To a visitor who has never eaten regularly at one, a kibbutz dining room might look like a glorified (or even unglorified) cafeteria: the stainless-steel smorgasbord of salads and meats and breads, the long table-clothed tables and conversation-filled open room, the...

If you’ve got an hour to kill, a decent Internet connection, and are looking for a good laugh, you could do worse than watching the Israeli comedy Mivtza Savta. When I was in Israel and mentioned I was giving a talk about kibbutz cinema, several people smiled and...

Of course, one solution to the problems at Kibbutz Hanaton would be to follow the wisdom of Solomon and make the split literal by chopping the community in half. That’s what happened during the much more contentious schism—a political divide about which left-wing...

Kibbutz Hanaton sits on a brush-covered plateau overlooking the blue waters of the Lake Eshkol reservoir in Lower Galilee, ringed by Arab villages. It’s picturesque location for a bitter legal, ideological and even religious battle that, according to some observers,...

The centenary of Degania has already started a outpouring of articles about 100 years of kibbutz life and philosophy. Some of the writing has been detailed and well-informed; some of it, less so. (I’m hoping mine falls in the former category!)A worthy addition to the...

... set sail yesterday, according to Ha'aretz. This one, however, safely navigated the Sea of Galilee, not the Mediterranean. This one contained two thousand kibbutz teenagers, not international activists. This one probably won't get nearly as much media attention....

I’m finally getting back to updates from my recent Israel trip….The next afternoon, after our wide-ranging shabbat conversation with Rachel Fulder, we packed up and departed Klil. On our way out, we picked up Renat, a young hitchhiker who was on her way to the music...