Like that of Mes’ha, Reuven Paicovich’s attitude to the Arab milieu was ambivalent. His courage stood out from his first day in the country59 and his memoirs include hair-raising exploits about near-death encounters with highwaymen and miraculous deliverances due to his unfailing heart. He gave at least as good as he got and he tried to teach his sons to fight for life and honor. It was not an abstract message, but something concrete translating immediately into physical engagement. It was the ABCs of Galilee—vital to survival. After the a-Zbekh incident, Paicovich’s neighbors understood that it was best not to tangle with this strong-willed man who itched for a fight, and they chose other fields for their spoil. But if they needed reminding, all they had to do was stray onto his property.
His reputation preceding him, Reuven was welcomed into Bedouin tents to sit and sip coffee with a-Zbekh elders between one scuffle and another. It was a reputation in which al-Insari’s sons too basked, and rightfully so: the boys were hardly fist-shy; as soon as they came of age, they showed themselves eminently capable of thwarting thieves and trespassers.
The frays were governed by ritual and were rarely life threatening. Both Arabs and Jews were careful to stop short of killing lest they stir up blood vengeance, known as gom, and all that it entailed. By an unwritten law of the Galilean wilds, deadly weapons were shunned unless there was absolutely no choice. Paicovich played by the rules of the game.
He observed the rules when it came to Jewish labor as well. National pride was one thing and hiring Jews another. He was already living at Mes’ha during the brief transition to Jewish labor when some fifteen farmers took Jewish workers into their employ. But not he: his name does not appear on any list of farmers using Jewish laborers. He saw no need. Arabs may have been rivals, robbers, constant opponents, but they were part of the landscape; there was no contradiction. Paicovich’s harats were part of his household and when the need arose the harat’s wife nursed his son.
He was not an observant Jew. According to Allon, Reuven was cured of religion after being thrashed by his father for playing with a puppy.60 En route from Odessa to Jaffa, he bickered with ultra-Orthodox passengers who were making the voyage in order to die in the Holy Land. They took exception to his abstinence from prayer; he showed them lofty contempt, undiluted by a scrap of Jewish compassion.61 His wife, Chaya, was highly devout and abided by all of the commandments, minor and major. She kept a kosher home, observed the Sabbath and the holidays with all of their traditional dishes, and lit the candles. It is safe to assume that Reuven did not make the blessing over wine. But he was the center of her universe, and she was careful not to force her ways on him. His feet knew the route to the synagogue but they took him there only on the High Holidays.62 He had a Lithuanian skepticism for anything that did not stand up to proof of reason or perception. The boys all took after him, adding a further distinction to this Mes’ha family. Generally speaking, the fathers’ generation was pious; it was only later that most of the sons turned their backs on religion—not so the Paicovichs. And yet, within a few short years, Paicovich became one of the colony’s leading figures, in all likelihood because of his other virtues.63 In 1912 he became a member of the council, a seat he retained intermittently until the onset of British rule.64
Hard, strict, pedantic, Reuven’s penny pinching was famed: he cut every cigarette in two, smoking half at a time and saving the leftover tobacco in a small box to use later in his pipe.65 Dearth can lead to minginess, and the residents of Mes’ha learned to hoard every sheaf of wheat and every matchstick. But Paicovich never featured among the colony’s poor. His parsimony was ingrained in his life and character. The main thread of his life was the work ethos—man was born to toil. His extreme individualism set the tone in his home. He had no time for small talk, never invited his neighbors home, never visited them for a glass of tea with tzuker, as they called it. Nor did he participate in joint village projects. Proud, reserved, and suspicious, he chose to work on his own with his family and his harat rather than rely on others. To his sons, he strove to pass on his independence, meticulousness, love of work, and courage. Of them, he demanded that they tell the truth, take responsibility for their actions, and lovingly accept punishment for their misdeeds, large or small.66 His integrity was ruthless, he did not know the meaning of mercy, and despite his diligence, conditions at Mes’ha never brought him the measure of ease he had hoped for. Eventually, he was forced to bury his pride and turn to the ICA for assistance.
Their first few years at Mes’ha were good to the Paicoviches. In 1909, their only daughter was born and named Deborah after the biblical prophetess with a connection to Mount Tabor. Eliav (born during Paicovich’s trip to America) and Deborah were still toddlers, but Moshe, Mordekhai, and Zvi already composed an able work force helping their father run the farm. Chaya lent the home its warmth and softness. Kind and gentle in nature and appearance, she sought to round the “sharp corners” in her husband’s personality. As the household’s bookkeeper, she would sometimes secretly manage to return to a farmer requiring seeds before Passover change from the money her husband had charged him. Without advertising the fact, she lent money to the needy of the village. She shielded the boys from their father’s wrath, Reuven’s parenting being based on “spare the rod and spoil the child.” In the cramped conditions of the small house—the dining room was at once the lounge, the kitchen, and the center of family life, while the bedroom served everyone (in summer, the children slept outdoors on mats)—she managed to cook, sew, and keep her home clean and tidy. Possessions were few and soon became worn in a house that had cried out for renovations from day one. Only rarely did she permit herself a luxury, such as visiting her father in Rosh Pinnah. The journey took a whole day and Paicovich was not given to visiting his father-in-law.
The disruptions wrought by the First World War did not bypass Palestine or Mes’ha. Men were conscripted into the army or forced to labor for the war effort. Livestock was requisitioned for military needs. In some sense, Mes’ha’s lot improved: since the country was cut off from the rest of the world and there was famine in the towns, the price of wheat soared. Like all Galilean colonies raising cereals, Mes’ha was spared hunger and even succeeded in selling spare produce. Paicovich and his two older boys, Moshe and Mordekhai, had been called up. Moshe, never having had a yen for fieldwork, had attended the Herzliya High School and excelled in languages; the Turks soon made him an officer. Mordekhai and his father were ordinary soldiers. In 1917, when the Ottoman fate was sealed, Mordekhai and Reuven snuck home, eluding the search for deserters. Yigal was born about a year later. He later laid his birth at the door of his father’s dramatic return from the dread of war.67
Yigal was an afterthought in a rather mature family. By the time he was born, his father was forty-five, his mother about forty-two. His sister, who was closest to him in age, was nine, his oldest brother, twenty-two. One story from Mes’ha about his birth said that his mother feared for his life because he was so small. The midwife consoled her: don’t worry, she said, this little one will yet head the Mes’ha Council!68 After Yigal made a name for himself, becoming the colony’s most illustrious son, the tale became part of the Mes’ha legend.
He was born in heady times of great expectations. Until then, Paicovich had given his children traditional Jewish names. He now outdid himself; he called the boy Yigal—a typical Eretz Israel name redolent of the exultation following the Balfour Declaration and the British conquest. No more dispirited Diaspora names, such as Moshe or Mordekhai or Zvi. “Eliav”—for the child born while the father was in American exile—expressed Jewish resignation to an inauspicious fate: may God be with both the tender newborn and the father. “Deborah,” though prompted by the scenery outside the window, still belonged to the lexicon of common Jewish names. But “Yigal”—the redeemer—suggested new times, a different sort of life experience, high hopes, and a commensurate self-confidence. It was exceptional among Mes’ha’s children. It bespoke great expectations and nationalist goals.
Allon’s memoirs describe the early 1920s at Mes’ha. Presumably, the stories were told and retold so that he absorbed
