Jul 15, 2010
Of course, I’m not the only international visitor obsessed with the legendary history, contemporary issues and uncertain future of the kibbutz, in this its centennial year. David Dagan, a Berlin-based American journalist, has started a series of blog posts for the Huffington Post about the five weeks he spent working on Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek.
I also spent time on Mishmar HaEmek, this year and last (as the guest of member and Givat Haviva instructor Lydia Aisenberg), and enjoyed my own brief time on this large, relatively successful and still resolutely communal kibbutz. The kibbutzniks of Mishmar HaEmek, in the Jezreel Valley near Haifa, have always seen themselves as elite members of the pioneering kibbutz movement—that commitment to socialism and the settlement of Israel (plus, the success of their plastics factory) has allowed them to stand against the winds of change that have swept through 70% of other kibbutzim.
As Dagan’s blog post makes clear, members are still debating possible changes—but they have resisted the trend toward different salaries or privately owned homes. One of the issues being discussed while I was there was the cost of the dining room and whether members (and their guests) should be charged a fee, even a highly subsidized one, for their food as a way to cut down on waste. (I’ll admit, after learning of this debate. I felt a little guilty chowing down on the kibbutz’s dime while we stayed there for four days.)
Of course, many other communities have been forced to privatize or shut down their dining rooms entirely. By contrast, Mishmar HaEmek’s large dining hall remains the centre of casual meetings and communal decision making.
I look forward to reading more of Dagan’s upcoming posts about his time on this important and fascinating kibbutz.
Jul 15, 2010
One of the great scenes in the soon-to-released documentary Keeping the Kibbutz is shot from a glider, high above the Huleh Valley, in which Uzi, one of the kibbutzniks from Kfar Giladi, has taken director and cameramen Ben Crosbie for a ride. The vistas of northern Galilee are dizzying and spectacular—and were apparently quite an adventure to capture, as Crosbie describes in a stomach-trurning blog posting about the making of the documentary.
Jul 12, 2010
I seem to have jumped the gun with my recent visit to Israel. The Kibbutz Movement is just now inviting former volunteers to return to the country to help mark the centenary of Degania, the first kibbutz. They plan to organize an event, for this fall, to attract a thousand or more former volunteers.
Sadly, most kibbutzim no longer employ international volunteers. The agricultural jobs that were the staple of the volunteer experience—I did everything from picking avocados to removing rocks form the cotton fields—and that were part of the attraction for the often city-raised visitors from abroad are now largely mechanized or done by cheap Thai labourers who drink less and work harder.
Depending on who you ask, the influx of international volunteers during the 1970s and 1980s either had a positive influence (new multicultural perspectives, youthful enthusiasm, etc.) or a negative one (sex, drugs and rock and roll, corruption of kibbutz youth!). One thing is certain, as the coordinator of the Volunteer Office told me last year: volunteers often returned home and became unofficial diplomats for the State of Israel, because their experience living and working with Israelis (and particularly some of the most educated and liberal citizens of the state) gave them a more intimate and complex view of the country than what is depicted in the international media.
Israel could use some of that good P.R. again. Perhaps a nostalgic return to the country for some of the 350,000 volunteers who worked on a kibbutz might help.
Jul 12, 2010
The kibbutz was, in its own way, a back-to-the-land movement, a way for disconnected young urbanites to renew their souls by reconnecting with the soil. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that kibbutzim have become leaders in the areas of organic farming and environmental technology, as well as eco-education. I saw evidence of this trend especially in the communities in the Arava Desert (Samar, Ketura and Lotan), although I was disappointed to learn that attempts to coordinate a national “green kibbutz movement” have essentially withered on the vine.
A recent Bloomberg article, however, did list a number of interesting kibbutz-based projects and cooperative business ventures in the field of environmental technology, alternative energy and organic farming. And a lot of people with whom I spoke saw promise in such environmental consciousness as a way of renewing the social-political mission of the original kibbutz pioneers.
Jul 12, 2010
Or at least long life on a kibbutz. That was one of the bits of evidence mentioned in a recent article in The Guardian about how to “age successfully”:
Longitudinal studies of ageing in Israeli kibbutzim are particularly revealing of the importance of continuity. Successful ageing was commoner if the elderly person felt they still had a working role and responsibility for their own health. The highly developed social networks proved effective at replacing the steady loss of peers. Hence, if a kibbutz closed and the person had to go and live in a conventional city, successful ageing was much less likely.
The study being cited is by Uriel Leviatan, of the University of Haifa, who I met last year and who gave a paper at the recent ICSA conference last month. Of course, the privatization of kibbutzim—as well as the neglect of some of the retirement-aged residents at poorer communities, as described in a recent Ha’Aretz exposé—may mean that kibbutz oldtimers, once the longest living amongst the already long-living Israelis (usually second only to the Japanese), may find their life expectancies regressing to the mean, as they feel their social connections and sense of purpose and contributions to the community decline.
