others from Mes’ha, were written in broken Hebrew, although there is no doubt that he respected education and made sure Allon was not remiss about his studies.
Allon was a conscientious pupil. An extant letter that he wrote when in second grade, to an ill teacher, is illustrated with a picture at the bottom showing Allon himself sick in bed.99 In 1928, at the age of ten, he wrote a poem and a composition for the school newspaper. The composition is a specimen of the high-sounding language of the Hebrew Enlightenment (Haskalah) upheld at Mes’ha’s school—one could not have too much of it.100 He contributed also to the quiz section, suggesting riddles that required a fair mastery of the Bible. The raw material for the newspaper must have been vetted by a careful eye because a letter he wrote two years later to the teacher Ephra’im Derekh shows quite a few errors of style. The Haskalah’s flowery phraseology features here as well: “Out of doors, the wind wails,” Allon wrote, “and I am seated alongside whispering embers and writing you the letter.” The letter sheds light on the curriculum: arithmetic class was not up to scratch. The pupils (the fifth grade, apparently) learned a series of topics, from grammar to crafts, together with the eighth. For Bible studies, it was common to memorize whole chapters. The children wrote a good many compositions. Allon’s special writing talent was on “My Family Memories” and “My Favorite Animal.” He comes across as a nice, obedient child, amiable to his teachers, scholastically ambitious, without any sense of rebellion.
Mes’ha in the 1920s did not attract enviable schoolmasters. Top teachers chose to live in the city or in the villages of Labor settlement. In 1933, the school won the high commissioner’s prize for raising silkworms and gardening. The awards did not solve the problems of a leaking roof in winter or a plague of flies in summer. In the 1930s, an effort was made to improve the school’s exterior and install an ornamental garden, which even won the Wauchope Prize. The children threw themselves into the task eagerly. Not so the parents, who considered gardening and ornamentation as a whole an unjustified waste of precious water.101
Even if the school did not really broaden the children’s vistas, it apparently left its stamp in several areas of study: Bible studies, Hebrew literature, and Jewish history. It was in fact a “nationalist” curriculum, aimed at bonding the child to the people and the land, especially the latter. In general, Jewish history in Exile was depicted as one long chain of persecution. In Allon’s imagination the Crusades were so tied to the Inquisition that when he traveled to Nazareth with his father he was careful not to bend down near a church lest it be understood as kneeling before the cross. He had no such misgivings about Islam, having learned in school that Muslims were tolerant of Jews, with the emphasis on Spain’s Golden Age.102 The Bible was the local history book: Saul and his sons; the prophetess Deborah; Barak, the son of Avinoam; Yael and Sisera; Gideon—all had waged their campaigns within an arrow’s shot of Kefar Tavor. The Bible was the source of legitimacy for an instinctive sense of ownership felt by youth rooted in the country’s soil.
Figure 4. Class of elementary school, Mes’ha. Allon sits in the middle line, first from the right. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Allon family.
The myth that had the greatest impact on young Allon was the story of Saul, to which he returned again and again: the lad who had been taken from behind the herd to become king of Israel. He and Mes’ha’s other children were spellbound by Saul Tchernichowsky’s ballad, “Be-Ein Dor,” their hearts pounding at the poet’s words when he visited their village. “Just imagine”—the mature Allon would quote the poet he had heard in the spring of his life—“how great King Saul was. The history was written by David’s sycophants, and even they did not manage to dwarf him. And if that is how he emerged from their hands, one may easily imagine how great a man he really was.”103 Much like Kefar Tavor’s own boys, Saul was the pure, innocent country lad, the sacrifice of both the “sullen and displeased” Samuel, who ignored political considerations and the ways of war, and of David, who though he may have been the “sweet Psalmist” yet was ready to join the Philistines in their war against his own people. In Mes’ha’s childhood world, the preference for Saul—the handsome tragic figure of the Book of Samuel—over David, the devious victor who did not shrink from wrongdoing or bloodshed, was self-evident, especially since Saul’s brave war was waged near the village and Ein Dor was visible from the window. The love of Saul, the noble victim, and the rejection of David, the reckless victor, was anointed with Reuven’s blessing: the one and only kiss Allon ever received from his father was after Tchernichowsky’s talk, when the excited child bared his heart to Reuven, objecting to David and identifying with Saul.104
A product of the Mes’ha of the 1920s and 1930s, Allon lived in a world that was imprinted with “earthiness.” Love of nature, of landscape, of the surroundings were givens. Life was molded by work. The daily routine, the yearly cycle, prosperity, and dearth, all revolved around the farm. Allon was born into agriculture without agony or agonizing. It may have been hard, but it was a fact of life.105
The realities gave rise to a very simple value system: a concept of primary, almost biblical, justice—of “an eye for an eye”; relations of “give and take” with the Arab neighbors; courage and physical prowess; a farmer’s love of the land; loyalty to the family, to the village, to the country, to the nation. The measure of a man was how he lived up to these values.
Daily life at Mes’ha no doubt posed a challenge to these values since the villagers hardly excelled in mutual help or cooperation. Extreme individualism occasionally degenerated into downright selfishness. Allon must have been aware of this, and it may explain his omission in Bet Avi of neighbors’ names, including those of boyhood friends. Perhaps he consigned them to anonymity because the mention of any one person might have offended those not named. Or, perhaps if he had done otherwise, relating to Mes’ah as it was, he could not have painted its picture as he did: naïve, but pretty and wholesome. The myth of Wild Galilee with his father cast in the role of tough, stern, dauntless sheriff, a myth he constructed by carefully selecting certain fragments and ignoring others—was the foundation of his worldview and the source of his pride. When he was to come into contact with youth of the Zionist movement, including those steeped in Labor traditions and proudly brandishing Labor’s banner, the only asset he could offer in return was his father’s house, rooted in the land, a rock of its rocks, an oak of its oaks. Against slick and worldly city youth, he held out the authenticity and simplicity of a country boy, the aristocracy of the land.
Chapter 2
Kadoorie Agricultural School
Allon’s first meaningful introduction to the world beyond the horizon was at the Kadoorie Agricultural School. He entered Kadoorie as a child of Mes’ha and emerged from it determined to leave his native village.
Once Reuven Paicovich realized that his youngest son was not to benefit from a Mikveh Israel education out of the PICA’s pocket, he began to nurse a fresh hope: Yigal would attend the newly built school next door to Mes’ha, on lands adjoining the Paicovich holding at Um-J’abal—meaning Kadoorie. The public storm surrounding its founding was typical of the Jewish Yishuv at the time, when Zionist fervor imbued every deed, big or small, with value and significance beyond ordinary mortal measure. Only in this sort of atmosphere could a school’s establishment turn into a national project, an open controversy, the focus of animosity and suspicion toward the British authorities, and a source of pride and sense of overall achievement for the Jews. Kadoorie—before it ever even rose—came to represent British injustice toward the proud Jewish Yishuv.
It all began with a misunderstanding: the last will and testament of one Ellis Kadoorie, an Iraqi-born Jewish millionaire who had lived in Hong Kong and bequeathed a third of his legacy, £1 million, to his majesty’s government for the building of a school in his name in Palestine or Iraq.1 The
