The founders of Kibbutz Sa’ad (literally, “Aid”) didn’t choose that name, but the establishment of this collective between Gaza and Beersheba in 1947 certainly aided in the Negev’s inclusion in the Jewish state

Tel Aviv teenagers in Mandate Palestine were generally too busy with high school and youth movements to do any more than fantasize about a Jewish state. The more adventurous of these youngsters joined Gadna youth battalions to prepare for membership in the Hagana defense militia or secretly distributed leaflets and posters for its Revisionist Zionist rival, the Irgun. But some couldn’t wait to start realizing the Zionist dream.

Young founders of Alumim from Bnei Akiva’s Tel Aviv branch, 1938

One such group, affiliated with the religious-Zionist Bnei Akiva youth organization, envied the Diaspora pioneers founding settlements in the Holy Land with the help of the Religious-Kibbutz Movement. No such opportunities were offered to local Bnei Akiva branches, and these teens felt unduly overlooked. So in 1937, they set up their own pioneer group, Alumim (Youth). They notified the Jewish colonization enterprise that they were about to begin agricultural training and suggested that the powers that be start looking for some wilderness in need of cultivation.

Get Up and Go

Alas, Alumim soon discovered at least a thousand others vying for this training, many of them refugees from Europe brought to the Holy Land by the Jewish Agency’s Youth Aliya office in the dark days of prewar Nazi expansion. Arriving without family, these newcomers found a natural home within the kibbutz movement. With so much older, stronger, and needier manpower available, there was no room for the Alumim collective anywhere.

Eventually, twenty members of the group persuaded ultra-Orthodox settlers from Kfar Gidon (in the Jezreel Valley) to let them finally get their hands dirty (in exchange for minimal wages and a pat on the back). Conditions were miserable, particularly for relatively spoiled urban youth, but they kept a stiff lip. As one of them later wrote:

8 Marheshvan, 1938. It’s really crowded in the room, five beds against the wall. One corner is the dining area, whose only furniture – serving as both table and chairs – is the floor. The group come back from work elated, each full of the miracles and wonders of his first day’s labor, and meanwhile a fine tomorrow beckons. (Lippa Aharoni and Ruti Lazar, eds., Sa’ad – One Step at a Time: Biography, Diary Excerpts, and Events Calendar Marking Forty Years Since Kibbutz Sa’ad’s Establishment in the Negev [1987], p. 4 [Hebrew])

Several months later, a few more began training in Nes Ziona. Everyone worked like a dog for pay that would have embarrassed even Arab laborers.

After a year and a half, with nothing to show but backaches and blisters, the Alumim collective accepted an offer from Kibbutz Tirat Zvi – in the sweltering Beth She’an Valley – to take in half of those in Kfar Gidon, while the rest joined nearby Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu. The two groups met only on the Sabbath – if the Tirat Zvi workers had the energy to drag themselves uphill to the white shack between the two settlements.

Time for Tents

By 1940, fed up with working for others, both groups reunited to pursue their own initiative. Renting a plot of land, they founded Bnei Akiva’s first kibbutz. Graduates of the movement from all over the country hastened to join Kibbutz Alumim. A large tent served as a dining room and synagogue, with ten smaller tents pitched around it. All the kibbutzniks needed now was a permanent home – but once again, their timing was off. With a world war in progress and Mandate Palestine in recession, they had trouble finding employment even in Netanya, let alone setting up shop somewhere new.

Alumim’s first wedding was held at the cohort’s campsite in Netanya. Miriam and Avrahami Rosenman

With little else to do, the pioneers put together an impressive roster of self-study programs, including Talmud (with eleven men learning the daily daf, or page), Bible, and even literature, economics, history, Arabic, and English. After all, if you couldn’t work or eat, you might as well fill in the gaps in your high school education and matriculate.

As things improved, the dining tent was replaced with a brick building, and a cow shed and chicken coop followed. There were new members too, graduates of Kfar Ha-noar Ha-dati, the religious youth village in Kfar Hasidim, in the Upper Galilee. On Lag Ba-Omer of 1942, the Alumim cohort celebrated its first wedding. Miriam and Avrahami Rosenman tied the knot joyfully but in almost total darkness, thanks to the wartime blackout.

The war’s end renewed Alumim’s hopes of proper premises, but with many other groups ahead of it in the pecking order, members pondered whether to stay in Netanya or seek some interim solution. The debate raged in the weekly bulletin, with the negative impact of urban bourgeois values cited as a prime reason for moving on. But there were also good reasons to stay: the alternatives weren’t tempting, and yet another relocation would be challenging.

In the end, Alumim settled temporarily in Herzliya, then a dusty pioneer colony seeking able hands to maintain existing orchards and plant new ones. In lieu of wages, the kibbutz members were offered ten local plots, which – as good socialists uninterested in real estate – they turned down. This land later became Israel’s most exclusive beachfront community, Herzliya Pituah.

In 1940, the Alumim cohort was split up, with members working in agriculture in different places. Caricature showing their various locations

Exchanging Leah for Rachel

The years ticked by, and still no suitably idealistic opportunity presented itself to Kibbutz Alumim. The Religious-Kibbutz Movement proposed a merger with Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, but this option fell short of the young pioneers’ utopian vision. As stated in their newsletter in 1942:

Inasmuch as those in Tirat Zvi are satisfied with setting up a farm run by religious workers in a pioneering location like the Beth She’an Valley – ignoring the goals of creating a new, ideal society, character refinement, and so forth – we can’t join them. We still hope to achieve these things and won’t be denied such aspirations. (ibid., p. 16)

A bitter pill for the youthful pioneers. Government document renaming the kibbutz Sa’ad

The people of Alumim spent years living according to this exacting model, preaching its virtues to the next generation of Bnei Akiva in Herzliya, and absorbing survivors of the terrors in Europe. Meanwhile, couples married, and children were born.

Finally, after incessant nagging, the kibbutz movement found Alumim a parcel of desolate land in Hazal’e, south of Beersheba. There wasn’t a parched Bedouin camel in sight; the area was so dry that nothing ever grew, no matter how much it was watered. But for the determined members of Kibbutz Alumim, no challenge was too great.

Ten men and one woman arrived in Hazal’e on Tu Bi-Shevat, February 5, 1947, only to be met by a surprise:

[…] a settlement group was already there, from the moshav movement. They’d also been promised land in Hazal’e. They wanted us to leave, and we thought they should be the ones to go. […]. A few days later, a decision was made: We were staying put. Two or three months went by, and it became clear that the place was no good for agriculture […]. We went back to Herzliya. We’d waited seven years [like the biblical Jacob], and all we got was Leah. (Dudu Dayan, Making a State [Ministry of Defense, 1992], p. 36 [Hebrew])

Luckily, Kibbutz Alumim was spared another seven-year wait, and “Rachel” soon turned up in the shape of a northern Negev site named Tual. Volatile Gaza was just a few kilometers away, but the kibbutzniks were undeterred. That summer, twenty-four men and women jubilantly set out for their new home. Warmly welcomed by the nearby religious kibbutz of Be’erot Yitzhak, they got straight to work, teaming up with dozens of experienced laborers to erect an entire settlement overnight. Why the rush? According to a Turkish bylaw still enforced by the British, once the roofs were in place, no demolition order could be issued.

We left at nightfall, with an almost full moon in the sky. We drove until the convoy stopped: here. We held our breath. This was it. A seven-year dream come true.

In one night, as we scurried about like ants, three sheds went up, a water tower, latrines, and a shower. A fence was erected all around the spot. By dawn, a settlement was in place. We kept working the whole day to get it all done.

A British van appeared on the horizon, kicking up clouds of dust visible for miles. [The British] saw the roofs, they saw the fence, and there was nothing they could do but add another name to the map. (ibid., p. 37)

Yet that name wasn’t Alumim. Instead, some settlement bigwig had chosen Sa’ad – meaning “aid,” since the collective was bringing just that to the Negev. No one in Alumim was happy, especially as Sa’ad was also the name of the government welfare office. Three years later, in 1950, kibbutz members were still complaining of being mistaken for social workers, and the whole thing had become a local joke.