Bedouins ‘Adopt’ Israeli Jew : Woman Social Worker Opts for Life in Arab Village

As a 7-year-old Polish Jew orphaned by the Holocaust, Noah Livneh was sheltered for a while by Polish Catholic nuns, who reared her as a Christian.

Two years after the end of World War II, other death camp survivors took her out of the convent in favor of a Jewish orphanage, and not long after that she was sent, at age 14, to a kibbutz in the then-fledgling state of Israel.

But she says it wasn’t until recently, when an ailing Bedouin sheik told her from his hospital bed that she was “like my daughter,” that she first remembers feeling that she truly belonged.

“My heart jumped,” Livneh, now a divorced mother of three adult sons, recalled in an interview at her home here. “Life is strange that a little Polish-Jewish girl would only get this feeling of belonging from a Bedouin.”

Anomaly for Israel

Livneh’s is a life style that may be unique in Israel. There are other Israeli Jewish women who have married into Arab families, and there are towns, such as Nazareth and Haifa, with mixed Arab-Jewish populations.

But Livneh, a social worker, is believed to be the only single Jewish woman in the country who chooses to make her home in an otherwise all-Arab village.

It is a life that has brought her physical hardship and, occasionally, scorn from her fellow Jews. At first, conceded her neighbor and friend, Khalil Okbi, he and the other Bedouins of the village were also dubious.

“At the beginning, everybody said that Noah would not stay more than two months,” he recalled. “A few gave her a year.”

Given the conservatism of Bedouin village life, some women were openly suspicious of this unmarried Jewish stranger who wanted to move in among them.

Valued Member of Community

More than two years later, however, she is not only an accepted but a valued member of this underprivileged community--sought out by Bedouin men and women alike for everything from advice on dealing with the Israeli bureaucracy to veterinary skills.

Livneh characterized herself as “a clear-cut Jew” who has “no identity problems.” But she identifies with her Arab neighbors enough that she occasionally speaks of “we” when discussing the Bedouins and their problems. And regarding what some see as the hazards of her living arrangements, she commented, “If I’m afraid, I’m afraid of Jews.”

She described the major influences on her life style as a combination of Christianity, the principles of social work and a leftist, political Zionism. “I’m not religious in a normal way,” she said. “If I was convinced that God exists, I’d go argue with Him that He doesn’t run the world right.”

An Israeli Jew described Livneh, after meeting her for the first time, as “a little too eccentric to be called normal, but a little too normal to be called eccentric.”

Ran Alcoholism Program

Livneh’s road to this ramshackle village in the gently rolling brown hills at the northern fringe of the Negev desert began four years ago. She had been running an alcoholic rehabilitation program in nearby Beersheba and was looking for a new challenge.

She discovered the Assn. for Support and Defense of Bedouin Rights in Israel, a pressure group formed to battle what it describes as discriminatory government policy against the country’s more than 50,000 Bedouin citizens, particularly a failure to recognize Bedouin land claims.

Descendants of nomadic desert tribes, these Bedouins have long accepted Israeli rule and, unlike the far more numerous Palestinian Arabs, routinely serve in the Israeli army.

As a survivor of the Holocaust, “I feel I have a debt to pay,” Livneh explained of her involvement. “And I think the country is doing an injustice to the Bedouins--the way they’re treated.

“At first, I was very insecure because I was the only Jew and the only woman in the association,” Livneh recalled. “I was sitting like a mouse in a corner.”

Dinner Invitation

With time, however, she became more active, and one day Khalil Okbi, who was also deeply involved in the group, invited her home for dinner with his family.

The Okbis are a large tribe that, before Israeli statehood, held extensive lands farther west of Horah. The head of the family was one of the first of the Negev sheiks to formally recognize Israeli sovereignty after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Nevertheless, the Okbis were among a number of Bedouin tribes moved off their land by the new Israeli government in the early days of the state. They came to Horah in 1951, but have never won official recognition for their settlement.

It means that the village, consisting of about 400 people, gets no state-generated electricity, has no telephones, paved roads or other government services. The residents had to build their own village plumbing system. “Officially we don’t exist,” Livneh commented.

The homes here are mostly wooden shacks with corrugated metal roofs.

‘Wouldn’t Mind’ It

Still, Livneh was struck during that first visit more than two years ago by the primitive beauty of the setting and made an off-hand remark that “I wouldn’t mind living here.” The Okbis, in a similarly casual way, said she should do it. They had a building next door that could be fixed up as a home for her.

The more she thought about it, the more serious Livneh became. “I wanted to show Jews that Jews and Arabs can live together,” she recalled. Also, she said, she thought she could be more help to the Bedouins by living among them. And besides that, the idea appealed to her “personal curiosity and sense of adventure.”

Soon it was settled. “Khalil adopted me,” Livneh said, and it was his father, the sheik, who later told her she was “like my daughter.”

Virtually the entire village pitched in to fix up what had been a small barn as her new home. The result is a small but comfortable three-room house that a recent visitor compared to “a loft in New York--a kind of bohemian life that people pay a lot of money for in the States.”

TV, but No Privacy

Livneh has a refrigerator, but never uses it because the village can only afford to run its two generators for a few hours each evening. She has a television, a stereo and indoor plumbing--but no door on what serves as a bathroom. On her walls is an eclectic collection of Bedouin embroidery, Christian artifacts, Hebrew sayings and Egyptian souvenirs.

She grows her own vegetables and tends a lush flower garden in the front yard. “I read a lot. I do needlework. I watch TV and fall asleep. I don’t have a problem of what to do,” Livneh said. “I’m always pressured for time.”

During a three-hour period the other day, a half-dozen neighbors stopped by for advice or just to say hello. Livneh doesn’t speak Arabic. “I don’t need it,” she said, noting that because they attend Israeli schools, all the Bedouins speak Hebrew “except little children and very old people.”

An intercity bus that passes by the village is the only public transportation, so Livneh occasionally hitchhikes to her office about 10 miles away in Beersheba. “When other Bedouins pick me up who don’t know me, I immediately tell them I’m a member of this (Okbi) tribe, and I feel secure,” she said.

Some Jews Uncomfortable

Some fellow Jews sometimes look down on her for living among Arabs, she conceded. Someone at the alcoholic rehabilitation center slurred her life style during an argument one day, and another time, a man who recognized her spat at Livneh in the outdoor market in Beersheba.

However, she added, her friends understand her choice. “Whoever didn’t understand is not my friend,” she said. Several friends have come to visit her and her Bedouin neighbors.

Most Israelis “don’t understand (the Bedouins) at all,” she contended. “On one hand they see them as romantic--the camels, the tents, the souk (outdoor market). But on the other hand, they look down on them as poor and primitive.”

‘Not Fighters’

Livneh described her neighbors as fatalistic, and said that sometimes works against them. “Israel uses this fact--that they’re so gentle, they’re not fighters--and they take advantage of it,” she charged.

The Bedouins are “a little lost in the Israeli world,” she said, and she sees her job to help them through it. Sometimes that means applying some old-fashioned Jewish chutzpah--audacity--on behalf of people who would never think of using it themselves.

“Let me ask you a question,” Livneh said as her interviewer was about to leave. “Is there a possibility of having people in Los Angeles adopt this community? To send toys or clothes? The Jews think they have a monopoly on asking for help from America. But what is this monopoly? The Bedouins also have a right to ask. It would be very nice if a Jew would help Bedouins.”