67 Our Baskets on our shoulders

Our baskets on our shoulders/ wreaths on our heads / from every corner of the country we came/ to bring our first fruits/ from Yehuda, from Yehuda and the Shomron/ from the Emek, from the Emek and the Galilee/ make way for us/ for we bear first fruits/ boom boom boom on the drum, play the flute/ boom boom boom on the drum, play the flute.

I remember the words of this simple naive Bikurim (First Fruits) song of Levin Kipnis which has been part of me ever since those early days. And already I wonder if the proper words are 'play the flute' or 'blow the flute', 'from Yehuda and the Shomron' or 'from Yehuda and from Shomron'. I do a Google search and discover various versions. All of them quoted from memory, incorrect and misleading. I think 'blow the flute' sounds better, but most of the versions that I find say 'play the flute' and I do likewise.

The Bikurim songs have been going through my mind all this past week. When I finish my daily swimming (40 lengths), the evening practice for the holiday ceremonies of Gan Shmuel are already in progress. They are held on the large lawn next to the dinning hall which is close to the swimming pool. Bales of straw are piled there and one glance at the dancing children and one note of the holiday songs send me back years to the time when all of us marched in the Bikurim procession – not in the heart of the kibbutz as a sort of ceremony created for urban tourists as is done today, but actually in the fields with all the agricultural equipment and all the kibbutz members and children participating in a grand procession of the various agricultural branches. Giant cotton picking machines rode by, lots of tractors, some of them dragging long aluminum irrigation pipes which were later assembled and taken apart to demonstrate developing agricultural technology. Turkeys, goats and calves were hauled there, even horses. And the babies born that year were also brought to be shown off as 'First Fruits'.

Here I am in the center of the picture, next to me – Ami. We have wreaths on our heads and are leading a dog that is drawing a little wagon. I don't remember what was in the wagon, perhaps pigeons from the children's farm. We tried to be creative in presenting our first fruits. Every year there was a competition between the various agricultural branches and the happy winners whose presentation was considered the most beautiful, original and colorful, won the right to keep the 'Bikurim Flag' until the following year.

66 After all, what does a man need?

After all, what does a man need? A room for the night in the upper end of Rosh Pinna with a porch overlooking the Jordan River and the Golan mountains, a good book, a cup of coffee, some peanuts and almonds, a breeze blowing after a hot day that slightly moves the boughs of the Mulberry tree, an old tile roof covered with a partition placed on thick stone walls, a green creeping plant that covers half of the stone wall and an ironwork railing painted blue.

And here I am, absorbed in a book that deals with events that happened right here. I ate lunch next to the Jordan River and thought about the beginning of the wild journey of Ora and Avram, Grossman's heroes, and how they crossed the river this way and that, bare footed, almost lost, with their huge back-packs. And when I ordered wonderful Turkish kebab I thought about the revolt of their son, Offer, refusing to eat meat, and he only four years old and very opinionated.

And tomorrow I shall take the steep road to the Nebi Yusha fortress and remember how Ora hated this cruel place where twenty eight Palmach fighters died in 1948 and among them Dudu ('bring the finjan and tell me, is there another Palmachnick like Dudu'). And from there I shall leisurely travel through the paths of the Gallilee and imagine that I am walking the "Israel Path" south. Thus I'll wind my way to the outskirts of Safed and around Mount Meron and rest in Peki'in to eat there the best labneh in the world. After that I'll take a brief look at the synagogue, take a few snapshots of Peki'in's alleys and buy myself some of 'grandmother Jamilah's' perfumed soap.

When I'll go up the road that surrounds the village, I'll drive until the observation point above Rame, and from there I'll see all of the lower Gallilee from the Kinneret to the Carmel and I already know that the trip of Ora and Avram reached that point.

But now the evening breeze sends me into my room to find something warm to wear, and I place the open book face down on the chair and stretch, smiling in anticipation of tomorrow's adventure. A little journey of pilgrimage it is turning out to be. After all, what does a man need? A good book, a porch with a view and the willingness to follow ones imagination and the book.