A detailed program is now online for the 10th conference of the International Communal Studies Association in Israel this June. It looks like a great line-up, although I noticed that the panel on which I’ll be sitting (and discussing the kibbutz in documentary film and “privatization cinema”) starts at 8:30 in the morning. Ouch.
The roster includes a number of Israeli kibbutz experts I interviewed last year (Shlomo Getz, Michal Palgi, Yuval Achouch, Uri Leviatan, David Amitai, Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Yakov Oved, Menachem Topel, Eli Tzur) as well as other scholars that I am keen to meet on this trip, including Jan Bang (eco-village expert), Henry Near (author of the definitive history of the kibbutz movement), Yuval Dror (education scholar of the new urban kibbutzim), Michael Livni (of Kibbutz Lotan, an authority on Reform Judaism and the eco-kibbutz), and Yehuda Paz (from the Negev Institute for Peace).
These are just the names I recognize; I’m sure many of the other speakers will be able to provide invaluable perspectives on the kibbutz and the international communal movement. In fact, I feel like a kid in a candy shop — eager to gobble up everything in sight, and disappointed I’ll have to make some tough choices: there are always two different sessions to choose from at each time slot, and I can’t (yet!) be two places at once. It should be a great conference.