In the army Sarah Simcha served in a technical capacity in the navy, then traveled and did a two-year stint as a motorcycle mechanic in South Africa. Not your typical female post-army pursuit.
But there is nothing typical about this woman. For the past 20 years she’s been a practicing holistic healer and for the last six, she’s gone back to tend the cows at Kibbutz Givat HaShelosh near Petach Tikvah where she lives.
Divorced, with a son and two daughters, she and her younger daughter became ba’alot 
Teshuvah four years ago. Tu B’Shevat marks the approximate anniversary – appropriately enough, since man (and woman) is likened to a tree of the field, and Torah is likened to water.
Although she never lived on Kibbutz Ayelet HaShachar in the North, Sarah Simcha has joined up with the 10-year-old kiruv organization bearing the same name. The connection is understandable. The name is found in Tehillim 22 which interestingly enough also contains the phrase “Many bulls (male cows) surround me” but I’m putting the cart before the cow, er, horse.
Like many new ba’alei teshuvah, Sarah Simcha, having discovered the joys of authentic Judaism wanted to impart her newfound erudition to amend the inveterate nescience of Judaism in kibbutzim. In other words, she started her own personal kibbutz kiruv movement.
A few months after becoming a ba’alat teshuvah, she decided that there would be a Yom Kippur prayer service in the spiritual desert of the kibbutz at which she was working. There had been no religious activity there for 50 years. She presented this reality to them as a fait accompli and it was a big success.
There were more than 100 people present. Sarah Simcha ensured that they would have everything they needed including a Torah Scroll. The next year, again at her own initiative, and with her own financing, she influenced other kibbutzim to commemorate the holiest day of the year.
A year ago she hooked up with Ayelet HaShachar. Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch comments on the verse in Tehillim, that ayelet ha’shachar alludes to the dawn of G-d’s salvation, which strengthens Israel, even during its darkest times. Sarah Simcha took it upon herself to represent the kibbutzim and moshavim in the organization. They had had some contact with kibbutzim in the North but not in the center.
“The most amazing thing,” she says, “is that not only am I now in touch with dozens of kibbutzim but I’m currently running three projects.” These projects are establishing synagogues in the kibbutzim; running workshops for bar mitzvah boys with all that entails; and regular Torani activities that include seasonal projects throughout the Jewish year, putting up mezuzahs and organizing Torah study.
“When I started contacting kibbutzim about setting up synagogues and they queried their members, they actually voted ‘Yes’,” she says, “even in a Shomer HaTzair kibbutz, which is the antithesis of religious society”.
“I work in the barn,” says Bar. “A cow is called behemah gassah, but it’s from the cows that we make tefillin, the parchment for Mezuzahs and Torah Scrolls, and the hides of cows are preferable to those of deer or goats.” This attribute of being tough skinned is also common to Sarah Simcha who doesn’t take no for an answer.
She extends the metaphor further. “A cow often gets sick after she gives birth and has to receive medication orally but the cow won’t open her mouth. So they grab her with a nose ring and tie her to a yoke so that they can raise her head to put the medication in.” That is the kind of spiritual first-aid that Sarah Simcha supplies.
And Sarah Simcha’s influence doesn’t end out in the field. “Even my ex-husband has started growing stronger in mitzvah observance.”
Like our Matriarch, Sarah is introducing the populace of the secular kibbutzim to a more authentic, spiritual and Jewish lifestyle. And like the second part of her name implies, she does it with joy and determination. Hopefully she will continue leading her people home.
Sarah Simcha Bar can be contacted at:
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Many leaders of the Jewish people began their careers as shepherds.