Yaakov Bromberg
In the spring of 1931, the land of Kfar Hess was still desolate. Only one lone hut stood on the land. The orchard division of Tel Mond, adjacent to the “Yizrael” organization’s land, laid a water pipe across the fence, installed a faucet at the end of the pipe, and built a hut nearby, which had two rooms.
In one room lived the drilling workers (three or four of them, including Karpowitz) who were working on drilling the first well on the organization’s land- this is the well in the small wadi within the moshav, not far from the grocery store. The second room was empty, so I approached the organization’s secretariat and asked for permission to move my family in- Leah and our two little children: Uri, three and a half years old, and Miki, six months.
At the time, I lived with dozens of other members of the organization- permanent workers of the Tel Mond farm- in the “camp” of the farm. Every Friday after work, I would travel to Tel Aviv where my family lived. Meanwhile, in the “moshav” of Tel Mond, the first six houses were being built. The farm administration had promised to allocate four of these homes for worker families- two families per house.
I knew that I would be moving into one of these houses with the late Michael Pitel, who also had two children. At the end of May, when it was clear that in three to four weeks the houses would be ready for occupancy, I decided to bring my family early to Tel Mond and house them temporarily in the organization’s hut until we could move into the house in Tel Mond moshav. The organization’s secretariat granted my request. On May 31, 1931, I moved my family from Tel Aviv into the hut.
We were, therefore, the first family on the organization’s land- the first settlers.
We fetched water from the outdoor faucet. At night, our lighting was a small kerosene lamp we brought from Tel Aviv. We bought groceries at the workers’ kitchen in the “camp” at Tel Mond, and Leah cooked food on a Primus stove, placed either on the hut’s porch or in one of the rooms.
To buy groceries, Leah would walk the several hundred meters to the workers’ kitchen, taking Uri with her and leaving the baby in a stroller in the shade by the hut wall. Sometimes, on her way back, she would meet Arabs leading donkeys or camels carrying gravel or manure for the Tel Mond farm. Passing by the hut, they would say to her: “Go quickly- the child in the stroller is crying.”
Nights were hard- especially Friday nights and Saturdays. The workers who lived in the hut’s other room would leave after Friday work for Kfar Saba or Tel Aviv, leaving us alone in the hut with the babies.
Around us, it was pitch dark and completely silent. Only from afar, to the west, twinkled the lights of the Tel Mond “camp,” and to the east, a few scattered lights flickered from the Arab village of Tira. The distant barking of dogs and the nearby howls of jackals were sometimes the only sounds breaking the night.
At the time, I worked in the young orchard section of the Tel Mond farm, adjacent to the organization’s land (the Pechter plot). In the mornings, Leah would hand Uri a tiny basket with some apricots or other snacks and send the toddler to the orchard to find me. He would leave the hut, enter the orchard, wander between the rows of trees, climbing from one irrigation bowl to another, calling, “Daddy, Daddy.” The tiny basket would swing, and the apricots often fell to the ground. By the time he reached me, there was usually not much left. I would sit with him in a dry irrigation bowl, eat what was left in the basket, and he would shower me with all sorts of questions. In the end, I’d kiss him and send him back to the hut. Those were good days- golden days.
One day, a delegation from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) visited the site: Professor Nahum Slouschz, Yosef Weitz, and Natan Bistritzky. They entered the hut and asked for water. Leah gave them water from the clay jug that was always full in our room and treated them to some watermelon. The guests told her they had never tasted such good water or such delicious watermelon. They photographed her in the hut with baby Miki in her arms and Uri at her side- and later sent us the photo.
A few weeks later, we left the hut and moved into our new house in the Tel Mond moshav. The late Aharon Ben Yosef moved into the hut, along with the organization’s secretariat, which relocated from Tel Aviv to the field. Various activities began on-site: arranging a nursery for the organization’s future orchard, and other operations that the secretariat could carry out using members’ funds, before the “Settlement of the Thousand” officially commenced.
A new life began to stir in the area…
From: “Ben Tzioni Yaakov,” 1977, Kfar Hess, published by Mozes.