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productive workers, they got no share of what we produced or possessed. A few years later, I raised this at one of the separate aseifa meetings held by young people on the kibbutz, only to be told we’d never wanted to employ outsiders in the first place. It was only because of Ben-Gurion that we felt unable to refuse. I’m sure that was true, but it seemed to me an incomplete answer, and an evasion. It struck me as an exercise in finding a verbal rationale for a situation that was obviously unjust.

It was an accidental glance up from picking carrots which focused in my mind the sense of unfairness I felt. We were working on a tract of about seven acres of rich, dark soil where we grew carrots, tomatoes and potatoes and eggplants. I think I was 11 or 12. We had assembled in the early afternoon near the kibbutz garage. We piled on to a flatbed trailer, a dozen kids and a dozen Yemeni women. We were towed by a tractor driven by a man named Yankele. He was in his mid-40s. Like my father, he was one of the original group at Mishmar Hasharon. Before the Yemeni came, he had worked planting and harvesting. Now, he was responsible for “managing” the Yemenis, and us kids as well, during our fieldwork. He paced among us every half-hour or so to make sure the work was going smoothly. Though the area was ankle-deep in mud during in the winter, it was hot and dusty in the summer. I’d been working for an hour or so, crouching alongside Baddura, when I looked up. On the edge of the field, under the shade of a clump of banana trees, I saw Yankele. He had a set of keys on a metal chain. He was twirling them around his finger, first one way, then the other, as his eyes tracked us and our Yemeni co-workers. Like a kibbutznik-turned-plantation-owner.

* * *

As a February baby, I was the youngest in our age group. In the tiny world of the kibbutz, there were not enough children to organize separate school classes for each year. When I started school, I was five-and-a-half. Most of the others were six. A few had already turned seven. Maybe it was this age pressure, or maybe something inside me, but from the outset, I had a thirst for knowledge. I was aware early on that some of the schoolwork came easily, almost automatically to me: numbers and math and reasoning most of the all. I also began reading books, even if I could not fully understand them. By the time I was eight or nine, I was burying myself in volumes of the children’s encyclopedia at

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