The Gorilla on Kibbutz Shefayim
When I visited Kibbutz Shefayim and saw a statue of a gorilla near the playground, I wondered what it’s story was. A gorilla on a kibbutz must have a story. But, turns out there is no story. They received it as a gift from the company that built the playground.
A gorilla on a kibbutz without a story is a bit of a shame. So I took it upon myself to find a story. Truth be told, at first glance I thought it was the famous Max from the Johannesburg Zoo in South Africa. I vividly remember the statue of Max when visiting JoBurg. But Max has a story.
One evening in March 1997, a rather dubious guy named Isaac set out to rob a store in Johannesburg. The local police got on him and a chase began. Isaac fled to the zoo and jumped straight into the gorilla enclosure. Just at that moment, the gorilla Max and his partner Lisa shared an intimate moment. Max, fearing for his beloved’s fate, stormed Isaac who fired three bullets at him. Then the policemen arrived, also jumped into the compound and a great commotion began. Finally, Isaac was caught and was ultimately sentenced to 40 years behind bars, and Max, who survived the injury and returned to the arms of his beloved Lisa, became a local hero with a statue in his image.
And how does all this relate to the gorilla on Kibbutz Shefayim? The wonderful Israeli poet, Rachel Shapira, a member of Kibbutz Shefayim, wrote in her “A Song for Africa”:
What do the lion cubs
Dream about in the dark?
Who snatched the gorillas
And sold them to the wildlife park (zoo).
The original version sounds better for those of you who can read Hebrew:
מַה חוֹלְמִים בַּחֹשֶךְ
גּוּרֵי הָאֲרָיוֹת –
מִי חָטַף אֶת הַגּוֹרִילוֹת
וּמָכַר לְגַן חַיּוֹת.
And so, I would suggest, perhaps, that Kibbutz Shefayim’s gorilla, like Rachel Shapira’s gorilla, remind us all that the place for animals is not behind bars. As for criminals and thieves… that’s another story.
