Green Acres is the Place for Me.

October 24, 2006 - 10:35 AM by Allison

Farm livin’ is the life for me.
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.

We get the full scoop on living on a moshav from Katherine.

First of all some history from wikipedia:

Moshav (Hebrew: ???? Translit.: moshav Plural: moshavim Translated: settlement, village) is a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah (wave of Jewish immigration during the 19th Century)

The moshavim are similar to kibbutzim with an emphasis on community labour and were designed as part of the Zionist state-building program following the Yishuv (“[Jewish] settlement”) in Palestine during the 19th Century, but contrary to the collective kibbutzim, farms in a moshav tended to be individually owned but of fixed and equal size. Workers produced crops and goods on their properties through individual and/or pooled labour and resources and used profit and foodstuffs to provide for themselves. Support of the community was done through a special tax (Hebrew “mas vaad”). This tax was equal for all households of the community, thus creating a system where good farmers were better off than bad ones, unlike in the communal kibbutzim where (at least theoretically) all members enjoyed the same living standard. Moshavim are governed by an elected council (Hebrew “Vaad”). Many moshavim still exist today.

Right, now as to how you know you live in a moshav in Israel.

1. You get woken up in the morning first by the goats, and then if you manage to get back to sleep, again by the traffic noises.

2. When you go for a walk with the dog, you do not worry about meeting a mugger, you worry about meeting a hyena. Or a jackal.

3. You realise all your neighbours are millionaires. You get this realisation the first time you get your bill for arnona and vaad (rates and taxes essentially), and you realise that everyone else in the neighbourhood is paying the same extortionate amount.

4. Despite the fact that they are millionaires, your neighbours’ gardens are piled high with old tires, old cars, half built houses and other assorted rubbish. Clearly the aim here is not to keep up with the Joneses but to try to appear as if you own nothing when the arnona man comes around to check up on you.

5. Your house is one of the smallest in the neighbourhood, at 170 square meters. By the by, I looked up the size of a tennis court – another 14 square meters and we would be there. And you all thought I was kidding when I said the house was as big as a tennis court.

6. Your neighbours’ gardens are big enough not just to contain the aforementioned rubbish and dead cars, but also half built houses. Put a good distance away from the main house.

7. Your neighbours own 8 dogs, 5 cats, quite a lot of goats, geese, ducks and who knows what they have down at the end of their land. Probably a marijuana plot. It is impossible to see that far.

8. Your postal address is: Moshav suchandsuch, some number smaller than 100. Add on an Israel after that for international mail. Hence a sample address would be Moshav Adam, 8. Try send some mail to those people and I’m sure you will get a reply. For all you stalkers out there we do not live in Moshav Adam.

9. When you go to a party in the evening you wonder if you should have brought your passport with you as all signs point to places in the territories (i.e. the West Bank), and there are no street lights outside the cities to see where you are going. Not that we live in the West Bank, but Israel is so titchy that to drive in any direction for 20km’s means you might hit a border post.

10. You have never met your closest neighbours. Why do you need to, as there is no chance you will bump into them as when you look out your window to their house, the shortest distance between the two houses is probably twenty meters. Anyone who lives in Israel knows quite how unusual this is, as people are incredibly friendly here and to be someone’s neighbour is practically to be part of their family.