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 them as a babe on his mother’s lap. One episode that took pride of place in the family saga concerned Mes’ha’s cattle robbery.
One cloud-free Sabbath morning in the early summer of 1920, as most of Mes’ha’s old-timers stood in the synagogue wrapped in prayer shawls, the serenity was shattered by a lad bursting in with the cry that the entire herd had been stolen. The residents of Mes’ha were shocked. Such a thing had never happened before—not even under the Turks. For it to happen now—in the British era—when the troublemakers seemed to have retired and stopped harassing the colony … They quickly pulled themselves together, quit their prayers and the synagogue, and, undeterred by the holy Sabbath, set out in hot pursuit. Paicovich was not at the synagogue, and the news of a robbery on this tranquil morning hit him like a bomb at home. Zvi hastily grabbed for his weapons in order to join the other young men in the chase. Reuven held him back momentarily, for fear of the Gom. But Zvi paid no attention. Paicovich, as the chairman of the council at the time (by his own report), went to see to the colony’s defense against a possible raid by the Bedouin neighbors to the north: the robbery and chase could well whet their appetite for an attack on the disconcerted village. The robbers had come from Transjordan and scurried to get back across the Jordan under cover of Wadi Bira, driving the herd eastward. In their flight, they ran into an ambush laid by Mes’ha’s “posse.” One of the robbers was killed in the dust-up, and others appeared to be hurt. Mes’ha also suffered losses: Moshe Klimantovsky, the son of a widow who managed her farm alone, was slain. Two others were wounded: Nahman Karniel and Zvi Paicovich.
Figure 2. Allon in the arms of the husband of his Arab wet nurse. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of the Allon family.
With Yigal in his mother’s arms—so the story goes—his mother and father stood outside their home anxiously awaiting news. All at once a rider came into view. It was Zvi; he had left home on his feet only to return atop someone else’s horse. “S’iz gornisht, imi” (“It’s nothing, my mother”), he shouted, his shirt soaked in blood. Chaya fainted. Horse and rider continued on to the pharmacy, but before he could get there, Zvi also fainted. Vigilant neighbors rushed to dismount him and dress his wounds. Mes’ha’s pharmacy served as a clinic and even an infirmary, and Zvi lay there for several weeks before being transferred to a hospital. It was a year before he returned to farm work.
The loss of the handsome, amiable Klimantovsky cast a pall over Mes’ha the next day. The two other casualties hovered between life and death and the air was heavy with the stillness of the grave. It was unexpectedly disturbed by noise on the northern road, not far from Paicovich’s home. He took his rifle and went out to investigate. A horde of