Choosing One’s Parents

By Bonnie Ellinger

One of the very appealing kibbutz customs is the assigning of a “family” to newcomers. The families are usually long-time kibbutz members who volunteer to be welcoming insiders to facilitate the absorption into the kibbutz of new arrivals. My Zionist youth group friends and I, on a semester-long stay on a kibbutz, worked 4 hours daily and studied Hebrew for another 4, and in the afternoons, we were invited to our “families” for what is known as the 4 o’clock meal. It is the time when children and parents get together after a day’s school or work and unwind in a relaxed home atmosphere, with delicious, (usually high-caloric) pastries, coffee, and conversation. It was an opportunity for many kibbutz members to have a close-up relationship with Jewish- American youth, and for us to get a first taste of how kibbutzniks lived. 

My kibbutz family was lovely. The parents were Polish Holocaust survivors who arrived after the war, and the children were three Israeli-born teenagers. We all got along well, and I enjoyed the relationship with the entire household. Spending time with them was also helpful for learning Hebrew.

Fast-forward several years, I made “aliya” and was living on the same kibbutz with my husband and baby. By this time, I knew many more of the members, spoke Hebrew quite well, and was settled into kibbutz life.

I think I first met Chaim because we were working together for a period of time in the dining room. I found him fascinating. He had had very few years of formal schooling, since he joined the partisans in the Polish forests during the war. What especially attracted me was his great knowledge of classical music, as music was a central part of my life, and I considered pursuing it as a profession.

I still had a warm bond with my kibbutz family, but there was something about Chaim and his wife Bella that really attracted me. When I asked them if they could be my (new) “parents”, they readily agreed. Of course, I first went to my “original” parents to explain that I was feeling very close to Bella and Chaim and asked the family if it would be ok for me to switch. They were very gracious, said they understood, and we remained friendly.

I must have instinctively known that the relationship with Bella and Chaim would be very special. Bella was an only child from Kovno, Lithuania, and spent 4 years in Bergen-Belsen from the age of 16-20. She and Chaim met on the Exodus, fell in love, joked about the miscommunication in their different Yiddishes (Polish vs. Lithuanian), and went to settle on the kibbutz.

Bella was wise, kind, had a wonderful sense of humor and was a well-needed mother-figure for me, as I was quite young. Bella and Chaim became doting grandparents for my son, Elan, and their children became my siblings. 

There was a profound love between Bella and Elan. The colorful vest that she knitted for him was his favorite article of clothing. Bella had very few remaining relatives after the war, so when she visited her uncle in Paris, she asked Elan what he would like. He loved the red umbrella that Bella gladly brought back for him.

Every year on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), we’d gather in Bella and Chaim’s home to light candles and remember their family members who were murdered. The first year that I participated with the family, I was surprised to see that Bella had a wrinkled photo of her and her parents in Kovno, before they were taken away to the camps, where her parents perished. I recall asking Bella how it was that she had a photo, after spending those years in Bergen Belson. Her reply: “I hid it in my shoe.”

My (biological) loving parents were far away in New York, but they visited Israel every year and formed a warm connection with Bella and Chaim. For me, Bella was the perfect substitute mother, and Elan gained another set of loving grandparents with whom he could spend time on a daily basis, right there on the kibbutz, for the 5 years that we lived there.

A few months after we moved to a city in central Israel, Bella’s wartime illness returned, and she became gravely ill. To everyone’s great sorrow, she was unable to fight much longer and died at the age of 48. It was a huge loss for all who knew her, and for my young son it was the passing of one of his grandmothers. Chaim lived for another 20+ years, and unfortunately died at 72, also too soon. We maintained close ties during those years after Bella’s death. Elan was an officer in the Air Force when we attended Chaim’s funeral on the kibbutz.

My generous, kindhearted mother said of Bella: “I’m so glad you had her as a second mother.”

Bonnie Ellinger, Phd., Applied Linguistics. Dr. Ellinger lived in Israel for 35 years, the first five on the kibbutz. She taught English for more than 20 years at Bar Ilan University before moving to Santa Fe.

Read also "With communal spirit, Nir Oz will rise again" by Bonnie Ellinger.

And, Bonnie interviewed Amir Tibon, Haaretz journalist and author of "The Gates of Gaza: One Family's Story of Betrayal, Survival and Hope on Israel's Borderlands." Tibon and his family survived the October 7th attack on kibbutz Nahal Oz. Read the transcript and view the interview here: "The Gates of Gaza" Israeli Journalist and Author Amir Tibon interviewed by Bonnie Ellinger - video and transcript.