[img]96|left|||no_popup[/img] Dateline Jerusalem — My oldest friend visited me in Israel this week. She is not really old, as we are not old enough to get a senior citizen's discount at tourist attractions or on the bus or train in Israel. But she has remained my friend longer than anyone else, since second grade for me, third grade for her. We always were late to school, and we met running to class. Fifty-three years later, from elementary school to UCLA and beyond, we are still friends although living 7,000 miles from each other.

I wanted to show my friend and her son some of the interesting sites in Rehovot. The Ayalon Institute was a top secret, clandestine bullet factory built underground, beneath a limestone hill where there was a kibbutz laundering British Mandate officers' uniforms. The kibbutz was chosen because of the strategic importance of its location, atop a hill, and because the British never would have guessed that a munitions plant would be operating beneath their noses. Just prior to the War of Independence, the Jews of Palestine (as it was called by the British) realized that once the British Mandate ended, they probably would have to fight the Arabs who were adamant about not having a Jewish state. But during the British Mandate it was illegal to own a weapon or have ammunition. Being caught meant prison or death. The Jews had been smuggling in weapons and also manufactured them secretly but did not have enough ammunition. They had to produce bullets themselves. While other kibbutz members worked the fields of the kibbutz, 45 “scouts” climbed down ladders and a narrow circular stairwell beneath a noisy laundry that hid the sounds of the machinery used to produce the bullets and a bakery's brick oven of bread and other good smelling products that camouflaged the smell of gunpowder. Because these young people were not suntanned like the other kibbutz workers who labored in the hot Israeli sun, they would sit under sunlamps before leaving the underground factory so that their friends and family members would not question their pale skin.

Who Could Have Guessed

This was so top secret that parents, spouses and friends were not told of what was going on beneath their noses. Over two million 9 mm sten sub-machine gun bullets were produced and hidden in the bottoms of milk cans and transported to Jewish fighters via gasoline trucks. Because copper was needed to produce the casings of the bullets, the kibbutz applied for a permit from the British to manufacture kosher lipstick and lipstick cases. Again, the British never considered that these tubes for lipstick had a military purpose. The lipstick often was given to British officers for their wives and girlfriends, sometimes as a bribe.

The next tour we took was of the T’nuva Dairy in Rehovot. Much to our surprise and disappointment, there were no cows and the only products manufactured there were milk, chocolate milk, puddings and yogurt. Cheese products are produced elsewhere. For over 80 years,T’nuva has been the largest dairy- producing company in Israel with more than 70 percent of the Israeli market. One of its most popular products (Shock, or Shoko in Hebrew) is a chocolate milk drink packaged in a plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and drink. It also comes in milk bottles. The tour showed us how the milk products are poured into milk cartons on state of the art machinery. The plant works 24 hours a day, only stopping for Shabbat and religious holidays. Part of the tour consisted of a Disneyland-like “spaceship adventure ride” where we sat in seats that moved and shook while a large, padded metal bar held us in as we viewed a movie about T’nuva products being stolen, and some pre-teens came to the rescue and saved the world from this tragedy. I still am having trouble figuring out the significance of the ride and the shaking of our seats to the production of milk products. Maybe I am getting too old to enjoy gimmicks like this. At the end of the tour we were treated to Shoko and a choice of chocolate or vanilla pudding or Yoplait yogurt.

The rest of the day was spent window shopping and our way through town. But the best part of all was having a good friend visit me here in Israel.

L'hitraot. Shachar.