Degania: The First Kibbutz Fights its Last Battle is a documentary with a definite point of view—the film’s bittersweet subtitle should make that clear—like a Michael Moore film without the presence of the lumbering U.S. agent provocateur. It is also a fascinating account of a watershed moment in the 100-year history of the kibbutz movement: the decision by members of Kibbtuz Degania A, the original communal settlement in Israel, to privatize their community in 2007. This news broke internationally, as the world finally took notice of the changes that had been transforming kibbutzim over the previous 20 years. It also became used — by free-market bloggers around the Internet — as the final nail in the rhetorical coffin of socialism.
Yitzhak Rubin’s 56-minute account of the last days of Degania as a fully communal kibbutz begins, curiously, with scenes of American Christians getting baptized along the banks of the Jordan River, not far from where Kibbutz Degania Aleph was founded. The movie then outlines the founding myth and storied history of this influential community (including its vital and valiant role in the War of 1948) through interviews and archival footage. But it soon makes clear that changes are afoot. Despite nearly a hundred years of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (and relative wealth compared to other kibbutzim), some members and leaders at Degania have been lobbying to alter the fundamental egalitarian structure of their community.
Here, the movie excels at letting viewers play fly-on-the-wall to the heated debates and civil strife caused by the public (and private) debate that precedes the vote to privatize—how it sets brother against brother, friend against friend, neighbour against neighbour. As one anti-privatization member asks, Why do members who want to privatize need to irrevocably change what is unique about Degania, when anyone who wants to live in a private neighbourhood can simply walk out the gates and find a “normal” community like that anywhere in Israel or the world.
Despite the radical origins of Degania, in 2007 its more bourgeois trappings are what make people want to stay: its slowed-down rural life, its sense of family, safety and security, where kids can run free and parents know that someone will bring their children home, amidst a world (and a country) of potential danger and uncertainty. It’s pretty clear that the filmmaker sides with the traditionalists of Degania, but we still get to see the arguments of the other side, led by kibbutz director Shai Shoshany (who I interviewed last year). Even for longtime residents, like Yoya and Alan Shapiro (a daughter of a Degania founder and her American-born husband), the choice is tough: they know that many of the younger members want change or they might leave.
Finally, the filmmaker takes us right into the final pre-vote general assembly before balloting on the proposed initiatives. Shoshany asks Rubin, the director, to wait outside and not film the proceedings, but the canny filmmaker keeps his camera rolling and captures memorable footage of the turbulent back and forth of this all-important historic debate. This is how a dream ends: democratically and divided. (That said, in Degania and other kibbutzim, a vote to change the economic structure of the community requires a super-majority, usually 75 to 80%, rather than 50% plus one.)
In the end, the anti-privatization members lose the vote and must accept the will of their peers. In 2007, Degania introduced differential salaries and other free-market initiatives to their once communal economic structure. When I visited last year, I only had a chance to interview Shai Shoshany, the kibbutz director, so I got little personal sense of how the privatization plans have panned out for the other kibbutzniks. That said, I did come across this interesting news video, shot a year after the vote, which suggests that the Shapiros, originally resistant to the changes, have seen benefits to their community—or at least accepted the inevitability of change.
In any case, this film is a vital document both as a historical record of the first and best-known kibbutz and as an incisive sociological unpacking of how privatization occurs in such democratic communities. It’s well worth watching as Degania marks 100 years since its founding with a year of celebrations and a huge three-day ceremony in early October, when Israeli president Shimon Peres and members of cabinet will visit Degania and help to honour the occasion.
Degania can be purchased or watched as pay-per-view online here. As I was looking for links, I also came across this fascinating footage from 1937 of Degania from the Spielberg Jewish Film Archive. The narration is perhaps typical of its time—a bit over the top—but it makes for fascinating viewing on the centenary of the first kibbutz. Whether it has fought its last battle, I leave up to others to debate…
Consumerism may have tried to kill the kibbutz—by offering young members the American Dream of infinite choice (in everything from cereals and deodorants to lifestyles and personal philosophies), with the promise that happiness might be just one more credit-card charge away…and certainly can’t be found in a community in which everything is shared.
Now educators in the Kibbutz Dati religious movement are trying to teach against the all-embracing mindset of modern consumerism, developing a curriculum that encourages students to look for happiness in their communities rather than their possessions and develop a belief that maybe less really is more.
For a more satirical spiritual take on anti-consumerism, my favourite preacher is the Reverend Billy (who I interviewed many years ago) and his hilarious Church of Life After Shopping.
If you see just one movie about the kibbutz, it ought to be Inventing Our Life: Kibbutz—The Fourth Generation. (I’m not saying you should just watch one kibbutz movie; in fact, I’ve seen five in the past few months, with two more on the way—but I realize everyone may not be as obsessive about the history and future of the kibbutz as I am.)
The catch? The film isn’t finished yet.
Toby Appleton, the producer/director, kindly mailed me a “rough cut” of her 82-minute documentary, while she continues to drum up funding to complete post-production. But “rough cut” doesn’t do justice to the diamond she has created. Inventing Our Life is a remarkably compelling work of documentary filmmaking that deserves the widest possible audience.
All of the other kibbutz documentaries I’ve seen so far have been informative, even provocative and well worth watching. However, they tend to focus on an individual community and then contrast its pioneering days with its present struggles. Appleton’s film takes a wider view and examines the kibbutz movement as a key thread within the greater tapestry of the history of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. And yet for all this long view, the film still speaks with an intimacy that strikes an emotional chord in the viewer, thanks to the anecdotes and opinions of the kibbutzniks she interviews. It’s a fine balance between macro-narrative and micro-narrative that Inventing Our Life walks masterfully.
After about 10 minutes of introductory interviews, the storyline loops back to the anti-semitic pogroms in Russia that motivated the Zionist movement and the early founders of the kibbutz to settle Palestine, illustrated by classic footage from a 1920s Zionist propaganda film. Later, members of Kibbutz Sasa, founded by Hashomair Hatzair youth-group pioneers from the U.S., describe their kibbutz-style training camp in New Jersey and then how stories from the Holocaust only steeled their determination to found a Jewish state. Even here, the documentary doesn’t shy from potential controversy:
“This was an Arab village,” one of the founders of Sasa recalls of their arrival to the kibbutz site in 1949. “We had serious qualms about coming to an abandoned village where people’s lives had been uprooted.”
The rest of the film carefully walks viewers through the kibbutz heyday in the 1950s and 1960s (and the vital role of kibbutz soldiers in the Six Day War), while acknowledging that a failure to help assimilate the waves of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries in the years after Independence helped lead to the kibbutz movement’s isolation from the rest of Israeli society, especially after the right-wing and anti-kibbutz Likud came to power in 1977.
The rise of a more capitalist-inclined “me generation” in the 70s and 80s is charted, as well as the financial shock of hyper-inflation and then burdensome debt loads in the mid-1980s, all of which resulted in an entire generation of young kibbutz-born members deciding not to return to their communal homes.
Here, the movie takes on even more complex tones as the issue of privatization (or “renewal”) is raised. We see the question from multiple perspectives, in multiple communities. If the movie has a main focus, it is on Kibbutz Ein Shemer, which is in the midst of hammering out a privatization proposal and debating it amongst its members. Still other kibbutzim appear throughout the film. Kibbutz Hulda, by contrast, has already closed down its dining hall and voted to privatize as a way to draw back young members. Kibbutz Sasa nearly came to the same decision but decided to remain resolutely communal; as one member says, paying different wages for different wages is a “red line” (or what another kibbutznik calls “the Jerusalem issue”) that can’t be crossed: “Anything else, then don’t call yourself a kibbutz.”
Appleton also profiles members of “urban kibbutz” Tamuz in Beit Shemesh about their revisioning of the original kibbutz ideals within an urban context focused on social justice and education. “We are somewhat like Degania in the first days of Degania but more anarchistic,” observes one Tamuz resident. “Cities are where most Israelis live,” says another, “so cities are where real social change must occur.”
One of the strengths of the film is the insight of its articulate interview subjects, which include everyday kibbutzniks but also poets (Avraham Balaban, Eli Alon), philosophers (Avishai Margalit, Yochanon Grinspon) and storytellers (Rakefet Zohar). An ingenious narrative “trick” used by Appleton is to give people’s names, occupations and then indicate which generation of kibbutznik they are but not reveal, until the final few minutes of the film, whether they have remained on their kibbutz or not. Even the composition and lighting of these various interviews are beautifully rendered.
In the end, Inventing Our Life offers a bittersweet homage to the history and future of the kibbutz, one that balances lamentation for its lost ideals (“All dreamers end up on the floor,” says one of the poets) with the possibility for change and the vital importance of the entire project. “I think the kibbutz was the most interesting thing to happen in this country,” says Margalit, “because human beings lack serious experimentation in their lives. I think this was the most dramatic experiment and the most important one.”
Despite the breadth of my own research, I learned a great deal and was fascinated by the archival footage that Appleton unearthed. More impressively, both times I watched the film, I found myself tearing up with emotion by the end, as the “children of the children of the children of the dream” describe the importance of the kibbutz and its altruistic philosophy to their own sense of identity. I challenge any viewer not to be moved by this fine, fine work of documentary art.
And if there are any philanthropists out there who want to invest in an almost-finished doc, drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with the director.
That’s all for now—I’m halfway to my goal of 100 blog posts to celebrate a 100 years of the kibbutz. More film reviews to come…
The magazine from Haaretz published a long and fascinating, if a little depressing, feature article about the strife at Kibbutz Hanaton. The kibbutz was founded in 1984 by American immigrants of Conservative Judaism background. (For those who don’t know, Conservative is “medium” on the spectrum of religious Judaism—with Reform on the “mild” end and ultra-Orthodox on the “spicy”… or maybe vice versa. You get the point.)
Like many kibbutzim, Hanaton fell on hard economic times and its membership dwindled. The kibbutz took in young men and women from a secular youth movement—but then voted against letting them become full members. The divide became ideological: The new youth-group members wanted the kibbutz to remain collective and become a centre for socially progressive education. The older members wanted the kibbutz to privatize—i.e., to become a “renewed kibbutz”—and maintain its character and vision as a bridge between secular and religious Judaism. (Interestingly, the situation at Hanaton goes against the trend that religious kibbutzim have tended to stay more communal than the secular kibbutzim.)
Now, the two sides apparently barely speak, and the older Conservative members are trying to expel the younger secular idealists. In the end, nobody’s vision of equality and cooperation has succeeded, not once they were pitted again each other. As the kibbutz rabbi lamented in the article:
“Kibbutz Hanaton was founded with the aim of becoming an influential voice, of instilling more connectedness in Israeli society. … They founded a school here that was supposed to be the place where the dichotomy in Israeli society between the religious person and the secular person was broken. But what’s happened is that this place that was supposed to be a meeting point became a scene of total lack of understanding, of anger and hot tempers.”
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 might say “infamous”) book about communal child-raising in the kibbutz system.
The dissonant music and frenetic motions of the dancers suggest that these aren’t exactly happy memories, however. And in a Jewish context, the baggy grey-and-white striped pyjamas carry far more ominous overtones. But that’s modern dance for you…
