Family? No. he had none. That is, he had no brothers or sisters, and, for the time being, no wife or children either. When could he have had the time to start? All he had were some distant relatives, some refugees from Europe. No, he positively preferred not to discuss them. Some people were best not talked about. Mum’s the word, so to speak. “The shorter the line, the straighter. The fewer the words, the greater.” And so he would waste no more of them. He simply wished to be accepted by Kibbutz Granot. To strike roots in its soil, so to speak. That is, he wanted to be part of a communal enterprise. Incidentally, the day after his release from the army, three-and-a-quarter weeks ago, he had registered as a member of the Labor Party.

Yes, he had all kinds of ideas, he read a lot too, and he even had written a few things of his own. Nothing special. Poems, yes. Some prose. A few theoretical pieces. No, he hadn’t tried publishing them. Still, the plain fact was that two days ago, well after midnight, he had sat alone at a table with a cup of coffee and had run his finger blindly over a list of all the kibbutzim in Israel. Wherever it landed, he had decided, was where he would go. “It’s fate that steers the horse that veers.” Take Spinoza, for example. A thousand years ago he had wisely written that although human beings come into this world ignorant of the reason for their existence, each one of them is born with the desire to realize what is best for himself. And that is how he had ended up this evening at Kibbutz Granot.

With all his experience in the realms of both ideology and practical politics, Comrade Yolek must surely have encountered events that seemed at first glance to be pure coincidence, yet that, once contemplated philosophically, revealed their predestined character. That too was an idea of Spinoza’s. Need he, Azariah, apologize for using the arguments of a philosopher excommunicated by his fellow Jews?

“If you’ll excuse me for saying so, Comrade Yolek, the ban on Spinoza was an act of gross injustice, so to speak, whereas the kibbutz was established to put an end to injustice in all things.”

A profession? In all honesty he had to admit he didn’t yet have one. When could he have had the time to acquire one? He had only been out of the army for twenty-three days. It would make him happy to be taught some agricultural skill like wheat growing or wine culture that would allow him to contribute to society. Even the broken clock is right twice a day.