| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011517)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011517" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2752 |
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| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| was especially upset because my attitude seemed to be infecting others. A few |
| months into the school year, he told the leaders of Mishmar Hasharon, and then |
| my parents, that I would have to leave. My father was especially upset. A |
| couple of years earlier, he'd had visions of my staying on in the regional high |
| school and going to university. Now, I'd been unable to hold my own in Rupin. |
| Still, both he and my mother were relieved when Mishmar Hasharon and the |
| school worked out a compromise which did not end my studies altogether. The |
| expulsion stood, but I was allowed to continue attending math and science |
| classes. |
| For my mother, the blow was softened by the fact I began working almost |
| full-time on the kibbutz, alongside Yigal, driving a tractor. I woke up early and |
| accompanied him into the fields of wheat, barley or rye. We also made a series |
| of trips 130 miles south into the Negev to a moshav called Patish. It had been |
| set up by newly arrived Moroccan Jews. Since they didn't have the equipment |
| or know-how to cultivate all their fields, they were renting out some of the land. |
| Mishmar Hasharon had contracted to farm a parcel of 450 acres. |
| For ten days at a time, Yigal and I would place a tractor on the back of a |
| pickup and head to Patish. We worked from four in the morning until sundown. |
| After work, we ate at a tiny family-run restaurant a few miles away in Ofakim, a |
| so-called "development town" populated by Moroccan Jews who had been |
| moved there as soon as they arrived in Israel. Far from regretting not being in |
| school, I drew satisfaction, and pride, from knowing that I was functioning as an |
| independent adult. But it also gave me time to think. My whole life had been |
| circumscribed by the struggle to create and secure the state. But I again found |
| myself pondering issues of basic fairness in our young country, and the |
| challenge of reconciling our words and principles with our deeds amid the |
| difficult realities of building the state. |
| Back on the kibbutz, it was the example of the kindly and hard-working |
| Baddura which had caused me to question how we were treating the Jews who |
| had arrived from Yemen. In the Negev, I met members of the even larger post- |
| war influx from Morocco. One image struck me above all. It was from the place |
| Yigal and I ate dinner. Ofakim was a development town that had yet to develop. |
| It had no visible means of support, and there was no sign the government was |
| doing much to remedy that or integrate the new immigrants economically and |
| socially. The "restaurant" was a side business a family had set up in the dining |
| room of their tiny home. The sixth or seventh time we went there, I was startled |
| by sudden movement a couple of feet away from where we were sitting. |
| 46 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011517 |
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|
