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March 4, 2011
Providing a safe haven
An Israeli couple cares for animals in great need.
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN ISRAEL21C
When a little lamb fell out of a truck bound for the slaughterhouse and broke her legs, her rescuers knew just where to take her. Babi Kabalo had already nursed back to health a slew of ill or injured animals, including a half-blind filly and a donkey whose leg was blown off by a missile.
Kabalo and his wife, Tami, run Bell Ofri Farm in the Golan Heights village of Kidmat Zvi. This unusual couple is known throughout the north for taking in unadoptable animals in addition to the goats, peacocks, pigeons, rabbits, marmots, guinea pigs, tortoises, chickens and ducks that live in a petting enclosure on their property. However, animals were never intended as the main focus of the Kabalos’ eco-farm, which they founded after their grown children moved away from home and they contemplated what to do with an empty nest.
“Ten years ago, our children went to the army and Tel Aviv and stayed there,” Tami said. “It was difficult for us because all you have up here is your family. So before they put us in a mental hospital,” she joked, “we decided to open our doors to tourists. And we built a new conversation with Christians and Jews coming from all over the globe to see us.”
Babi, a farmer, and Tami, a former Jewish philosophy and sociology teacher at ORT Hatzor Haglilit High School, used recycled materials to create a living museum of the Golan Heights lifestyle during the talmudic period some 2,000 years ago. It encompasses a boutique winery, a reconstructed ancient olive press pulled by a mule, an organic vegetable patch, a working well and a restaurant with a clay oven. Guests can pick and stomp on grapes from the Shiraz vineyard, grind wheat kernels into flour and press oil from olives. Tami shows them how to bake olive-studded whole-wheat loaves in the clay oven, sprinkled with herbs picked on the spot. She also demonstrates how to make cheese, a byproduct of the resident goats.
“We got a lot of goats as gifts, and when they started having babies I had to learn what to do with the milk, so I learned to make cheese,” she explained. “Camembert, Roquefort, all kinds.”
Because Tami is still a teacher at heart, she turned her casual conversations with tourists into formal workshops on Jewish philosophical approaches on wide variety of topics. She also offers instruction in sculpting, painting, collage and mosaics, and finds the time to design jewelry that her husband renders in silver.
For the children who visit, however, the biggest attraction is the Barboron Animal Petting Corner. The collection of disabled or injured animals there began with a white horse found hobbling on a broken leg near a Druze village. Later, it was joined by a half-blind filly and an older horse that wouldn’t eat. The couple’s oldest daughter, Rotem, heard on the radio about a donkey whose leg had been blown off by a Katyusha rocket launched from Lebanon during the 2006 war. He was found wandering in the mountains near Safed and was going to be put to sleep. Rotem immediately faxed the authorities and assured them her father would adopt him.
The local children who come every day before and after school to help Babi care for the animals named the donkey Katzefet (Whipped Cream), a conjunction of the words Katyusha and Tzfat (Hebrew for Safed).
Osher (Happiness), the lamb that fell off the truck, is now a healthy sheep and expecting a lamb of her own. And the goat kids from the Kabalos’ flock love to cuddle with Tami at night, she said. “We take care of Osher and she takes care of the kids,” she laughed.
It’s neither simple nor cheap to rehabilitate injured, traumatized animals, but the Kabalos duo is adamant that “we cannot throw away these animal friends.” They rely on income from the workshops and from sales of their wines, cheeses and jewelry, plus occasional contributions and even short-term loans.
The couple met in Beersheva, where Tami was working toward her bachelor’s degree in behavioral science and Babi was serving in the army. They headed north following their 1978 wedding and helped build Kidmat Zvi. When empty-nest syndrome set in, they turned their attention to building Bell Ofri, which is open Saturdays and holidays, plus weekdays by reservation.
“We like having a lot of life around us,” said Tami.
Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
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