Everyone likes collecting something. Back when we were children we would collect corks, when we grew up we started to collect scores – who are bad and who are good, then we collected girls, others collected money and a small number collected crops – simply that.

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The festival of Sukkot is one of our agricultural festivals. The Sukkah, the four species and all the rest just add form, decoration and some sort of religious content to the festival.

 

We the farmers customarily gather our crops all year round. Every day eggs and meat from the chicken coop are sent to market, as well as the yield from the cow house. We market fish all year round and during the summer straw and Lucerne flour, some seeds and the ploughed crops, mainly fruit and cotton.

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The Harvest Festival must be a festival of tallying. A tallying of what was invested and a tallying of what was received, the total for the kibbutz – was it a year of blessing or another year of effort without sufficient remuneration. This is the first year that we could indicate achievements. This is the year in which we can  put the total expenses against the total income.

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All those same years of shortage, all those years of uncertainties, of searching for a way, of attempts, all those same years of hard work and exhaustion are folded into this minute total of expenses and abilities. It is the start of standing on our feet.

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When our feet standing in the fields of the valley give crops, when our bodies drag in a net full of fish, when the fruit panniers are full to bursting on our shoulders, when iron beating on iron is heard loudly in the factory, when our hands old and young are busy, when we create produce and see fruit from our work.