When we were in 3rd grade, the woman who was our care taker declared that from now on we are going "to be shy/ashamed" and therefore from now on boys and girls are going to reside in separate rooms. We were not sure what being shy or ashamed meant, and it did not seem that anyone could explain that either.
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| Love starts at young age - Boaz and a childhood friend |
The whole subject of gender was quite hushed and whispered about. I remember we had conversation about sex with our woman caretaker around age 12, for the girls and then for the boys, it was all under a heavy veil of mystery and obscurity to say the least. We were boys and thoroughly embarrassed to hear the personal details we heard that day, a big time TMI (too much info)
I remember my own "now that you are becoming a man" conversation with my dad when I was almost 13 years old, and that was even worse. I think there was a whole veil of confusion around gender issues. No wonder, since our parents generation had not been initiated either.
In non-religious Kibbutzim the drill was very different. They wanted boys and girls to feel like family members and let them sleep in the same rooms way into there puberty years. I think that worked. Growing together from age zero, you relate to the other gender from your age group as your siblings and I know of very few, if at all, individuals who married someone from the same Kibbutz age group.
Years letter, when realizing that we are indeed possessing different physiologies, curiosity got the best of us. We had common showers in our own children house as well as a public showers for the whole Kibbutz, one for men and one for women, to which we will go before Shabbat.
I remember the stench of the men shaving cream. Nothing like the shaving creams we have nowadays, it stunk. Using the men public showers was a great fun. We would open the shower heads at full volumes hot waters, making the whole place steamed, go on our butts and slide across the slippery shower floor, it was a hoot. I have no idea what the girls were doing. I was what is called "yeled tov yerushalim" (good boy Jerusalem). (There were yarmulkes embroided with these words and boys who wore these kind of yarmulkes were considered, well, good boys..)
I was one of those good boys who had no clue what is going on, and who is going out with whom, but there were always whispering going on as to who were seen with whom doing what, ie. holding hands, or god forbid, kissing. There was a whole underground romantic stuff going on I was only marginally aware of.
Actually gossip was one of the things that completely turned me off and irritated me and one of the reasons I have never came back to live in the Kibbutz, I felt it was the lowest common denominator, I am not sure I was right though.
Well, maybe gender is a mystery that was never meant to be completely solved, it is a mystery after all.
Boaz Pnini
Bridges 2 Israel
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