I believe the conversation went something like this:

"What do you want to do?"
"I'm not sure."
"Is there anything to do?"
"I'm not sure."
"Do you want to make a fire?"
"Um, sure."
"Do you want to make a fire and cook some food on it?"
"Why not?"

And that is how it started one evening on Kibbutz Ketura for a bunch of kids from New Jersey on Young Judaea Year Course in Israel. I, along with three of my close friends from home, decided one night to gather up some leftovers from the kitchen and see what we could do with them. We started our quest early in the day deciding what we would need and where to get things to make our cookout successful. Two of my friends work in the kitchen so they could easily obtain various food items. By nine in the evening, we had pita, hummus, Israeli salad, rice, and breaded chicken pieces. The kitchen staff cooks all of our meals on kibbutz so we never have to prepare meals for ourselves. So, we were very excited to make our own food for a change. And there is always excitement anytime there is fire involved. But that's really where our adventurousness ended. We didn't want to risk messing up our food on a fire so we cooked it in a toaster oven instead.

We planned on making our fire on kibbutz grounds deemed acceptable for fires. My friend Jon and I set out to gather wood from various scrap piles near our fire site. After we got enough material we started our fire. A few minutes after we lit the fire, our friends Jon (who we call Tissue) and Scott arrived with 4 pitas stuffed with chicken and hummus, salad and rice. It tasted as good as any schnitzel you can get in Israel.

We spent the next few hours just sitting around, eating the potatoes we had thrown into our fire, looking at the bright desert sky, and talking. At the conclusion of the evening, we all felt very proud. We had made something out of nothing and left feeling closer to each other and to the place we live. Kibbutz life can teach you many things: Compassion, cooperation, work ethic, and compromise. But for us, this evening was the essence of our kibbutz experience. We had only what we could find and each other. And from that we were able to mold can experience far more satisfying than going out anywhere in a city. We have the opportunity here for several months to escape the pressures of "civilization." There is no inner voice telling each of us that we need to go out and spend money to have a good time. There are no bright signs or loud music calling out to us. Instead, we are left alone in the middle of the desert with magnificent stars and the symphony of the desert. While you might not be able to find anything in the desert, there is no better place to find yourself.

We only have a few short weeks left here on Kibbutz Ketura before we move to Jerusalem for our academic studies portion of Year Course. Some people say they are excited to have a chance to "finally be a part of Israeli society." True, we are isolated here on kibbutz from the rest of the country. The news, or the "situation" as people like to call it, is not as relevant here as in Jerusalem. Many of us are happy to have the chance to live in Jerusalem, but hardly anyone can say that they are looking forward to leaving kibbutz. This place is truly special and you can see that in the eyes of anyone who lives here or has grown up here. A 16 year-old who has spent much of his life on Ketura once said to me, "You can take the man out of the kibbutz, but you can never take the kibbutz out of the man." And after only three months, that is how many of us feel. We have learned much from this kibbutz. We might be leaving kibbutz shortly, but kibbutz will never leave us.

Want to find out more about Young Judaea Year course in Israel? Click on http://www.YoungJudaea.org/html/year_course.cfm.

Jeremy Sklarsky is from Voorhees, N.J. After Young Judaea Year Course in Israel, he will attend Rutgers University in the fall of 2002.