Allon’s reputation preceded him to Ginossar. His friends from Kadoorie had sung his praises, and the kevutzah knew to expect a brave young hero, a born farmer who did not flinch from clashes with Arabs. Upon entering the yard at Migdal, he was immediately assigned to the small camp at the bottom of the plain, where the more daring members tilled the PICA’s lands. And that first night, he was posted to the middle shift to guard from 12 to 2 A.M.38 Allon did not manage to reach any great heights at Ginossar, for within months, Nahum Kramer (Shadmi) appropriated him for a sergeants’ training course given by the Haganah. Allon left.
Nevertheless, his heart was already lost to Ginossar. In 1936 the kevutzah was enlarged by a group of German-Jewish youth educated at Tel Yosef. They had been on a kibbutz for two years now and found it all overwhelming: the Hebrew language, the collective life, the hard work. The period was rough: it was the start of the Arab Rebellion and the tenderfoots were called on for guard duty on top of their daily work load.39 Ginossar’s members began to grumble that the “match” with the group from Tel Yosef had been a mistake. Nor was the crowd from Kadoorie sympathetic to the heartbreak of the German girls who were asked to deposit in the common warehouse all of the fine clothing they had brought with them—their mementos from a faraway home. Some, however, were charmed by the foreign girls who were so different from those they were accustomed to. Sini and his friends told Allon that they were reserving the prettiest one—Ruth Episdorf—for him.40
Ruth Episdorf had immigrated to Palestine from Germany in 1934. Her family stemmed from Poland, although her father had served in the German army and the family had taken pains to integrate into German society. Her father was a sales agent, her mother a housewife. Hitler’s rise to power was traumatic. At fifteen, Ruth, was expelled from school, putting an end to her formal studies. Her father died of a heart attack, and as the family sat shiva in mourning for him German soldiers burst in on them in search of him. The shock was too much. The family’s vague Zionism gelled into practical action. Ruth joined the Habonim youth movement, which emphasized returning to the land of Israel and settling on a kibbutz. This became the ideal that illuminated the darkness of those days in her native country. The three Episdorf sisters immigrated to Palestine; Ruth arrived with the training group at Tel Yosef. Her mother deferred her own emigration, not wishing to be a burden on her daughters. Ultimately, she delayed too long and met her death in the Lodz Ghetto.
Ruth’s sights were set on working in the cowshed. But city girl that she was, she did not take easily to physical toil and so did not meet the challenge at Tel Yosef. At Ginossar, she again tried her hand in the cowshed. Later, she was proud to be assigned to fieldwork. In the early years, she fell prey to various illnesses, including typhus and malaria. There were emotional difficulties too: she lacked the mentality and social traditions of Yishuv society, which was predominantly “Russian”; and moreover, there was the shame of hailing from the country of the Nazis. She felt inferior to the young native Jews around her—and they certainly did not go out of their way to make things any easier. She eagerly adopted the pinafore, the embroidered blouse, and the elastic-bottomed shorts, an outfit that was almost a status symbol of the new society. The desire to “assimilate” was strong, and even if there was little sensitivity to or understanding of the woes of an individual, a foreigner, an orphan, there was something spellbinding about Ginossar’s young society: it had the air of a band of boys and girls on a desert island; a whole world that consisted only of themselves.41
All of the girls at Ginossar were attracted to Yigal: apart from his reputation as a farmer and warrior, he was handsome, nice, cheerful, and good-hearted.42 It was only natural that his choice would be Ruth, the “star” of the German group, as his friends said.43 He was everything an immigrant girl could wish for: his manly qualities aside, he was native born, a sabra personified, and well-ensconced in the society to which she aspired to belong. Their very different cultural backgrounds added mystery and charm to the relationship. But they had also undergone a similar experience—a severance of roots: Allon from Mes’ha and its world; Ruth from the land of her birth and parental home. For both, Ginossar held out the promise of a new start, hope for a future not lodged in the past.44
A mere few months separated Allon’s break with Ada Zemach and his attachment to Ruth. Was this an indication that he had been hurt by Ada’s refusal to join him on the kibbutz? Whatever the case, his relationship with Ruth was on an entirely different footing: With Ada, he had been older and more experienced in affairs of the heart, even as he was her inferior socially and culturally. With Ruth, he was the dominant partner from the start, having the social and cultural edge as well. Neither was broadly educated and, in this sense, they were equal. But he, of course, had the added advantage of a native over an immigrant.
They must have been the best-looking couple at Ginossar if not in the whole Jordan Valley. They soon moved into a family room, which meant half of a room in a hut along with another family and the infamous “third.” Formal marriage, according to the laws of Moses and Israel, took place later, apparently around 1939, in a mundane atmosphere stripped of the romance surrounding their move to the family room. One day, after work, Allon and Ruth simply drove to a rabbi in Tiberias accompanied by two members of Ginossar who served as witnesses. The rabbi lent them a ring for the ceremony and that was that.45 There were no relatives present, not his father or brothers, not her sisters.
Ruth soon understood that Allon would be away a lot, yet it never even entered her head to complain. Security came first and everyone was enlisted, in spirit if not in fact. Security work epitomized the apex of commitment and lent an aura to both the volunteers who performed and those who were close to them. Allon was well liked by the members of the kevutzah even though in the difficult years of 1938–40, he spent little time at Ginossar.46 And then something happened that suddenly brought him home.
Figure 7. Yigal and Ruth Allon. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Allon family.
Ginossar took advantage of the eruption of WorldWar II on 1 September 1939 to further extend its vegetable tracts and planted fields. The pretext was that the emergency made it necessary to farm every bit of land lest wartime imports be stopped and/or the Arabs worked the lands and thereby gained rights to them.47
Up until that time, the Arabs of the Ju’ar village of abu-Shusha had used part of the waters of the Rabadiyeh spring and left the rest to flow into the Sea of Galilee. Like some of the village lands, the spring was the property of the PICA though the Arabs held it and Ginossar sought to obtain legal rights to it. The members of Ginnosar began by talking to the villagers and even reached an agreement: after the abu-Shusha lands were irrigated, the waters were to be channeled across Ginossar lands. But the Arabs broke the agreement and diverted the spring waters to the wadi on the approach to the village, from there to spill into the lake. The diversion was accomplished by placing a large rock in the channel to direct the flow. After the agreement was broken several times, the British stationed its Jewish Settlement Police (JSP) to guard the water.48 On 27 October 1939 a mobile, three-man JSP patrol was attacked. One member was hurt and his firearm was stolen. The guards shot into the air to raise the alert and call for help. A squad was organized at Ginossar with Allon (who had been recalled from Tiberias, where he served at Haganah’s headquarters) commanding the counterattack. At nightfall, the toll was three wounded Arabs and two dead, including abu-Shusha’s mukhtar himself—Sheikh abu-Fais Hamis, a notable