Elizabeth and the company taxi arrived around 1 PM to pick me up and take us south towards Ashdod where the Masu’ot Yitzhak community is located.  Albaad, a wet wipes manufacturer, is located on the Moshav/Kibbutz.  A Mashov is slightly different from a Kibbutz in that it keeps the family unit together and allows for more individuality.  In the old kibbutz model, the children lived separate from their parents and the community owned everything.  The Masu’ot Yitzhak community has evolved into its own expression incorporating elements of each model.  I was excited about the opportunity not only to see behind the scenes of this Jewish community, but meet with Amnon Brodie, the Chairman of Albaad.  Amnon’s family was part of the original group who founded the communities back in 1945 first located in the Judean mountains.  The original families came from Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.  They divided themselves into 5 different kibbutz’s and during the 1948 war, one of the kibbutz’s (Kfar Etzion) was totally overrun and destroyed.  Everyone living on it was killed!  It was a story I knew all too well.

Once we arrived, we were greeted by various Albaad employees excited to see Elizabeth who hadn’t been there in over a year.  Amnon, Boaz (CEO) and others all welcomed us with big smiles.  Amnon had arranged a tour of the community and our guide was a middle aged gentleman named David who was born in London and of course spoke excellent English.  It was an amazing time of interaction as he drove us around and showed us the various aspects of the community.  Besides a wet wipes business, they have a dairy farm; cattle feed plant, chicken hatchery and various other enterprises. I have just completed reading “Start Up Nation” about the entrepreneurial spirit of the Jewish people. There right in front of me I could see it all in action.

As we drove through the various homes and living quarters, we came to a tall sculpture incorporating the base of an old railcar.  Surrounding it was white stone panels with names in Hebrew etched into them.  David explained this was a memorial to all the relatives of family members of the community who had been lost during the Holocaust.  As you might imagine it was sobering.  Soon we were at a second memorial and this one dedicated all the members of the community lost during their service in the IDF, the Israeli military.  As we stood and contemplated, I noticed a mother walking along the road with three young children two of which were in a push cart.  Their cute little faces were leaning over the side of the cart watching us intently.  I was struck by the paradoxes of life and death.  Here we were standing at a memorial for people who had died so these little children could have life!   

While Elizabeth met with the CEO, David and I took a tour of the plant and I witnessed how a wet wipe is produced from raw ingredients to packaged product.  I was intrigued by the whole process.  As we walked along we found ourselves into deep conversations on the evolution of the kibbutz model, what the motivation was to live on a kibbutz and how to keep the most productive from feeling like they are “carrying” the lesser productive.  David was up to the challenge and gave me great insight for future ideas I have which may work in Zimbabwe.

After the tour was complete, Amnon took us to his house to meet his wife Esther.  She is a lovely woman, quiet with understanding eyes. She also works for Albaad in the lab.  She had prepared some pre dinner snacks and over a cup of coffee we got acquainted.  The Brodie’s have 5 children (3 boys, 2 girls) and 8 grandchildren.  They are a blessed family.  Once we finished our coffee they took us to the next town over for dinner.  While I dined on salmon, we had a marvelous time of sharing stories and learning more about each other’s lives.  They were deeply moved by the story of The Community of Reconciliation and fascinated to know they there was a Zimbabwean tribe descended from Jewish priests!  As the evening wound down, I found my heart filled with a sense of gratitude for the kindness they showed us inviting us into their busy lives and sharing their culture with us.