{"id":28397,"date":"2016-02-05T17:12:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T23:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=28397"},"modified":"2016-02-05T17:12:40","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T23:12:40","slug":"mystery-solved-sanders-volunteered-at-kibbutz-shaar-haemekim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/mystery-solved-sanders-volunteered-at-kibbutz-shaar-haemekim\/","title":{"rendered":"Mystery solved: Sanders volunteered at Kibbutz Shaar HaEmekim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (JTA) \u2014 The kibbutz where Bernie Sanders spent several months in the early 1960s has been identified, thanks to a rediscovered news story from 1990.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_28398\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-28398\" class=\"wp-image-28398 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"&lt;&gt; on January 5, 2016 in New York City.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/200;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-28398\" class=\"wp-image-28398 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"&lt;&gt; on January 5, 2016 in New York City.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/bernie-sanders-ny-1024x683.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-28398\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders delivering a speech on financial reform in New York, Jan. 5, 2016. (Andrew Burton\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sanders, an Independent Jewish senator from Vermont now running for the Democratic presidential nod, spoke to Haaretz in 1990, on the eve of his election to the U.S. House of Representatives as a socialist. He named the kibbutz where he volunteered in 1963 as Shaar HaEmekim.<\/p>\n<p>As Sanders\u2019 campaign gained traction this year, Haaretz, like others in Israeli and Jewish media, had tried to identify\u00a0the kibbutz, but until the author of the article, veteran journalist Yossi Melman, said Thursday on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/yossi_melman\/status\/695358087071272961\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a> that Sanders had named the kibbutz in 1990, no one had tracked this particular article in the Haaretz archive.<\/p>\n<p>In the Hebrew-language article, a pdf of which appeared\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/israel-news\/.premium-1.701513\" target=\"_blank\">Thursday<\/a> on Haaretz\u2019s website, Sanders tells Melman that he visited Israel in 1963 as a guest of the leftist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair movement and stayed at its affiliated kibbutz.<\/p>\n<p>Located northeast of Haifa, Shaar HaEmekim (Gateway to the Valleys) was founded in 1935 by immigrants from Romania and Yugoslavia who had been trained in farming techniques. The kibbutz still includes farmland and has a flour mill and a dairy, but its primary income is now\u00a0from the manufacture of solar panels, according to its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.s-h.org.il\/mainsite.asp?sitename=shahar\" target=\"_blank\">website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What drew Sanders to Israel at the time is not known, but his older brother, Larry Sanders, was spending time in the country. Bernie Sanders had earned some renown as a civil rights activist at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders has been reluctant\u00a0during this campaign to discuss his Jewish upbringing and his time in Israel, where he traveled with his first wife, Deborah Shiling, who also was Jewish. His campaign has turned away queries about his Israel stay.<\/p>\n<p>The exact dates Sanders was in Israel are unclear. Although he tells Haaretz he was there in 1963, he did not graduate from university until 1964. He also had not married Shiling by June 1964, when she was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1964\/06\/08\/schragshiling.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">listed<\/a> as a maid of honor at her sister\u2019s Baltimore wedding in a New York Times notice.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders, born in Brooklyn to a Polish immigrant whose family perished in the Holocaust, had divorced Shiling and was living in Vermont by the late 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of the interview with Melman, Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, the state\u2019s largest city and was a sharp critic of the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, particularly in Central America.<\/p>\n<p>He tells Melman that \u201cas a Jew, I\u2019m embarrassed by Israel\u2019s involvement\u201d in Central America, accusing the country of\u00a0acting as a front for the American government and delivering arms to repressive regimes. He also says he would like to see greater pressure on Israel to compromise on the Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Mystery%20solved%3A%20Sanders%20volunteered%20at%20Kibbutz%20Shaar%20HaEmekim\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28398,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4841,8790,8795,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28399,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28397\/revisions\/28399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}