The idea of the kibbutz continues to inspire, often in surprising places. On this website, an author makes his case for a system of kibbutzim in Ireland, as part of a country-wide contest called Your Country Your Call to brainstorm new ideas for social enterprises. Beyond its back-to-the-land philosophy, I’m not sure how much his idea aligns with the actual kibbutz; his Irish farms would be designed to attract Irish-Americans for temporary stays and have vaguely religious overtones.
Still, I found it interesting that the author would look to the kibbutz as a successful model. Plus, I liked the notion that each “Irish kibbutz” might be built and marketed around a theme, including Irish literature and creative writing. I’d love to live and work in a kibbutz-style community and be nourished by the works of Yeats, Joyce and Guinness.
One thing I’ve learned from my research is that the “end of the kibbutz” has been predicted from practically Day 2 of its founding. Every decade—almost every year—a new threat appeared to pose a crisis for this utopia. In fact, it’s hard to read a book or an article about the kibbutz without encountering both those words: crisis and utopia.
Most recently, the privatization schemes of various kibbutzim—in particular, different wages for different work and the ability to own your own house or apartment—have prompted observers, inside and outside the movement, to claim that the sky is falling again and that this change marks the end of the kibbutz.
Before that, though, one of the biggest and most controversial changes had been the decision to “decommunalize” the children’s houses—to vote to let kibbutz children stay home at night and be raised by their parents, rather than by a metapelet (aka, the kibbutz’s “super-nanny”) with other children of the same age, from almost the day of birth until they went off to do army service. This communal child-rearing was one of the most original, studied and debated elements of kibbutz life. (Interestingly, I recently learned that it wasn’t party of the mutual arrangement at Kibbutz Degania, the original settlement, although they did debate who should name the first child there: the parents or the kibbutz.)
The decision to move toward family-based child-rearing from communal children’s houses began in the 1970s and accelerated throughout the 1980s, until Kibbutz Bar’am, the last kibbutz to raise children communally, was deciding to give way to this trend in 1995. For many people, that decision marked the end of the kibbutz as a unique social arrangement. Here is a fascinating short documentary from that time, done at Kibbutz Bar’am, that looks at the history of the “children’s society” (as this system was known) and the decision to eliminate it.
As a parent myself, I can appreciate the freedom the metapelet system most have given couples to remain an active part of their community. (My wife and I are lucky if we get out for dinner together three times a year and we have lost touch with too many old friends.) At the same time, I would find it hard to give up the simple pleasure of waking up with my kids, aged four and two, curled up and cozy in our bed. I realize how fast they are growing and how soon I will look back with nostalgia on these often sleep-disturbed nights. It must have been a terribly difficult decision for the parents of the so-called “children of the dream” to make as a community.
Here is a little video news story from WeJew.com that takes a more optimistic view of the changes to the kibbutz movement, with images from the pioneer times and interviews with contemporary kibbutzniks. Life on a “privatized kibbutz”, it seems, still offers a greater sense of community and extended family for many residents.
Well, I did my talk about the lessons on kibbutz life yesterday, and I think it went well. (Maybe that’s just the energy drink I had beforehand speaking!) It was reasonably well-attended with familiar and new faces. People seemed to be focused and attentive on my potted history of the kibbutz movement, even if the “comic relief” photos from my kibbutz experiences fell a little flat. I’d hoped there might be more discussion in the Q&A, as I’d promised in my talk’s title, about how the lessons of the kibbutz movement could be applied here in Canada. But most people wanted to talk about big issues like socialism vs. Marxism and Israel vs. Palestine. Several people came up to me afterwards and shared stories of their own kibbutz experiences, which I appreciated.
The Q&A got briefly sidetracked by a woman who showed up early to distribute leaflets and claimed my talk left out “half the story” — how the kibbutz had been built on “stolen land” and with the blood of the Palestinian people. I’d anticipated this objection, but I don’t know if I responded to it satisfactorily. (I felt it was a particularly ill-timed critique, considering a guest worker on a kibbutz in the south of the country had been killed by a rocket fired from Gaza that morning.) Instead, an audience member pointed out that most kibbutzim were built, in fact, on land bought by the Jewish National Fund.
Anyway, I’ll write more about the talk (and post a link to the podcast when it’s ready) next week. In the meantime, I wanted to share a few key points that a good friend, who attended and who lived on a kibbutz (as did his parents), sent me today. They are definitely areas I’d like to follow up in my own research:
A few ideas:
Most kibbutz chalutzim (pioneers) came from Eastern Europe, smaller numbers from the relative wealth and security of North America. Kfar Menachem, where my parents lived, had quite a few Canadians and Americans. This might be an interesting area to explore–why North Americans left relative comfort and safety to live the tough life on kibbutzim in the early days. (One American couple I knew lost both their sons within a few days in the 1967 war.)
Arab Israeli relations: this is an encyclopedic topic of course but again I think some kibbutz members took leadership in forging better relations, learning Arabic and working with their Arab neighbours. When I visited the Arab village next to KM and asked the men who lived there if the kibbutzniks were their friends, they said “Lo chaverim, achim,” Not friends, brothers.
Thanks for the feedback: dialogue is what I hope my talk promoted. And that’s a phrase I think we should all add to our vocabulary: Not friends, brothers. And sisters, too, for that matter!
Today, I was polishing up my presentation for Thursday, titled “Look Back to Galilee: What a Century of Kibbutz Life Can Teach Canadians about Co-operation and Community,” when I took a break, surfed through some YouTube kibbutz videos and came across this gem: “The Geek Kibbutz”.
Maybe I’m brain dead from reading and writing and not enough sleep (we could use a metapelet in my house these days!), but I found this spoof of kibbutz documentaries just the comic relief I needed. It certainly looks like the filmmakers had fun producing their low-budget mockumentary homage to computers and kibbutz life.
