From the beginning of November that year (1988), "Manpower" could not find a job for me. I I utilized the time to write the first draft of the vision, or the "project", as I called it then more modestly - paying for the usage of a computer somewhere.

At that time I did not believe, that I could realize this project myself, so I tried to "sell" it to the "Nature Reserves Authority", believing that they would be interested in my first motive behind the project, the integration of Man with Nature. Already on Dec. 12th I got an appointment with Uri Baidetz, then the General Director of this Authority. I knew, that he appreciated me ever since my appearance before the board of the "Israel Land Authority" in 1976, concerning my Bir'am Project.

..............

After that major "failure" in 1976 it took me another 4 years of intense "Partnership Work" to understand, that people are not able to turn adversaries into partners as long as they do not really believe in self-determination but continue to make themselves victims~~~

It was then - by the end of 1980 - that I decided to retreat into my inner desert and find out, how I could work on the root of so many maladies: self-victimization!

The Succah-Vision is - beyond its more obvious aim of "Man's Integration with Nature" - the mature fruit of this understanding:

the Succah is a situation,
where I and other creative people train
in becoming masters of our lives.

 

Though there was a real understanding on the part of Uri Baidetz, ---the "Nature Reserves Authority" stated later, that they had no interest in my idea, on the contrary, they were opposed to it, since "Man is unable to live with Nature harmoniously. Wherever Man is - Nature will be destroyed."

One good result of this meeting was, that Baidetz sent me to Mitzpe-Ramon, and it was 3 days later, that I first made the aquaintance of the Negev-Heights, and its little desert-town - so far from any town or settlement.

It would fill many pages to tell the many things that I learnt during those first 20 hours at Mitzpe-Ramon~~~

I understood, why Baidetz had sent me to this town: exactly that week an affair had exploded which was to teach me a lesson: a ranger, Motti Shamir, had lived a lonely year at the Nature Reserve of the Lotz Cisterns, until more and more people of the hippie kind found out about the place, lived with him at his expense and slowly took over, to the extent that the ranger had to ask his bosses to help and drive his companions away. Since those guys had nowhere to go, they were actually camping in town, when I arrived, and the affair was the main issue in the talk of the many people I introduced myself to. The message was clear: "See, what is going to happen to you, if you pursue your idea of a place in the desert."

I was extremely grateful to Uri Baidetz and to Motti Shamir: the warning saved me from making the dire experience myself. There will be a place in the desert for the hippi-kind too, but not as long as the germ of "Succah in the Desert" is still so vulnerable.

The second most important experience at Mitzpe-Ramon was my encounter with Dan Rubin, the "soul" of the Nature Reserves Authority and Uri Baidetz' friend. During that meeting in Baidetz' Jerusalem office, he called his friend "Roibe" in, introduced me and said:

"Rachel is right, we should also offer possibilities "off the beaten track" for those hikers who want that."

I then met Roibe again "by chance" at the house of Ezri and Hanni Alon, two pillars in the N.R.A. and since then my challenging friends. Though he was absolutely opposed to my "project", he liked the Biblical image of "Abraham, the desert host", and, despite himself, he gave me two advices, which were to become the only major alterations in the original vision:

- One succah at a site, as you envision, cannot work. There have to be at least ten succot. ( I decided upon seven).

- A five-year concession to the host of a succah would break your rule of temporariness, because after 5 years a human being feels attached, settled and unwilling to move on.

"What would be an optimal period of functioning as a host?" I asked.

"One year".

( I adopted this view-point as a guide-line.)

(To my deep distress I myself am still living in my bus at the site of the first Succayah - against that adopted rule, - I'll explain later, why the "child" still fails to walk without me ~~~) This was written in winter 1992- two years before I finally managed to part.

When I parted from "Roibe", I was happy to have found my match:
his thoughtful, wise opposition would have a fruitful effect on my own thinking.
But four weeks later he suddenly died - a man exactly my age ~~~

The day I learnt about this death I was on one of my many study-tours during those 10 months of pregnancy with the Succah Vision.

This one was about "looking for natural sources of water in the Negev".

Moshe Klein, the best friend of Uri, my son-in-love, one of the most independent and creative spirits I know, once met me "by chance" in a little restaurant at Tel-Aviv Dizengoff Center, out of all places, and - learning about my idea - said: "I want to support this idea with all my heart".

A major milestone was the " Succah Experiment" with 14 participants, on July 20-22,1989. 20 years after the Landing on the Moon. [I'm updating this page on July 9, 2009...] Each one built and lived in a simple succah for 24 hours. During the sharing in the closing circle I suddenly knew, that I was almost ready and that on Jewish New Year (on Sept.26) I would start. There is deep significance for me in this triangle dance on the edge of the Ramon-Crater, of the mathematician and inventive educator Moshe Klein (right), Itamar Kashteil (lives partly in Mitzpe-Ramon and partly in Paris) and Muhammed, a Bedouin, who later changed his name to "Ha-adam Ha-universali" - "The Universal Man".

Moshe had a car, and some weeks later we made a two-day water-tour to the Negev.
I was very naive then about water, despite the information I was given in 1984, when - while preparing for my mobile life - I asked a man from the "Israel Water Authority" about the possibility of digging wells far out in nature:

"In Israel all water to the depth of 180m is contaminated."

Moshe and I stayed over night at Mimi Ron's place at Merkaz Sapir in the Aravah, hoping that she, a botanist and desert expert, would show us some water-places.

Mimi was Wardit's friend, and she visited me during my first desert experience. It was in Novembert 1987, when I wanted to challenge myself and find out, if I could bear to be alone and not talk to anybody for days. The desert, which did not mean anything to me then, seemed to be the right place for this experiment.

The only desert person I knew about, was Ariel, whose camel business at Mamshit near Dimona was still in its infancy. I stayed at his site for 3 days, still not alone, but together with two German pupils/friends of mine, Utz and Margret, who wanted to experience the desert. When there was too much noise from the phosphat-loaded freight-trains passing by not far away, Ariel suggested that I move to a place above the Oasis of Zin, below the "Scorpion-Ladder". A short-cut through Oron proved to be too hazardous for my mobile home, but the attempt gave us a chance to stand in awe in front of desert-marvels like the water-holes of Yorqe'am and the Great Canyon, where we stayed overnight.

After the frightening drive-down to the Aravah we found another excentric desert-place; Moshe Perlman and the almost forsaken site of his kibbutz, a site which he had chosen opposite "Edom" (Jordan) because of a prophecy in the Bible, that from there the Messiah would come ~~~

The next day my supporters helped me to find the place, indicated by Ariel, at a distance of 23 km from the next settlement (Hatzeva), and - as we had agreed before - left me alone ~~~

It was then, that my eyes and ears and heart started to open to the nakedness, the vastness, the silence, the purity of the desert.

Diary 12/11/92

The experience , that for days on end there was nobody to talk to or to listen to, turned out to be almost intoxicating! I started to understand why the experience of silence in the desert was so different from the one I had once made in town, when I was a student: then - after less than 24 hours - I had to run down to the street and just talk to any passer-by. But here - the air, the earth, the atmosphere, everything was so full of life - yes, this is what I felt; being filled, fulfilled~~~

I had only one problem, except for having to be extremely prudent with my provisions: I wanted to do so many things in this "Time without Pressure", that I always had to choose between 3 or 5 things ~~~
One of them was an amusing game:

When I had moved only the most necessary "possessions" to my tiny bus, I had given 500 books to the Tel-Hashomer "Hospice" for people dying from cancer, in which I had worked as a volunteer for some time. Now again too many books had accumulated, and I decided to get rid of some 27 by burying them in caves, imagining how after 200 years somebody would excavate them~~~

Each day I took one book on my walk, each day into a different direction - thus discovering one of the most exciting qualities of the desert: that nothing limits your sight, nothing stops your foot, you can always walk in 360 directions! The aim of finding a cave or at least a niche for my book focused my seeing! My game had no such intentions - but I found myself more and more able to distinguish between different forms and colors of rocks, stones, sands - I became sensitive to the ever changing kaleidoskop of mountains, wadis and the sky, in short I became familiar with the desert, I grew into it, I felt - at home~~~

When I had found a cave or a niche, I sat in front of it, took the book, quite often connected with a person or a situation that had helped shaping my life and my understanding of life, and opened it one last time, letting my regard fall on a sentence "by chance" and then writing this sentence as a "prophecy" on the first page of the book. Past and future merged in one, when I added the date of the day and buried the book. A photograph and one last glance to absorb the near and far environment, and I parted.

[2002_07_24: The album I compiled of these photos and quotations was burnt in the 1998 fire in the Succayah]

Was this a kind of "conquering territory?"

The N.R.A. ranger, who came to drive me away, did not know about this "crime". I stayed on - Mimi, who had visited me for the first time - talked to him. But then more busses with noisy tourists drove to the edge of the cliff above the oasis, and I yearned to enter deeper into the desert. I made my way back to the main Arava road, and drove some 30 km further South.

Mimi helped me to find a vast site in Wadi Karkeshet - very different from the one I had left - only 2 km away from Merkaz Sapir, but except for a Bedouin on a camel and another one on a motorbike I saw nobody during the rest of my 40 desert days.

There I finally experienced the difficult situations everybody expects to find in the desert: getting lost in the middle of nowhere - climbing a slope, a rock and not knowing how ever to get down again without falling into the abyss, feeling forlorn and suddenly unable to cope with past and future of one's life. Maya, my dog, was comforting me, and when it became too hard, I walked to see Mimi and her children.

Still, the sound of the silence, the violence of the wind,
the surprises of the ever new shapes and colors
of the desert earth and the desert clouds,
the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars,
and now the beauty of a flower,
a blooming bush in the midst of a crust of sand or rock
- all this would act as a sting,
until one day I would make the desert,
not a certain site in the desert,
but the desert everywhere
~~~~ my home~~~~


Click and listen to my song of 1993

Desert earth, ---- devoted or rebellious Desert wind, ---- relaxed or tempestuous, Desert moon, ---- radiating or veiled; Naked and pure is the desert earth She conceives, she gives birth to love and grace, compassion of Wo/Man, towards him/herself.

I left my bus at Mimi's and went straight to one of the noisiest town of this planet, to Berlin - to help Channah, a woman-friend, whom I thought would share my life and enhance my creations, to make her move to Israel. Two months later - coming from the ship in her minibus I brought her straight to Wadi Carqeshet.

Six additonal weeks in the desert, this time in the spring - with exciting floods and waterfalls - just imagine, you sit in your home, and you watch, how in the dry little wadi next to you a sudden stream of water comes towards you and fills the wadi to the brim. [All photos burnt] Then more flowers sprang up everywhere - "never did I see, that in one winter there was a second blooming", said Mimi. Channah, unlike me a natural "desert-child", though born and raised in the city by some mistake, enjoyed it too. But the relationship should have been ended then ~~~

 

Through all these pages the DESERT will be the one pole and human dramas will be the other. "Life without children is like masturbating", Idith said yesterday, being exhausted by the joys and sorrows of growing with her first child. The same must be true for living in the DESERT alone for more than 40 days. It is in relationships where we become real.

click to move to Succah Diary Fragment 3