Word: naomi
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There are other cracks between the thorns, and sometimes, on velvet Israeli evenings, her reserve dissolves entirely and reveals a pensive girl, struggling with great uncertainties. Naomi wants desperately to go to the University and study literature. "I feel that here I am marching in the same place," she says with subdued passion. "Every day the same thing." Her radio (one of the few luxuries the kibbutz allows its members) plays classical music all Sunday when the Israeli radio broadcasts Christian Masses. She keeps a copy of Dylan Thomas' Collected Poems (looking strangely unfamiliar in Hebrew) above...
...even if she found a job that barely paid her way, once she left she could not return. The kibbutz--which requires a year-long trial for prospective members--allows its members a one-year sabbatical, but to take more would mean forfeiting membership. Despite her sense of stagnation, Naomi finds more than home and family at Ayeleth. It has been her way of life: a philosophy and social order not easily shed...
...Naomi is not the only young kibbutznik demanding more than her home can offer. Responding to this outcry, and its own needs for trained teachers, economists and agriculturalists, the kibbutz sends some members to a University, all expenses paid. But this does not help Naomi. The kibbutz requires that its scholars study something it needs and return to serve Ayeleth with their new skills. It does not need experts in literature. Anyway, all the slots for the coming year are filled by others, so Naomi would have to mark time for another year, perhaps more...
Eventually Naomi accepts a compromise. Instead of leaving she will take courses two times a week from a local teacher, and then later, the kibbutz will send her to the University--to study what, she is not yet sure. It is a defeat. Even the Sabra must sometimes swallow her pride...
...area, the Sabra does not accept defeat. During the war Naomi sat in the cool semi-darkness of one of Ayeleth's concrete shelters, and sang "We Shall Overcome" to the faint crump of Syrian shells. The shelter's occupants were not as sure of their impending triumph as foreign experts. They knew only that if Syrian troops swarmed down from the brown hills across the Jordan, they would have to fight to the last woman and child. The Syrians would leave no one alive. "I was not afraid," says Naomi without hesitation, "Only worried--about my brother...