Steve Snyder
In the summer of 1973, shortly after graduating from college, I went to Israel as a volunteer worker on Kibbutz Ramat Hashofet in Northern Israel. I was there from June 1973 to May 1974, working mainly on the assembly line of the Kibbutz orange crate factory.
The Yom Kippur war broke out in October 1973. A significant portion of the Kibbutzniks were army reservists, so they were immediately mobilized— leaving the volunteers and remaining Kibbutzniks to work and run the Kibbutz. During that time, all of us who were volunteers formed an emotional bond with the Kibbutz and the people who remained. The two young men pictured here with me are Wafik and Jemail, two Drues Arabs from a nearby village who worked alongside us on the assembly line in the orange crate factory.