Dancing the Dream
A month or two ago, I stumbled across this intriguing YouTube clip of a dance designed by an Israeli choreographer, inspired by her memories of growing up on a kibbutz. It's called "Five Beds / Children of the Dream"—an allusion to Bruno Bettelheim's famous (some...
Varied Paths of Communal Life
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...
The Cooperative Life
The final article in the excellent series on the "sharing economy", in B.C.'s must-read online newsmagazine The Tyee, focuses on the social, economic and environmental promise of co-housing. The conclusion: living together is not just for hippies anymore. As...
A Tale of Two Deganias
Privatization takes many forms on the kibbutz. I realized this fact last summer, when I visited both Degania A and Degania B—neighbouring communities since 1920, when Degania A "franchised" a decade after its own founding. Degania A is now a relatively wealthy...
Look Back to… Mishmar Haemek
This link includes some classic archival photos from the Shomria Institution, the first kibbutz education centre founded by the Hashomer Hatzair movement. It was located on Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, overlooking the Yizreel Valley, which I had the good fortune to...
Chomsky and the Kibbutz
Here is an interesting audio interview from 1976 with Noam Chomsky, the famous American linguist and left-wing political critic, about anarchism—or what he calls "left-wing libtertarianism". "I myself think that the most dramatic example was the Israeli...
Divisions in the Movement
Almost since the birth of the kibbutz a hundred years ago, different communities have hived off into a handful of different federations that would represent their collective interests and various visions of communal life: religious vs. Marxist, staying small vs....
The Kibbutz is Dead. Long Live the Kibbutz
Catching up on my Net-surfing, I read this analysis of the rise and fall and rise of the kibbutz movement in MarketWatch. It's part of the Wall Street Journal's digital network, so you can anticipate the bias. It's definitely typical of the...
Happy 80th to Kibbutz HaDati!
I'll be the first to admit I know little about religious kibbutzim in Israel. I've never visited one and have only read about them tangentially. I didn't even know that 2010—the centenary of the movement as a whole—is also the 80th anniversary of Ha-kibbutz Ha-Dati,...
The Economic Crisis
I've been distracted by end of term deadlines and meetings, plus a short business trip to San Francisco, but have been meaning to link and reflect on an interesting story in The Jewish Daily Forward. It's a look back at the economic crisis. No, not the recent...