenly it totally forgets

That it is a bird at all.

He refuses to befriend

Yes, this is the case

He merely came to notify me

That Autumn is on its way.

 

A wagtail, A wagtail, rests near me my Lord

Has fled from me, has fled from me my Lord

My Lord – from my window.

 

I sit and play cards on an autumn eve

And it stands in a circle and looks around me.

I, as if I do not feel softness, I just pretend to be.

No, no, no, no, no, no, I cannot find a place to be.

 

A wagtail, A wagtail, rests near me my Lord

And I don't have my Lord and not it either

And no wagtail.

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Once a traveler wandered through the desert to the grove of palm trees growing near a spring, tired, hungry and thirsty. He sat in the shade of the palm tree, drank from the spring, ate its fruits, and was revived. As he was about to leave he said: Palm, palm, how shall I bless you? That your fruit be sweet – sweet they are, that your shade be beautiful- you have a beautiful shade. That it would be nice if a spring flows beneath you – there is already a spring of water that passes under you. But may it be the desire of above that all saplings planted from you shall be like you.

With this blessing shall we be blessed and bless the advancement of our kibbutz life.

 

Rain – Come

Lyrics: Tirza Atar Melody: Alona Turel

 

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We dare call the rain to return

To the spring, the spring.

Autumn leaves shall be carried with the stream as in the past.

We'll call the rain to return with the storm all around

May the wind once again whisper and ignite a bright light.

 

Rain, rain, come

Rain, rain return

The spring and the hills

Are already burning green

Rain, rain, come

Rain, rain, return

Return from far forests

And come right back again

 

We called - come, come please come good rain

from above, above

Silver fields shall twist in the storm, back and forth

We called out, come and return from the forest to the place

Where the path already blooms and gives off a golden light.

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Rain, rain, come...

 

On the main road we shall once again meet young women

And their wet hair

shall flow silently on our shoulders curly and wonderfully.

Oh, rain, rain come here, come here -  the wind shall pass by

It shall blow with love and kisses and hugs like a butterfly. 

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Rain, rain, come...