At age 14, Oz became a Labor Zionist, left home, and joined Kibbutz Hulda. There he was adopted by the Huldai family and changed his surname to "Oz" (Hebrew: "courage"). Later asked why he did not leave Jerusalem for Tel Aviv, he replied, "Tel Aviv was not radical enough – only the kibbutz was radical enough". By his own account he was "a disaster as a laborer...the joke of the kibbutz". When Oz first began to write, the kibbutz allotted him one day per week for this work. When his novel "My Michael" became a best-seller, Oz quipped, "I became a branch of the farm, yet they still said I could have just three days a week to write. It was only in the eighties when I got four days for my writing, two days for teaching, and Saturday turns as a waiter in the dining hall".