Here in Kibbutz Kinneret, which next month will celebrate its 100th birthday, the most sweet of all Israeli honeys is made: date honey. 

In the wake of rockets falling on southern Israel and Operation Protective Edge, which just ended with the end of the year, and the beginnings of a new year and new holiday season, this Rosh Hashana is the time to reflect on the bitter and the sweet in the very place that “on the bitter and the sweet” began. Kvutzat Kinneret – the “Kinneret Group.” Known today as Kibbutz Kinneret.

The entrance to Kibbutz Kinneret is near the Jordan River. It inspired lyrics that became the soundtrack of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel in the last 100 years. Indeed, a sign points visitors “To the Eucalyptus Grove,” a line from a song by a daughter of the Kinneret, Naomi Shemer, and to the “sweet” – the sweet dates that grow by the hundreds on the fields of the kibbutz.

The Bitter and the Sweet

But on the banks of the Jordan it’s as if nothing happened
The same silence, and the same backdrop
The eucalyptus grove, the bridge, the boat,
And the smell of the saltbush in the water

Naomi Shemer wrote of the grove, the bridge, the boat, and the saltbush – but under her sweet words were the challenges and terrible tragedies that accompanied the first pioneers to settle the land.

The eucaplyptus grove was planted by pioneers who built up this place in the first ten years of the 20th century; the trees helped to drain the swamps that attracted the “Angel of Death” of the First Aliyah – malaria-carrying mosquitos. The grove provided shade to the children of the Kinneret, and was certainly the inspiration for Naomi Shemer, who grew up here in the 1930’s and 40’s; on the side of the road are saltbushes.

Naomi Shemer grew up here in the footsteps of another Daughter of the Kinneret, the poet Rachel Bluwstein – known by her first name only – who was born in Russia and made Aliyah to Palestine in 1909, when she was 19. During the course of her short life, she lived for a few years in Kvutzat Kinneret and, later, the neighboring Kibbutz Degania – she was forced to leave when she contracted tuberculosis, which was incurable and contagious, and moved to first to Jerusalem and then Gadera -- and was buried in this area according to her wishes.

The bitter and the sweet . . . both Rachel and Naomi Shemer died from painful illnesses . . . they didn’t know one another, but they both lived with the Kinneret as their backdrop. Here lies Rachel, and here lies Naomi Shemer, who never met . . . the first line of Rachel’s poem “Kinneret” is: “There are the mountains of the Golan; reach out your hand and touch them."

Near the eucalyptus grove is the restored, historic “Motor House,” which housed the water pump that was used to irrigate the Jordan Valley, and which was built by the World Zionist Organization – Palestine Office, which supported the first pioneers (and later became The Jewish Agency). Here, Berl Katznelson first worked as a laborer before later founding the national Worker’s Union, and this is the very place where methods were developed to bring Kinneret water to irrigate the fields of the hot Jordan Valley, transforming a region that had previously supported only dryland farming into a place with a rich variety of desert farming possibilities.

Walking from the Motor House along the “Kinneret Swamp” (the Israel Trail, up to Route 90), one gets a sense of the swamp that was here until it was drained by the pioneers – the last remnant of the original channel of Lake Kinneret. The fish pools are part of that same swamp.

The honey of Naomi Shemer's poetry is to the right, in the date fields. When Rachel the Poetess died, her family brought her body to the Kinneret cemetery and decided to lay her to rest in the date fields, as a symbol of beginnings and creativity.

The bitterness of Naomi Shemer is in the cemetery across Route 90, for here lie great figures such as Rachel, and Moshe Hess -- a founder of Labor Zionism, from the first beginnings of Zionism in the mid 1900’s! – whose remains were brought here and buried here. This is the Pantheon of the pioneers of the Second and Third Aliyahs. Here lie markers for pioneers who were killed when they were guarding (whose bodies were later brought to the cemetery in Kfar Giladi, but their names are still marked here); immigrant pioneers from Yemen who died of fever; Rachel the Poetess who does of tuberculosis; and members of her family who asked to be buried near her, including her sister; Naomi Shemer who died after much suffering; and more.

The Kinneret cemetery is the resting place of warriors who created, with their own hands, the Zionist experiment. Here lie pioneers who couldn’t overcome the challenges and took their own lives; here lies in her final peace the daughter of the Kinneret, Naomi Shemer, whose songs were influenced by the views and vistas here; Rachel the Poetess who so beautifully described, in song, those same views.

The Sweet

On the grounds of Kibbutz Kinneret one experiences the bitter and the sweet. The difficult and the gentle, the story of Zionist settlement that provides a compass to those who understand that the State of Israel was not handed to us on a silver platter, as Hebrew poet Natan Alterman once wrote.

The kibbutz’s date factory supplies delicious yellow dates that are wonderful served frozen; brown-black Majoul dates, the twigs for which were brought here by a member of the “Mossad L’Aliyah Bet” (a Jewish Agency-founded program to illegally bring endangered European Jews to British-controlled Palestine), Yani Avidov; and the incredible date honey known among locals as “silan.”

This year, after a painful summer in Israel, we're singing the words of Naomi Shemer with all the more understanding.

Al Kol Eleh (“For All This”), by Naomi Shemer
(translation from zemerl.com)

Over the honey and the stinger 
Over the bitter and the sweet 
Over our daughter, our baby 
My God, watch over what is good

Over the flame that is burning 
Over the water running pure 
Over the man returning home 
from far away

Chorus: 
Over all these, Over all these 
God please watch over them for me, 
Over the honey and the stinger 
Over the bitter and the sweet

Do not uproot what is planted 
Do not forget the hope 
Return me, and I will return 
to the good land.

Watch over this house for me, my God, 
the garden, and the wall 
protect them from pain, from sudden fear 
and from war.

Watch over for me the little I have 
the light, the baby 
over the fruit that has not ripened 
and over what has already been reaped.

A happy and sweet year to the entire Jewish people.