A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [78]
—Davar, 27 November, 1960
62. In 1951, anthropologists Melford and Audrey Spiro spent a year observing children at Beit Alpha, the oldest Young Guard kibbutz (founded 1922). Members of the kibbutz they studied were reportedly shocked and dismayed when the book based on these observations came out.
Melford, who by his own account had been warmly welcomed during his stay, was now accused of distortion, exaggeration, errors, and incomprehension. Members were stunned when Melford reported that, between the ages of one and five, more than half of all observed interaction between the children consisted of acts of physical aggression e.g. hitting, slamming others with an object, kicking, biting, jostling, jumping on, throwing objects at, scratching with fingernails, pulling hair, destroying a toy or game another child was playing with, smearing with food, choking, threatening to cut with a knife, eye-gouging, hair-cutting and penis-pulling.
Melford himself claimed to be the constant target of what he felt was unprovoked aggression, and though he was aware that his work would be compromised if he departed from the observer’s stance, he and Audrey sometimes had to intervene, he said, to save a child from being seriously injured when the Minder left the room and asked one of them to keep an eye on things.
No one could explain Melford’s “ludicrous” comment that in the past children were not prevented from playing with their faeces; members felt he had misunderstood what he was being told, given the fact that virtually all kibbutzim are obsessed with cleanliness and health.
Most wounding, however, were descriptions of the neglect of infants, whom Melford said could not be cared for properly by one worker, even with the best of intentions.
—Selina R. Korenberg, Under a Microscope: The Kibbutz as a Subject of Study (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis)
“At least the Melfords understood basic Hebrew, unlike Bruno [Bettelheim], who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew and only spent a few weeks on the kibbutz, mostly writing in his room and asking for favours. He never looked in on the children for more than a few minutes at a time.”
—Rafael Avidor, Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan
63. I tried to send you this letter yesterday but I was having trouble with the computer. I think it’s working now. I’ll do my best to answer your questions, if I can.
— I asked my friends in Canada to send me magazines with pictures so the kids in my class could make collages and posters. We did art, theatre, games—for every topic I taught, I invented a game.
— We made up our own rules regarding babies. Edna was fantastic. We once had a so-called expert from the Federation visit us. I remember Edna was so nervous she broke two bottles. The expert rearranged all the clothes and furniture in the Infants’ House and told us we spoil our babies. She felt we picked them up too much and held them too much, and she suggested that Edna should go and observe the European kibbutzim for a month. She also said Spock exaggerated the importance of milk in children’s diet. After she left we put all the clothes back in place, picked up the babies, and prepared the milk bottles. Edna was so exhausted she fell asleep in her chair.
— All the outside children had a situation. One came from the Holocaust as a baby with his mother, then the father left. Another boy, the father died and the mother was sick, he was very sweet.
— We had one gay man and one lesbian. Both were very open about it and it wasn’t an issue. But they left because they couldn’t find partners at Eldar.
— Yes, Tzvi Lipkin had a PhD in nuclear physics. The government took him out of Eldar in 1952, they needed him. I think he was one of the only people in Israel with