It's a stifling Friday in early August on Moshav Hemed, a religious Zionist village of some 190 families south of Tel Aviv, and the streets are deserted. Hemed was established in 1950 as an agricultural community by Holocaust survivors and soldiers who had fought in Israel's War of Independence. At the end of its first decade, Hemed boasted 31 oxen, 159 cows and calves, 78 goats and 50,000 egg-laying hens.

Now, however, the farming days are long over; Hemed's residents commute to jobs in Tel Aviv and some agricultural land has been transformed into office and warehouse space. But there's a lingering air of the old-fashioned religious and political pragmatism that was once associated with Orthodox Zionist farmers. Many older women don't cover their hair; and despite spoken admiration for the soon-to-be-evacuated settlers of the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank, there's only a moderate display of orange protest ribbons dangling from cars. By Friday afternoon, preparations for Shabbat done, most locals are napping.

Yitzhak Meir, the 80-year-old village historian and archivist, is waiting for me in his simply furnished living room; his wife Berte, who came to Israel on the Exodus, serves homemade apple cake. Five years ago, Meir, an energetic man with a thick German accent, spearheaded opening a museum detailing the moshav's history and contributions to the state, a story that runs parallel to Meir's own life. Born in Berlin to an Orthodox family, he escaped Nazi Germany at age 14 but lost 17 family members in the Holocaust. In 1946, he helped found the religious kibbutz of Ein Hanatziv near the Jordan River; he worked in the chicken coop and eventually became national inspector of poultry farms at the Agriculture Ministry. He moved to Hemed in 1952.

Excerpted from The Jerusalem Report, September 5, 2005 issue

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