I first went to Israel in July, 1976. The ‘kibbutz experience’ was by miles the cheapest way to ‘travel’, ‘stay away from home f’ra bit’ and ‘holiday’. Even though you work 6 days a week, so its not, like, Club Med, and the rooms are less ‘The Savoy’ and more ‘Stalag 14’, but that’s all part of the ‘sperience, innit’. And when you’re just 20, you barely notice things like discomfort, hard labour and cockroaches. Me and me mate, Steve, stayed a couple of months. It was simply brilliant. Independence, a world filled with young, fit and open-minded people, and at every bus stop you passed there was Gal Gadot in a khaki mini-skirt with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Possibly two of them.

We arrived 2 days after the ‘Raid on Entebbe’, when Israeli commandos flew to Uganda to rescue a hi-jacked flight, did a lot of shooting, were more heroic than Bruce Willis ever dreamed of, saved all the people and brought them safe. The only loss was Jonathan Netanyahu, the leader of the commandos and big brother to Binyamin who was also there. Two guys from our kibbutz ‘came home’ too, the day after we arrived. Having been whisked away silently, 5 nights previously. They said nothing, made no comment, asked for no praise. Cooler than Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. But taller.

And then it happened. My mate Paul, a Californian with whom I collected eggs every morning from about 10,000 chickens who really didn’t want to give up their eggs, called for me in the afternoon. Work starts at 6-ish so you’re done by 2. We hitched a ride across the fields on a tractor, and from the road took the bus into the bustling metropolis which Kyriat Gat really wasn’t. It was just a really small desert town. Paul didn’t tell me why we’d gone there. And it was actually the bus terminal we sought. Because there was the path to heaven. Though this comes in many guises, as the holy all know. This particular route was via a pitta bread stuffed with felafel, hummus, chilli and other magic which I’d never experienced before.

If that little ‘take-away’ experience made me actually question the very fabric of my atheism, then our next trip, all the way into Beersheba for shawarma, sent me into the welcoming arms of the devil herself (you really think a man could ever be that evil??) forevermore. Because heaven is what drips down your arms. In the promised land.

Which is why I’ve just arrived back in Tel Aviv. Where spirituality comes wrapped in flat-bread and drips.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx