Israel

South of Nazareth and north of the West Bank, with the Mediterranean and Jordan no more than 30 minutes to the west and east, lies a peaceful kibbutz that has made the most of the fertile valley it calls home. Everything seems to grow here, including rugby.

Milton Kaplan is tending to his cows, there’s 400 of them in total, all dairy. It’s what he does every day, and has done ever since he first came to Kibbutz Yizre’el some 40 or so years ago.  Arriving in the early 70s from South Africa, he was following a path that had been trodden by many Jews from across the diaspora for decades previous. 

The first kibbutzim had emerged in the early 1900s. They were created by people wanting to make Israel their home and finding that, by joining together, they could make lighter work of land that could be tough to farm. From the first one in 1909, around 270 emerged across Israel, with Kibbutz Yizre’el joining that number in the 1940s. In the 1960s, numbers were swollen significantly. “The history goes back to 1967 and the six-day war [fought between Israel and Jordan, Syria and Egypt],” explains Milton, taking a break from feeding his bovine stock. “Volunteers came from all over the world to help on the kibbutzim because the men had been called up to serve, so people were needed to work the farms. They came from England, America, South Africa and New Zealand, everywhere. There were a lot of students, and I would have come then, but I had to have an operation, so couldn’t, but a lot of my mates did.

“Anyway,” he continues, “during that time, a girl volunteer came from Australia and her brother [Rupert Rosenblum] had played for the Wallabies and he was one of the only Jewish guys to play for them [his father Myer was another – they were also only the second father and son to represent Australia].

“So, she was going out with a rugger bugger here and said, ‘listen my brother is coming over with a mate of his and I’m sure he’d like a game of rugby’ and a game of rugby was organised in his honour. There was some field we had just cut for grazing, the guys took some irrigation pipes and put them up to make an H shape, they marked out the field and then, in 1967, a game of rugby took place in Israel. I think it was South African volunteers against the rest, and he played for the rest. 

“That was kind of the first game here and then after that guys played all the time – there was a patch of grass and after work everyone would always play rugby. Rugby too, not touch, so you took your life into your own hands. Some people didn’t know the rules so you got tackled all over the place.”

Milton made Aliyah [moved to Israel] in 1973. “I was 25 at the time,” he says. “The idea of going to Israel was always very much part of the Jewish narrative.

“I lived in the Free State and I went to university at Pretoria, which, together with Stellenbosch, probably produced more Springboks than anywhere – I never played for them though.

“Anyway,” he says using his favourite word for restarting a story, “I arrived here in May and I remember distinctly walking up that path over there and, I’d not even met anyone, and this guy came up and said to me, ‘so you’re a rugby player, are you? There’s rugby practice this afternoon, see you there’. And that was it.”

Only months after he arrived, war broke out, on Yom Kippur. “During the war it was terrible, everyone got called up,” explains Milton. “It was our holiest day, Yom Kippur, and I remember sitting in synagogue and all these guys kept getting up and going, and I couldn’t work out what was happening and where they were all going. 

“Being the holiest day, the country comes to an absolute standstill, there’s no television, no radio, no paper, nothing, absolute black out – it’s amazing actually. You come here on that day and it’s a deathly silence across the whole country. 

“But we had one radio station working. He reported from the Middle East and he had a ship out off the coast of Tel Aviv so he obviously wasn’t bound by any of laws of the country, because he was off shore. 

“And he announced the war to us, he said ‘they’ve attacked Sinai, the Egyptians are coming’. And that’s when we realised war had broken out. I had not been called up because I’d only got there in May.”

When the war started, like many kibbutzim across the country, they lost friends and family.

“We had one very, very good rugby player called Dudi Silbowitz – he’d played in a team that had been put together to play against a British military team from Cyprus in what was the first sort of Test – and he was a superstar, he would’ve gone far, he was a great cricketer too. But he tragically got killed, he was in the first tanks that moved on Egypt across the Suez Canal. They ran into a trap and got killed. 

“He was one of two mates in the same tank and they both died. That war was a mess – as they arrived they just chucked them in tanks together, mates were together, brothers were together. They wouldn’t do that now, they wouldn’t let them in the same tank or whatever because of the loss to families and communities.”

The war lasted for 21 days, ending on 26 October 1973.  “We started playing rugby again in the 74/75 season and it never ended, it never abated,” adds Milton.

It wasn’t just at Kibbutz Yizre’el that rugby was taking place. “It just became bigger and bigger,” says Milton, still talking to us from his cowshed. “Volunteers were arriving from all over the kibbutzim and teams were continually forming as word spread.”

As Milton tells his story, another resident wanders over to join our chat. “This is Ken Phillips, a New Zealander,” says Milton in his South African accent that’s still surely as thick as the day he arrived. “He was one of the originals in the rugby too.”

“We used to go around looking for teams to play,” chips in Ken, with his own native accent also showing no sign of weakening. 

“There was an English newspaper guy who wrote for the Jerusalem Post who always gave us a lot of publicity and teams popped up everywhere,” continues Milton. “We had Israeli teams too, in Tel Aviv, Ra’anana, Haifa, it was quite a big league. There could have easily been twelve, maybe fourteen teams – double the size of what it is today.

“We’d play North v South [Israel], combined university sides, combined kibbutzim sides, we’d play everything. We had a lot of sides come to play us here, a lot of big South African sides like Northern Transvaal.”

How did you get on? “Socially great,” says Milton, “but they murdered us on the field. We also played as North v South [Israel], we played as combined kibbutzim for a few games too. “Did you play for combined kibbutzim against Cape Town?” he asks Ken.

“Yep,” confirms Ken.

“We also played against the military sides,” continues Milton, “you had British destroyers docking in the harbour, big American aircraft carriers too and they’d ask if any rugby was played here and would find their way to us.”

As the rugby grew, so did the new structure. A youth programme was set up to train the children on the kibbutz and they’d also be proactive on the recruitment front. “A mate of mine started writing letters to all the universities, informing them that rugby was here, so the students would come here, live on kibbutz, work part-time, play part-time, and we got some really good players that came from South Africa. Some of them had been knocking on the provincial rugby door and they brought us up to a different level.”

We leave the cowshed and Ken to tour the kibbutz, as we walk Milton talks us through life on the kibbutz. “The kibbutzim was a socialist entity, we all worked, all contributed, all shared,” he explains. “After everything was paid for – food, laundry, education – whatever was left is shared out among everyone as pocket money.”

Unlike many kibbutzim today where individuals keep what they earn but just live in the same community, all 600 or so Kibbutz Yizre’el residents still put all the earnings into the same pot, as was once the norm. “We are still collective orientated, whereas a lot have gone into privatisation, living together but working for themselves,” he says. “All our money comes into a general account from which food [they eat all their meals together] education, culture, tours, outings, medical is all taken out, leaving you enough for beer or to save for holidays. 

“When I arrived here it didn’t matter what you were qualified to do, you just did the job that was needed. But now you do what you’re trained to do, if you’re a teacher you’re not going to milk cows. That way, you can maximise your potential.”

The 1,800-acre kibbutz was once purely a farm, but now it’s home to industry too, including a factory making robot pool cleaners which, we’re told, is worth around £300m.

Such has been the change in the way kibbutzim work, that even back in 2010, they contributed 40 per cent of Israel’s agricultural output (US$1.7 billion) and nine per cent of its industrial output, which was worth an astounding US$8 billion. 

Milton takes us into a fish hatchery, home to giant tanks of assorted specimens in their hundreds of thousands. “This is Ofir, he was our fly-half, he played for Israel,” says Milton, introducing us to the man scooping fish. “I have great memories of playing rugby,” responds Ofir, who earned the moniker Golden Boot, “but we were always coming up short in terms of physicality.”

Do you have a best moment? “I’ll tell you his best moment,” suggests Milton, as Ofir struggles to think of one. “It was against the Fiji Barbarians. They were a battalion based on the Lebanese border and these guys are rugby crazy so came to play us. We were losing by two points in the final minutes and he got the ball and went for a drop goal. Their fullback jumped up to stop it, but it hit him and projected the ball higher up and sent it over. We were the only club team to beat Fiji in those days.”

The growing strength of the kibbutz teams across Israel led to the first-ever international game in 1981, with an Israel national side embarking on a tour against clubs in France and then, finally, to Geneva to face Switzerland. “This French guy called Gerard Levy knew about us, was determined to bring an Israeli side over to France. He was kind of biggish in French rugby and collected money and sponsors to help get us out there. We played in Paris, Lyon and Toulouse and then got us a game against Switzerland in Geneva, it was 9-9, in the rain – amazing. I captained that side and we held out.”

A short drive to the far side of the kibbutz takes us to the rugby club. Like any you’ve ever been to its walls are a mish-mash of photographs, ties, cups, shirts, scarves, trinkets and miscellany. Decorating a rugby clubhouse like this is a never-ending job, with each touring side doing their bit to furnish the place. Milton grabs beers from behind the bar and plonks himself down on the well-worn chair that sits in front of the TV screen. “This is a little gem,” he says of his clubhouse. “That chair is mine, I brought it from home. The only way we used to watch rugby was if we managed to get somebody to record the Five Nations and then send us the video tape so we could all watch it here together.”

Unlike their fellow kibbutzim, rugby has stayed at the heart of Kibbutz Yizre’el. When the generation of ex-pat players that had led to a national league in the early 1970s got too old to play, sides faded away, but Kibbutz Yizre’el continued to grow. 

Coaching kids in the kibbutz ensured there were more generations to come – including the next one, involving both of Milton’s sons, Yonatan and Nimrod who would follow in their father’s footsteps by captaining Israel. 

As Milton picks his highlights from the rugby bric-a-brac on every wall – including a team photo featuring no less than seventeen kids who were born on the kibbutz – we’re joined by Amir Beutler who, together with Yonatan (the eldest of the Kaplan brothers), runs the club. “We have about 100 kids across twelve age grades,” he says, “we train twice a week, and then get together for games against other sides at weekends.”

The changing face of the modern kibbutz has meant that while children go to nursery on-site, they go to school elsewhere, which does at least give them a chance to spread the rugby word, encouraging everyone to join their club. To help things along, coaches from the club regularly take sessions at schools in the area.

And there’s always the chance for new recruits to come from within, with the kibbutz accepting around two to three families each year. “There’s a process where people come and live here for two years and then after that there’s a vote to see if they stay, you need to get 60 per cent and everyone votes,” explains Amir. “You need to have an occupation and a good salary, because they don’t take anyone. If you’re married and have kids you get more points too.

“It’s a good life,” he continues. “I wouldn’t say easy, but it’s an easier life if you’re willing to do the kibbutz way of life. The phrase is, ‘you do what you can, and you get what you need’. Whether you clean the floor or manage the factory you get the same.”

An hour’s drive from the kibbutz you’ll find the city of Netanya, a seaside resort known for its beaches and, on the day we arrive at least, very popular with surfers, despite the rain lashing down. 

Israel’s coastline marks the end of the Mediterranean and today it feels like the waves have whipped themselves into a frenzy, smashing against the sands of Netanya.

Nonetheless, it’s not our problem, we’re not here to surf, as it’s a rugby day, and at Netanya’s Wingate Institute, Israel’s home of elite sport, there’s an international taking place. 

Israel are facing Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Rugby Europe Conference 1 South, the fourth tier of European rugby. The visitors have failed to record a single victory in this campaign, and, while Israel have ran group leaders Malta and Croatia close, they’ve only a solitary notch in the win column themselves. Win this though, and a mid-table spot with two wins, two defeats, all the while being competitive, represents a decent campaign – certainly building blocks for a tilt at the title next season.

Milton has travelled down for the game, as has Yonatan, who no longer lives on the kibbutz, but lives an hour south of Netanya. The third of the rugby Kaplans, Nimrod, is here as well, albeit in a working capacity, as he now helps coach the side. He joined his brother in retirement five years ago, the pair of them bowing out in the same Test against Croatia. 

As the teams kick-off, Yonatan, a former lock like his father, tells us how the game has developed. “When I was playing, English was the spoken language, but when it got to the late-90s that’s when we started getting Israelis in,” says Yonatan. “There was also immigration from the Russian Jews in the 1990s who while they hadn’t played rugby before, they were sportsmen, and so the game’s language changed from English to Hebrew. I’d say almost 99 per cent of the players now are Israeli, people that grew up with the game.”

Right now those Israelis are riding roughshod over their opponents. From the first whistle, they dominate the set-piece, making space and smashing holes wherever they go. Meanwhile, Bosnia-Herzegovina are demonstrating every aspect of their game which has left them rooted to the bottom of the table. Predictably, Israel, laden with nine Kibbutz Yizre’el players, score.

Another spectator is the union’s technical director, Raanan Penn. Before he took on his current role, he was the man responsible for the fifteens side, taking them on when they were at their lowest ebb. “I joined in the middle of a campaign when we’d just lost to Finland,” he tells us. “We were 95 in the rankings and they were the only side beneath us – we were down twenty points at half-time. The coach left after that.”

Raanan took over for a crunch game that would have a big impact on the country’s rugby-playing future. “I came in for a play-off game against relegation,” says Raanan. “If we lost we’d go to the lowest division in Rugby Europe. It was against Cyprus in the years when they were winning all their games so everyone was assuming we’d lose, but we won, 23-14. “That kicked everything on, we went on to win twelve or thirteen games in a row and we climbed in six years, from 95 to 46 in the world rankings, that was the biggest, quickest climb in IRB history. 

“Then we reached our level, with Croatia, Czech Republic, Malta, these teams, and we dropped in world rankings because we stopped winning every game,” he says. “To climb higher we need a better generation I think.”

With a few front row exceptions, the generation that took them to their current level of European rugby are now on the sidelines, some with beer in hand, but Raanan has cause for optimism due to his current role heading up the sevens programme.

“About seven years ago we got the backing of the Israeli Olympic Committee to run a sevens project,” explains Raanan. “It’s really big for us, we train as a national team two or three times every week, the players also train at their club and they are all on gym programmes, nutrition programmes. 

“We also fly them four or five times a year to preparation tournaments and we host a couple of tournaments here too, so I’d say they’re semi-professional. They get a little bit of money, it’s not a salary but it’s more than petrol.”

With twenty in his sevens development squad, a third are also soldiers who are released for rugby. Ten of them, the under-18s, live at the Wingate Institute, so are able to live almost a professional rugby life worked around their schooling. “We had a special generation of tight five forwards,” continues Raanan, “but they got old and we didn’t really find good enough replacements. But now, because of the sevens project, our backline players and backrow have become better so the way we play the game is changing too.”

Supporting Raanan’s statement, Israel have now added try number two and three, with little in the way of response from the visitors. There’ll be two more too, as Israel wrap up a straight-forward 40-0 win, securing mid-table.

It’s not quite world cup rugby yet, but there’s plenty for Israel’s current senior coach Kevin Musikanth to work with. The South African took over in 2018 after the Israeli union had noted his work at the Maccabiah Games (effectively the Jewish Olympics with 10,000 athletes competing). He’d taken an unfancied South Africa side to gold in the sevens and silver in the fifteens and, coupled with his much noted achievement of taking the University of Cape Town (who had been tipped for relegation) to South Africa’s Varsity Cup title, his stock was high. 

Given South Africa’s often repeated routine of promoting university coaches to Super Rugby, Kevin had hopes of one day coaching the Stormers, but when Eddie Jones was appointed, he started to look elsewhere for opportunities. “You can’t just dream of being a Springbok coach,” explains Kevin, “you have to do something about it, and this was a different route. I’m Jewish and this is my country too, so I was very honoured to be offered it.”

Splitting his time between Israel and South Africa (where he still heads up rugby at a school in Johannesburg), Kevin has big hopes for Israel. “The Rugby World Cup repechage was littered with South Africans,” he says. “Germany and Hong Kong had players who I knew from the Varsity Cup or club rugby, so I know that’s the level we have to aim at.

“I know with more professionalism we can get these guys up to that standard and then, when we get there, we’re knocking on the door [of the Rugby World Cup]. I know it’s do-able.” 

Today’s match is only his seventh in charge, but he’s surrounded by experience. Not least team manager, Julian Shapiro, who’s now on his 100th game in the role. 

In that time, stretching back to 2003, he’s seen the best and worst of what goes with being involved in Israeli rugby. “There’s been plenty of special games,” he says. “It’s very important when you’re standing with the Israeli national team, singing the national anthem in eastern Europe, that you go back to our history. 

“In those games, you can look at all 23 rugby players and every one the staff, and nobody has dry eyes. Given all the history of the 1930s and 1940s and the holocaust, it means so much to them, to be playing in eastern Europe for Israel.”

Is anti-semitism ever a problem? “We arrived in Austria a couple of years ago for a match and, as we walked into the stadium, there was huge writing all over this one wall, it wasn’t for our game, it had been there for years, but it said, ‘Hitler, why didn’t you finish the job properly?’. I made the guys all stand around it, and I reminded them of what we saw in the changing room, and it was one of our best games.

“I’ve managed 100 games and I’ve only come across one incident on the pitch, a game against Denmark, and one of their players said to our prop, ‘pity Hitler didn’t finish the job’, it was the same as the writing on the wall. We didn’t do anything about it, but the Danish punished him, which was good enough for me. 

“We’ve also had the odd thing, with a few people in crowds shouting ‘Palestine, Palestine’ and Palestine flags, but on the rugby pitch we’ve always been hosted fantastically. 

“I try to explain to friends of mine who are involved in football and they can’t understand it, because they go over to these countries and the night before the whole game has to move to another city because of threats. 

“We feel rugby is one family, it’s not a cliché, it’s how we feel.”

Like almost everyone we speak to during our stay in Israel, they all feel rugby is the perfect fit for the Israeli psyche. “The Israeli personality has got rugby written all over it,” continues Julian. “We call a person born in Israel a sabra, it’s a fruit, a prickly pear, prickly on the outside soft in the middle, and that’s Israelis. 

“They’re the best people in the world, they have the most good in them, but outside they’re rough, they’re not the kind of people you want to see in a dark alley.

“These guys are tough, you’ll have seen it today with some of these kids, they’re small but they can really hit hard. We just need to get more people seeing rugby, and understanding what it is, junior rugby is growing bigger, no question. 

“In Israel our soccer isn’t great, the basketball isn’t bad, but I just think rugby is written on the country’s forehead and they should be playing it, it’s completely made for them.”

The breakthroughs have started to come to make it happen for Israel. Aside from the sevens programme at the top end, at base level, tag rugby has been added to the national curriculum, helping to ensure they at least know what shape a rugby ball is. Our final audience in Israel is with the union’s president, Menachem Ben Menachem who knows exactly what the biggest challenge facing the sport is. “We’re not very good at getting it out there, maybe there’ll be a reality show that will help us,” he laughs. 

“When I started, the first thing I did was try to think of a campaign logo for Israel rugby, and because people don’t even know there is rugby in Israel, we decided to go with, ‘There is rugby in Israel’. 

“We did a lot of work on that and now at the very least the main stakeholders in Israel sport (the authorities) know there’s rugby – when I first came even they didn’t know. The broadcasters know too, but, as for the wider public, we are far away from that.” 

Of course, one place there definitely is rugby is Kibbutz Yizre’el, which is very much setting the standard that Menachem hopes others will follow. “Kibbutz Yizre’el is the closest thing we have to a proper rugby club,” he says. “They have a proper youth from the age of ten to eighteen, and they have the tradition of a club, a pitch, a clubhouse. If we can have between six to ten clubs like this in Israel then rugby will be truly rooted.”

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Christopher Kennedy