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Yigal was mine. Solidly built and self-confident, with a knowing smile, he would go on to become one of the most respected members of the kibbutz. Though I was the only child he mentored, he was also in charge of our class's extracurricular educational program. It began when I was ten, and Yigal was sixteen. It was a mix of ideological training – the kibbutz equivalent of what my mother had done with her Gordonia friends in Poland – and a scouting course.

One evening a week, he would spend several hours with us. He began by reading us a story or a poem. One which I remember with particular clarity involved a slave who had a nail driven into his ear in hopes of remaining in his master's service forever. He had become enslaved not only in body, but in mind. Another night, Yigal read us an account of a Palmach unit stranded on a hill they had taken, with anti-personnel mines all around them. The readings were gripping and they were always an entry-point for a discussion: how did we understand the story? What would we do if faced with a similar choice?

When that part was over, he walked us into the fields outside the kibbutz. The only sound we heard was the occasional screech of a jackal. Sometimes, he would split us into twos and have each pair set off from a far edge of the field and find our way back. Yigal stationed himself at the center. We would have to sneak up and see which of us could get closest without his seeing or hearing us approach. In his last year with us before leaving for his army service, he gave each of us a narrow wooden stick and began drilling us in the teenage introduction to martial arts. But I was less interested in that part of the training than the scouting exercises. Not only was I the youngest in our group, and the smallest, except for a couple of the girls. Notwithstanding my accidental prowess on the soccer field, I lacked the strength and coordination to hold my own in most physical contests at the time.

* * *

Yet then, shortly after I turned thirteen, I overheard a conversation between a couple of older kids in the dining hall. They said there was this guy in Gan Shmuel, a kibbutz to the north of us, who had an "amazing" ability. Using a strip of steel shaped to work like a key, he could open locks – even chunky Yale padlocks, the gold standard in those days – in less than a minute.

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