A recent article from London’s Times Newspaper about travel on Kibbutzes in Israel:

Does anyone have Bono’s phone number? If so, could they give it to Merav Ayalon because she’d like a word. Ayalon leans back, pats her dog and draws languidly on a cigarette. I’m sitting with her near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, 400m below sea level.

Cicadas chirrup and a lustrous full Moon illuminates the cacti and baobab trees in the middle distance, making them seem like old men frozen in time. Even at 10pm on a November evening, it’s warm enough to sit out in shorts and a T-shirt. My drinking companion is wistful, and so am I, but for different reasons.

“I need Bono to help save the Dead Sea,” says Ayalon, a member of Kibbutz Ein Gedi, where I’m staying tonight. “Politicians never get anything done. It’s only musicians and artists who do.”

Ein Gedi used to be closer to the Dead Sea, she tells me. The kibbutz hasn’t moved, but the waters have. Over 30 years the shores have retreated by more than a kilometre. Less water is flowing in from the River Jordan and a large potash plant to the south is also blamed. It’s a man-made problem and, according to Ayalon, only the publicity supplied by an Irish rock-god can start to solve the issue.

I’m also in a reflective mood, my mind temporarily full of “what ifs”. I’m not one for regrets, but in my late teens I did think about coming to work on a kibbutz — as did Bono, Bob Hoskins and Simon Le Bon — but chose to head Down Under instead.

Until the 1980s a few months’ stint in Israel picking bananas or mucking out cows was a rite of passage, whether or not you were Jewish. But the start of the Intifada meant that much international empathy ebbed away from Israel at the same time as inexpensive round-the-world tickets made Koh Samui and Sydney seem more attractive options for a gap year.

Now, for me at least, it’s too late. You need to devote several months and be in your mid-30s or under. But of the 256 kibbutzim nationwide, 32 have developed tourism programmes, so here I was, 90 minutes’ drive from Jerusalem, reminiscing over Goldstar lager under a star-spangled sky and promising to track down U2.

Ein Gedi is a good base from which to explore the Dead Sea region. The Hilton it isn’t, but it offers clean, basic accommodation (units have air-conditioning, TV and en suite bathroom), a chance to mix with holidaying locals, and enjoy salads and fresh vegetables and fruit in the canteen.

The next morning revealed the magnificent towering cliffs that act as Ein Gedi’s backdrop and a reminder how low I had sunk, literally. I hopped on a shuttle bus to the kibbutz’s spa complex five minutes away.

It used to lie on the shoreline but now you board a tractor-shuttle that ferries you past signs showing the retreat of the waters year by year and deposits you at the sea five minutes later, with Jordan shimmering in a heat haze on the other side.

Here you can bob in the buoyant waters, having snaps taken while you read a book on the surface and then do as the Russian tour groups do, liberally rub mineral-rich mud all over each other on the beach.

Ein Gedi is a fine spot, too, for hikers who come from all over Israel to explore the nearby canyons or walk up to the ruins of the fortress at Masada, a 15-minute drive away, where Jewish rebels committed suicide rather than surrender to the Roman forces besieging them in the 1st century AD.

I drove north for several hours, across the West Bank and past Jericho, with the lights of villages in the Jordan valley twinkling across to my right and Amman just 40km away. My destination was Ein Gev, another kibbutz that lies in the shadow of the Golan Heights on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Tourism plays a big part in generating revenue here, but the farming side seemed more obvious than Ein Gedi with kibbutzniks raising cattle and chickens, breeding snails for export, growing bananas, avocados, figs and dates, and fishing.

Tourists at the holiday cottages that look directly out on to the Sea of Galilee are housed separately from the volunteers, but there is usually someone who will show you around and give you a brief taste of kibbutz life.

Which is how I met 22-year-old Ben Rose from London, who had spent six months doing a variety of jobs. “Most of my friends in England had never heard of a kibbutz,” he told me as we chatted in the canteen. “I’d explain it to them, but they didn’t really understand — most would rather just go and laze on a beach in Thailand.

I was floundering back in London, but the time I’ve spent here has really helped me. It’s a family and I’ve met great people. It seems like home; in fact, I’m emigrating here next year.”

The next day Ben showed me around and introduced me to other volunteers from South Africa, Korea, the US and Britain (one of whom arrived 38 years ago and never left), before we set out to explore the local area. We stopped for a shawarma at the Bonjour kebab shop in Tiberias.

The town, despite being one of the four holy cities of Judaism, seemed ramshackle and tacky, so we didn’t linger but drove instead to the northern end of the sea.

“The best guide book you can have round here is the Bible,” I was told as we stopped at the Mount of Beatitudes (where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount) and, by coming towards the end of the day, thereby avoided all the multitude of coach parties.

A short distance onwards is the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, where we had a similarly solitary experience as the sun was starting to slowly /, and so too by the water’s edge at the Church of the Primacy of St Peter, at Capernaum where Jesus recruited his first disciples, and the ruins of the town of Korazim.

Perhaps my stay on the kibbutzim was a bit of a cheat after all those years. Hardly weeks of back-breaking labour, rather just a few days of applying sunscreen and polishing off chicken schnitzel. But still, a stay on a kibbutz does provide an alternative view of Israel, a refreshing change from the rather heavy atmosphere of Jerusalem, and more realistic than the hedonistic bubble of Tel Aviv.

No sign of Bono, though, but seriously Mr U2, if you are reading this over a pint of Guinness, please do get in touch.

Source: Times