ABSTRACT
Between Purim and Passover, which was a quiet time for the agriculturist, we younger people decided that a number of us should visit the other colonies and especially Rishon le Zion. The latter place had a very special attraction for us, namely this : that we were not allowed to go there except on special occasions such as a wedding. Just as Petach Tikvah had a very orthodox reputation, Rishon le Zion had the opposite. It was looked on as a place where young men and girls might easily be led away from Judaism and made into free thinkers who called themselves Jews, but who, in the eyes of our parents, were not. So how was the visit to Rishon le Zion to be managed ? We put our heads together at the well, and wherever else there was an opportunity, and settled that we should express a great wish to visit Katran and Ekron, mentioning that we might have a look in at Rishon on the way back, to 40see how they managed their schools and their chemist, because ours was not well stocked. Also to discuss the question of the colonies having a Jewish guard in common. All this seemed well enough for the young men, but on what pretext were we, the girls, to go ? The end of it was that we womenfolk were left to shift for ourselves and that we managed very well and received our parents’ consent to the expedition. So one happy spring morning a party of fourteen young people set off in wagons with plank seats, and after a merry ride across the sandhills arrived at the small colony of Katran. The inhabitants, on seeing the wagons, rushed out to meet us, mostly imagining that we were new settlers, immigrants from Russia. But some of them knew us, and as no one family could take us all in, it was decided that one should have us to dinner, one to supper, and another arrange where we should sleep. The rest of the colony was to meet us over the teacups, or rather glasses, in the school-house.
