Israel
- Kibbutz
A kibbutz (Hebrew: קיבוץ;
plural: kibbutzim: קיבוצים, "gathering" or "together") is an Israeli
collective community. Although other countries have had communal
enterprises, in no other country have voluntary collective communities
played as important a role as the kibbutzim have played in Israel;
indeed, kibbutzim played an essential role in the creation of Israel.
Combining socialism and zionism in a form of practical Labor Zionism,
the kibbutzim are a unique Israeli experiment, and part of one of the
largest communal movements in history. The kibbutzim were founded in a
time when independent farming was not practical. Forced by necessity
into communal life, and inspired by their own socialist ideology, the
kibbutz members developed a pure communal mode of living that attracted
interest from the entire world. While the kibbutzim lasted for several
generations as utopian communities, today kibbutzim are scarcely
different from the capitalist enterprises and regular towns to which the
kibbutzim were originally supposed to be alternatives.
The kibbutzim have given Israel a wildly disproportionate share of its
military leaders, intellectuals, and politicians. Though the kibbutz
movement never accounted for more than 7 percent of the Israeli
population, it did more to shape the image Israelis have of their
country, and the image that foreigners have of Israel, than any other
Israeli institution.
History
Origins
Conditions were hard for all subjects of in the Russian Empire in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, but they were especially difficult
for Jews. It was the official policy of the Russian government to "cause
one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism, and
one-third to starve." Except for a wealthy few, Jews could not leave the
Pale of Settlement; within the Pale of Settlement, Jews could neither
live in large cities, such as Kiev, nor any village with fewer than 500
residents, even in the case of tuberculosis treatment. In case any Jews
made their way into the Russian capital city, in 1897 the Moscow Chief
of Police offered a bounty for the capture of an illegal Jew equal to
the capture of two burglars. (Dubow, Vol. III, 15)
The tsarist government disproportionately conscripted Jews into the
Russian army. While in other countries soldiers of all kinds would be
honored, in Russia, Jewish soldiers suffered severe discrimination. Jews
had to leave the Pale of Settlement to serve with their units, but while
their units were given furlough Jews had to return to the Pale of
Settlement, even if their service was in the Russian Far East. There
were other laws in effect which allowed the expulsion of Jewish families
that had no breadwinner. During the Russo-Japanese War, many magistrates
in Ukraine took advantage of the fact that Jewish men were away at the
front to expel their families. Only this was too much for the Russian
government. The Interior Minister at the time, Vyacheslav Plehve rebuked
his subordinates, saying "the families of mobilized Jews should be left
in their places of residence, pending the termination of the war."
(Ibid, 95)
Most ominously, beginning in the aftermath of the assassination of
Alexander II in 1881, the Russian autocracy allowed and encouraged its
discontented peasants to take out their frustrations on their Jewish
neighbors. In May 1882, Tsar Alexander III issued the so-called "May
Laws." The May Laws forbade Jews to live in towns with fewer than 10,000
inhabitants and systematized the anti-Jewish quotas that kept thousands
of Jews out of the professions and out of university. The consequence of
the residency laws was that hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled
from towns and villages that their families had resided in for
generations. The turn of the century marked a high point for Jewish
oppression in Russia.
Jews responded to the pressures on them in different ways. Some saw
their future in a reformed Russia and joined Socialist political
parties. Other Jews saw the future of Jews in Russia as being out of
Russia, and thus emigrated to the West. Other Jews took little notice of
the changing world and continued in orthodoxy. Still other Jews took the
opposite course and became assimilationists. Last but not least among
the ideological choices that presented themselves to Jews in late 19th
century Russia was Zionism, the movement for the creation of a Jewish
homeland in the cradle of Judaism, Palestine, or, as Jews called it,
Eretz Yisrael.
Prior to this time of increased persecution, Jews had gone to Palestine
either late in life to die or as young people to attend the various
yeshivas clustered in Jerusalem and Hebron. These individuals were
religious and had no political ambitions. In fact, instead of having
livelihoods, they relied on charitable contributions of Jews from
abroad.
Although Zionism's antecedents can be traced back into distant Jewish
history, the ideology emerged as a significant force in Jewish life only
in the 1880s. In that decade approximately 15,000 Jews, mostly from
southern Russia, moved to Palestine with the two intentions of living
there, as opposed to dying and being buried there, and of farming there,
as opposed to studying. This movement of Jews to Palestine in the 1880s
is called the "First Aliyah", and its members are called "Biluim".
Zionism is usually understood to mean a kind of nationalism, but Zionism
also had economic and cultural aspects. Zionism's chief economic program
was for Jews to abandon inn-keeping, pawn-brokering, and petty selling
in favor of a return to the land and its cultivation.
The Jews of the First Aliya generation believed that Diaspora Jews had
sunk low due to their typical disdain for physical labor. Their ideology
was that the Jewish people could be "redeemed"—physically as well as
spiritually—by toiling in the fields of Palestine. It was believed that
the soil of Palestine had magical properties to metamorphosize feeble
Jewish merchants into strong, noble farmers. In 1883, The London Jewish
Chronicle wrote of the new Jewish agriculturalist in Palestine that he
had been transformed from "the pallid, stooping Jewish pedlar and
tradesman of a few months back ... into the bronzed, horny-handed, manly
tiller of the soil." (Silver-Brody, 33,36)
In harmony with the "religion of labor," the Biluim manifesto proudly
called for the "encouragement and strengthening of immigration and
colonization in Eretz Yisrael through the establishment of an
agricultural colony, built on cooperative social foundations." In
harmony with the yet unnamed ideology of Zionism the Biluim called for
the "polico-economic and national spiritual revival of the Jewish people
in Palestine."
The Biluim came to Eretz Yisrael with high hopes of success as a peasant
class, but their enthusiasm was perhaps greater than their agricultural
ability. Within a year of living in Palestine the Bilium had become
dependent on charity, just as their scholarly brethren in Jerusalem
were. The difference between the charity that sustained the Bilium and
the charity that sustained the scholars was that the Bilium used
donations for land and agricultural equipment purchases.
Thanks to donations of regular Jews who read the above quotation from
the London Jewish Daily Chronicle and extremely wealthy Jews like the
Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, the Biluim were able to eventually
prosper. Their towns, Rishon LeZion and Zichron Yaakov developed into
attractive, healthy communities. Unfortunately, something had happened
to the Biluim between their arrival in the country and the turn of the
20th century. Instead of cultivating the soil on their own land, the
Biluim found themselves hiring Arabs to cultivate the soil in their
place. The Zionist economic revolution was yet to occur.
The Second Aliya and founding the first kibbutzim
Pogroms flared up once again in Russia in the first years of the 20th
century. In 1903 at Kishinev peasant mobs were incited against Jews
after a blood libel. Riots again took place in the wake of Russia's
defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution. The occurrence
of new pogroms inspired yet another wave of Russian Jews to emigrate. As
in the 1880s, most emigrants went to the United States, but a minority
went to Palestine. It was this generation that would include founders of
the kibbutzim.
Like the members of the First Aliya who came before them, most members
of the Second Aliya wanted to be farmers in Palestine. Those who would
go on to found the kibbutzim first went to a village of the Biluim,
Rishon LeZion, to find work there. The founders of the kibbutz were
morally appalled by what they saw in the Jewish settlers there "with
their Jewish overseers, Arab peasant laborers, and Bedouin guards." They
saw the new villages and were reminded of the places they had left in
Eastern Europe. Instead of the beginning of a pure Jewish commonwealth,
they felt that what they saw recreated the Jewish socioeconomic
structure of the Pale of Settlement, where Jews functioned in clean
jobs, while other groups did the dirty work. (Gavron, 19)
Joseph Baratz, who would go on to found the first kibbutz, wrote of his
time working at Zikhron Yaakov:
We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more
certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us. This was
not the way we hoped to settle the country — this old way with Jews on
top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn't
be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way. (Baratz,
52)
Though Joseph Baratz and other laborers wanted to farm the land
themselves, becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option in
1909. As Arthur Ruppin, an proponent of Jewish agricultural colonization
of Palestine would later say, "The question was not whether group
settlement was preferable to individual settlement; it was rather one of
either group settlement or no settlement at all." (Rayman, 12)
Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment, quite unlike the Russian
plains the Jewish immigrants were familiar with. The Galilee was swampy,
the Judean Hills rocky, and the South of the country, the Negev, was a
desert. To make things more challenging, most of the settlers had no
prior farming experience. The sanitary conditions were also poor.
Malaria was more than a risk, it was nearly a guarantee. In addition to
malaria, there were typhus and cholera.
In addition to having a difficult climate and relatively infertile
soils, Ottoman Palestine was in some ways a lawless place. Nomadic
Bedouins would frequently raid farms and settled areas. Sabotage of
irrigation canals and burning of crops were also common. Living
collectively was simply the most logical way to be secure in an
unwelcoming land.
On top of considerations of safety, there were also considerations of
economic survival. Establishing a new farm in the area was a
capital-intensive project; collectively the founders of the kibbutzim
had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently
they did not.
Finally, the land that was going to be settled by Joseph Baratz and his
comrades had been purchased by the greater Jewish community. From around
the world, Jews dropped coins into little "Blue Boxes" for land
purchases in Palestine. Since these efforts were on behalf of all Jews
in the area, it would not have made sense for their land purchases to be
conveyed to individuals.
In 1909, Joseph Baratz, nine other men, and two women established
themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near an Arab
village called "Umm Juni." These teenagers had hitherto worked as day
laborers draining swamps, as masons, or as hands at the older Jewish
settlements. Their dream was now to work for themselves, building up the
land. They called their community "Degania," after the cereals which
they grew there. Their community would grow into the first kibbutz.
The founders of Degania worked backbreaking labor attempting to rebuild
what they saw as their ancestral land and to spread the social
revolution. One pioneer later said "the body is crushed, the legs fail,
the head hurts, the sun burns and weakens." At times half of the kibbutz
members could not report for work. Many young men and women left the
kibbutz for easier lives in Jewish Palestinian cities or in the
Diaspora.
Despite the difficulties, kibbutzim grew and proliferated. By 1914,
Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea
of Galilee and the nearby Jezreel Valley. The founders of Degania
themselves soon left Degania to become apostles of agriculture and
socialism for newer kibbutzim.
Kibbutzim during the British Mandate
The end of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, and the
coming of the British Mandate of Palestine was good for the yishuv and
kibbutzim. The Ottoman authorities had made immigrating to Palestine
difficult for Jews, and they had also made land purchases problematic.
This had affected Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike. The Ottomans were
poor administrators as well.
Aside from the change in government in Palestine, kibbutzim and the
whole yishuv grew as a result of the increase in Anti-Semitism in
Europe. In contrast to the prediction anti-Zionist Jews had made prior
to World War I, the spread of liberal ideas was not irreversible and the
position of Jews in many Central and Eastern European societies actually
deteriorated.
Jews suffered severely in the Polish-Soviet War and the Russian Civil
War. Though the deaths were small compared to the recent bloodletting of
World War I, the pogroms of 1918-1920 would actually make the pogroms of
the 1880s and 1900s look like scuffles.
"The first major pogroms took place in Zhitomir and Berdichev, old
Jewish centers," Walter LaQueur wrote in his A History of Zionism,
whence they spread to Proskurov (where fifteen hundred Jews were killed)
and neighboring places. Altogether about fifteen thousands Jews were
killed in these attacks and many more wounded. Much Jewish property was
destroyed. The number of deaths was far higher than in the prewar
pogroms. Human life had become very cheap after 1914, and whereas the
death of a few dozen victims in Kishinev had aroused a storm of protest
in the civilized world, the murder of thousands 1919–1920 caused hardly
a ripple. (LaQueur, 441)
As the pogroms after Alexander II's death and the pogroms of Kishinev
caused mass aliyas, so did the pogroms of the Russian civil war. Tens of
thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine in the early 1920s, in
a wave called the "Third Aliya."
After the Bolshevik consolidation of power, Jews of Russia and Ukraine
were assured of their physical safety, though none could emigrate. In
the rest of the 1920s Jewish immigrants to Palestine would come from the
rest of Eastern and Central Europe, the "Fourth Aliya." These Third and
Fourth Aliya immigrants would actually do more for the growth of the
kibbutz movement than the immigrants of previous immigration groups.
The three million Jews of Poland suffered as a result of large-scale
boycotts of their businesses. The number of Jews practicing medicine and
law was deliberately reduced. By 1930, before the Great Depression had
even set in, one-third of the Jewish community of Poland would be unable
to pay nominal Jewish community taxes. The Polish government usually
maintained law and order, but there were several minor pogroms.
Jewish Romanians also were victims of intense anti-Semitism. Jews were
displaced from many occupations and groups formed, such as the National
Christian Defense League and the Iron Guard, whose goal was the eviction
of all Jews.
In other countries institutional anti-Semitism was not as disabling as
it was in Poland or Romania, though there was virulent anti-Semitism in
the public at large.
Partly based on German youth movements and the Boy Scouts, Zionist
Jewish youth movements flourished in the 1920s in virtually every
European nation. Youth movements came in every shade of the political
spectrum. There were rightist movements like Betar and religious
movements like Bachad, but most of these Zionist youth movements were
socialist such as Dror, Brit Haolim, Kadima, Habonim, and Wekleute. Of
the leftist youth movements the most significant in kibbutz history was
to be the Marxist Hashomer Hatzair. In the 1920s the left-oriented youth
movements would become feeders for the kibbutzim.
In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliya, these youth
group members had some agricultural training before embarking. Members
of the Second Aliya and Third Aliyas were also less likely to be
Russian, since emigration from Russia was closed off after the Russian
Revolution of 1917. European Jews who settled on kibbutzim between the
World Wars were from other countries in Eastern Europe, including
Germany. Finally, the members of the Third Aliya were to the left of the
founders of Degania, and believed that voluntary socialism could work
for everyone. They considered themselves to be a vanguard movement that
would inspire the rest of the world.
Degania in the 1910s seems to have confined its discussions to practical
matters, but the conversations of the next generation in the 1920s and
1930s were free-flowing discussions of the cosmos. Instead of having a
meeting in a dining room, meetings were held around campfires. Instead
of beginning a meeting with a reading of minutes, a meeting would begin
with a group dance. Remembering her youth on a kibbutz by the Sea of
Galilee, a woman remembered "Oh, how beautiful it was when we all took
part in the discussions, [they were] nights of searching for one
another—that is what I call those hallowed nights. During the moments of
silence, it seemed to me that from each heart a spark would burst forth,
and the sparks would unite in one great flame penetrating the heavens….
At the center of our camp a fire burns, and under the weight of the hora
the earth groans a rhythmic groan, accompanied by wild songs." (Gavron,
45)
Kibbutzim founded in the 1920s tended to be larger than the kibbutzim
like Degania which were founded prior to World War I. Degania had had
twelve members at its founding. Ein Harod, founded only a decade later,
began with 215 members.
Altogether kibbutzim grew and flourished in the 1920s. In 1922 there
were scarcely 700 individuals living on kibbutzim in Palestine. By 1927
the kibbutz population was approaching 4,000. By the eve of World War II
the kibbutz population was 25,000, 5 percent of the total population of
the yishuv.
The growth of kibbutzim allowed the movement to diversify into different
factions, although the differences between kibbutzim were always smaller
than their similarities. In 1927, some new kibbutzim that had been
founded by HaShomer Hatzair banded together to form a countrywide
association, Kibbutz Artzi. For decades, Kibbutz Artzi would be the
kibbutz left wing. In 1936, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation founded its own
political party called the Socialist League of Palestine but generally
known as Hashomer Hatzair. It merged with another left-wing party to
become Mapam once the state of Israel was established.
Artzi kibbutzim were also more devoted to equality of the sexes than
other kibbutzim. A 1920s, 1930s era kibbutz woman would call her husband
ishi — "My man" — rather than the usual Hebrew word, ba'ali,, which
literally means "My master."
In 1928 Kibbutz Degania and other small kibbutzim formed together a
group called "Chever Hakvutzot," the "Association of Kvutzot." Kvutzot
kibbutzim deliberately stayed under 200 in population. They believed
that for collective life to work, groups had to be small and intimate,
or else the trust between members would be lost. Kvutzot kibbutzim also
lacked youth-group affiliations in Europe.
The mainstream of the kibbutz movement became known simply as "United
Kibbutz," or "'Kibbutz Hameuhad." Kibbutz Hameuhad accused Artzi and the
kvutzot of elitism. Hameuhad criticized Artzi for thinking of itself as
a socialist elite, and they criticized the kvutzot for staying small.
Hameuhad kibbutzim took in as many members as they could. Givat Brenner
eventually came to have more than 1,500 members.
There were also differences in religion. Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim were
secular, even staunchly atheistic, proudly trying to be "monasteries
without G-d." Most mainstream kibbutzim also disdained the Orthodox
Judaism of their parents, but they wanted their new communities to have
Jewish characteristics nonetheless. Friday nights were still "Shabbat"
with a white tablecloth and fine food, and work was not done on Saturday
if it could be avoided. Later, some kibbutzim adopted Yom Kippur as the
day to discuss fears for the future of the kibbutz. Kibbutzim also had
collective bar mitzvahs for their children.
If kibbutzniks did not pray several times a day, kibbutzniks marked
holidays like Shavuot, Sukkot, and Passover with dances, meals, and
celebrations. One Jewish holiday, Tu B'shvat, the "birthday of the
trees" was substantially revived by kibbutzim. All in all, holidays with
some kind of natural component, like Passover and Sukkoth, were the most
significant for kibbutzim.
The kibbutz movement developed an overtly religious faction late in its
history, a group now called Kibbutz Dati. The first religious kibbutz
was Ein Tzurim, founded in 1946. Ein Tzurim was first located by Safad,
then by Hebron in what is now the West Bank, then finally in the Negev.
Religious kibbutzim are obviously religious, but they were and are no
less collectivist than secular kibbutzim. Some religious kibbutzim now
identify with the "hippie Hasidism" of rabbis like Shlomo Carlebach.
Kibbutzim in Israeli statebuilding
In Ottoman times kibbutzim worried about criminal violence, not
political violence. The lack of Arab hostility was due to the small
number of Jews in the country at the time. Arab opposition increased as
the Balfour Declaration and the wave of Jewish aliyas to Palestine began
to tilt the demographic balance of the area. There were bloody
anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem in 1921 and in Hebron in 1929. In the
late 1930s Arab-Jewish violence became virtually constant, a time called
the "Great Uprising" in Palestinian historiography.
During the Great Uprising kibbutzim began to assume a more prominent
military role than they had previously. Rifles were purchased or
manufactured and kibbutz members drilled and practiced shooting. Yigal
Allon, an Israeli soldier and statesman, explained the role of kibbutzim
in the military activities of the yishuv.
The planning and development of pioneering Zionist settlements were from
the start at least partly determined by politico-strategic needs. The
choice of the location of the settlements, for instance, was influenced
not only by considerations of economic viability but also and even
chiefly by the needs of local defense, overall settlement strategy, and
by the role such blocks of settlements might play in some future,
perhaps decisive all out struggle. Accordingly, land was purchased, or
more often reclaimed, in remote parts of the country. (quoted in Rayman,
27-8)
Kibbutzim also played a role in defining the borders of the Jewish
state-to-be. By the late 1930s when it appeared that Palestine would be
partitioned between Arabs and Jews, kibbutzim were planted in remote
parts of the Mandate to make it more likely that the land would be
incorporated into Israel, not a Palestinian state. Many of these
kibbutzim were founded, literally, in the middle of the night. In 1946,
on the day after Yom Kippur, a dozen new "Tower and Stockade" kibbutzim
were hurriedly established in the northern part of the Negev to give
Israel a better claim to this arid, but strategically important, region.
Not all kibbutzniks worked to expand the amount of territory that would
be given to the Jewish state. The leftwing, Marxist faction of the
kibbutz movement, Kibbutz Artzi, was the last major element in the
yishuv to favor a binational state, rather than partition. Kibbutz
Artzi, however, still wanted free Jewish immigration, which the Arabs
opposed.
Kibbutzniks were considered to have fought very bravely in the 1948
Arab-Israeli War, emerging from the conflict with enhanced prestige in
the nascent State of Israel. Members of Kibbutz Degania were
instrumental in stopping the Syrian tank advance into the Galilee with
homemade gasoline bombs. Another kibbutz, Maagan Michael, manufactured
the bullets for the Sten guns that won the war. Maagan Michael's
clandestine ammunition factory was later separated from the kibbutz and
grew into TAAS (Israel Military Industries).
Kibbutzim in independent Israel
The establishment of Israel and flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and
the Muslim world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim.
The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new
members and inexpensive labor, but it also meant that Ashkenazi
kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different
from their own.
The first challenge that kibbutzim faced was the question of how to
accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews, or
mizrahi. Until the 1950s, nearly all kibbutzniks were from Eastern
Europe, culturally different from their cousins from places like
Morocco, Tunisia, and Iraq. Many kibbutzim found themselves hiring
Mizrahim to work their fields and expand infrastructure, but not
actually admitting very many as members. Since few mizrahi would ever
join kibbutzim, the percentage of Israelis living on kibbutzim peaked
around the time of statehood.
Another dispute occurred solely over ideology. Israel had been initially
recognized by both the USA and the Soviet Union. For the first three
years of its existence, Israel was in the non-aligned movement, but
David Ben-Gurion gradually began to take sides with the West. The
question of which side of the Cold War Israel should choose created
fissures in the kibbutz movement. Dining halls segregated according to
politics and a few kibbutz even saw Marxist members leave. This
controversy cooled once Stalin's cruelty became better known and once it
became clear that the Soviet Union was systematically anti-Semitic. The
disillusionment particularly set in after the Prague Trials in which a
envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried in an anti-Semitic show
trial.
Yet another controversy in the kibbutz movement was the question over
Holocaust reparations from West Germany. Should kibbutz members turn
over income that was the product of a very personal loss? If Holocaust
survivors were allowed to keep their reparation money, what would that
mean for the principle of equality? Eventually, many kibbutzim made this
one concession to inequality by letting Holocaust survivors keep all or
a percentage of their reparations. Reparations that were turned over to
the collective were used for building expansion and even recreational
activities.
Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard
of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s,
kibbutzim actually saw their standard of living improve faster than
Israel's general population. Most kibbutz swimming pools date from the
good decade of the 1960s.
Kibbutzim also continued to play an outsize role in Israel's defense
apparatus. In the 1950s and 1960s many kibbutzim were in fact founded by
an Israel Defense Forces group called Nahal. Many of these 1950s and
1960s Nahal kibbutzim were founded on the precarious and porous borders
of the state. In the Six-Day War, when Israel lost 800 soldiers, fully
200 of them were from kibbutzim. The prestige that kibbutzniks enjoyed
in Israel in the 1960s was reflected in the Knesset. When only 4 percent
of Israelis were kibbutzniks, kibbutzniks made up 15 percent of Israel's
parliament. (Bettelheim, 15)
As late as the 1970s, kibbutzim seemed to be thriving in every way.
Kibbutzniks performed working class, or even peasant class, occupations,
yet enjoyed a middle class lifestyle.
About
Ideology of the kibbutz movement
The members of the First Aliya had been religious, but the members of
the Second Aliya, of whom the founders of Degania were a tiny
subsection, were not. Although they were settling in the land of the
Bible, these young people were not the type to attend synagogue. To
their minds, Orthodox Judaism was a hindrance for the Jewish people. The
spiritualism of the pioneers of the kibbutz movement consisted of
mystical feelings about Jewish work, articulated by labor Zionists like
Berl Katznelson, who said, "everywhere the Jewish laborer goes, the
divine presence goes with him." (Segev, 255)
In addition to redeeming the Jewish nation through work, there was also
an element of redeeming Eretz Yisrael, Palestine, in the kibbutz
ideology. In Anti-Zionist literature that was circulating around Eastern
Europe, Palestine was mocked as "dos gepeigerte land"—"the country that
had died." Kibbutz members took pleasure in bring the land back to life
by planting trees, draining swamps, and countless other activities to
make the land more fertile. In soliciting donations, kibbutzim and other
Zionist settlement activities presented themselves as "making the desert
bloom."
Most kibbutzim were indeed founded on vacant land, but many were founded
on land that had long been cultivated before. The land on which Degania
was established had previously been occupied by Arab tenant farmers, who
were evicted when the land was purchased from absentee landlords by a
Zionist settlement agency. Not all kibbutzim were founded in deserts,
either: most were in the Galilee, a region with many streams and springs
that receives up to forty inches of rain a year.
Members of a kibbutz, or kibbutzniks, like other participants in the
Zionist movement, did not predict that there would be conflict between
Jews and Arabs over Palestine. Mainstream Zionists predicted that Arabs
would be grateful for the economic benefits that the Jews would bring.
The left wing of the kibbutz movement believed that the enemies of the
Arab peasants were Arab landowners (called effendis), not Jewish fellow
farmers. By the late 1930s reality had dashed these notions of class
solidarity and kibbutzniks began to assume a military role in the
growing yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine).
The first kibbutzniks hoped to be more than plain farmers in Palestine.
They even hoped for more than a Jewish homeland there: they wanted to
create a new type of society where there would be no exploitation of
anyone and where all would be equal. The early kibbutzniks wanted to be
both free from working for others and from the guilt of exploiting hired
work. Thus was born the idea that Jews would band together, holding
their property in common, "from each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs."
Kibbutz members were not orthodox Marxists. Marxists did not believe in
nations, and kibbutzniks, as Zionists, clearly did. Traditional Marxists
were hostile to Zionism, even its communist manifestations. Following
the 1953 Doctors' plot and 1956 denouncement of Stalin's attrocities by
Nikita Khrushchev in his Secret Speech, many of the remaining hard-line
Kibbutzim communists rejected communism. However, to this day many
Kibbutzim remain a stronghold of left-wing ideology among the Israeli
Jewish population.
Although kibbutzniks practiced communism themselves, they did not
believe that communism would work for everyone. Kibbutz political
parties never called for the abolition of private property. Kibbutzniks
saw kibbutzim as collective enterprises within a capitalist system.
Also, kibbutzim are democratic, holding periodic elections for Kibbutz
functions, being governed democratically and actively participating in
national elections. Kibbutzniks generally believe in the democratic
political process and have never called for a "dictatorship of the
proletariat".
It should be noted that while most Kibutzim were founded by communist or
socialist movements, some Kibbutzim were initially settled by other
ideological groups, not necessarily left-wing. A case in point are
Kibutzim belonging to the Kibbutz Dati (Religious Kibbutz) movement,
pure communism rejecting any religious manifestations (more on
ideological differences between Kibbutz movements below). Other communal
settlements with less socialist emphasis (e.g., enabling private
property) became known as Moshav (plural: Moshavim).
Communal life
The principle of equality was taken extremely seriously up until the
1970s. Kibbutzniks did not individually own animals, tools, or even
clothing. Gifts and income received from outside were turned over to the
common treasury. If one kibbutz member received a gift in services—like
a visit to a relative who was a dentist or a trip abroad paid for by a
parent—there were arguments at evening meetings about the propriety of
accepting such a gift.
The arrival of children at a new kibbutz posed certain problems. If
kibbutzniks owned everything in common, then who was in charge of the
children? This question was answered by regarding the children as
belonging to all, even to the point of kibbutz mothers breastfeeding
babies which were not their own. For most kibbutzim, the arrival of
children was a sobering experience. "When we saw our first children in
the playpen, hitting one another, or grabbing toys just for themselves,
we were overcome with anxiety. What did it mean that even an education
in communal life couldn't uproot these egotistical tendencies? The
utopia of our initial social conception was slowly, slowly destroyed."
(Segev, 254) Overall though, kibbutzim always had a very low birthrate.
In the 1920s kibbutzim began a practice of raising children communally
away from their parents in special communities called "Children's
Societies" (Mossad Hinuchi). The theory was that trained nurses and
teachers would be better care-providers than amateur parents. Children
and parents would have better relationships due to the Children's
Societies, since parents would not have to be disciplinarians, and there
would be no Oedipus Complex. Also, it was hoped that raising children
away from parents would liberate mothers from their "biological
tragedy." Instead of spending hours a day raising children, women could
thus be free to work or enjoy leisure.
There is much to be said about the role of women on kibbutzim. In the
early days there were always more men than women on kibbutzim, so
naturally kibbutzim tended to be male-dominated places. Memoirs of early
kibbutz life tend to show female kibbutzniks as desperate to perform the
same kinds of roles as kibbutz men, from digging up rocks to planting
trees. At Degania at least, it seems that the men wanted the women to
continue to perform traditional female roles, such as cooking, sewing,
and cleaning.
Eventually the men of the kibbutz gave in and allowed, even expected,
women to perform the same roles as men, including guard duty. The desire
to liberate women from traditional maternal duties was another
ideological underpinning of the Children's Society system.
Interestingly, women born on kibbutzim were much less reluctant to
perform traditional female roles. It was the generation of women born on
kibbutzim who eventually ended the Societies of Children. Also, although
there was a "masculinization of women," there was no corresponding
feminization of men. Women may have worked the fields, but men did not
work childcare.
Social lives were held in common as well, not only property. As an
example, most kibbutz dining halls exclusively had benches. It was not
an issue of cost or convenience, but benches were considered to be
another way of expressing communal values. At some kibbutzim husbands
and wives were discouraged from sitting together, as marriage was a kind
of exclusivity. In The Kibbutz Community and Nation Building, Paula
Rayman reports that Kibbutz Har refused to buy teakettles for its
members in the 1950s. It was not that the teakettles were expensive, it
was that couples having their own teakettles would have meant that
people would spend more time in apartments, rather than in the communal
dining hall.
The communal life was naturally hard for some people. Every kibbutz saw
new members quit after a few years. Since kibbutzniks had no individual
bank accounts, any purchase that could not be made at the kibbutz
canteen had to be approved by a committee, a potentially humiliating
experience. Kibbutzim also had their share of members who were not hard
workers, or who abused common property; there would always be resentment
against these "parasites." Finally, kibbutzim, as small, isolated
communities, tended to be places of gossip.
Although major decisions about the future of the kibbutz were made by
consensus or by voting, day-to-day decisions about where people would
work were made by elected leaders. Typically, kibbutzniks would learn
their assignments by reading an assignment sheet.
Kibbutz memoirs from the Pioneer era report that kibbutz meetings were
heated arguments or free-flowing philosophical discussions. Memoirs and
accounts from kibbutz observers from the 1950s and 1960s report that
kibbutz meetings were businesslike and poorly attended.
Kibbutzim attempted to rotate people into different jobs. One week a
person might work in planting, the next week with livestock, the week
after in the kibbutz factory, the next week in laundry. Even managers
would have to work in menial jobs. Rotation was good in that all shared
in every kind of work, but it was harmful in that it interfered with
allowing people to specialize.
Children's Societies were one of the features of kibbutz life that most
interested outsiders. In the heyday of Children's Societies, parents
would only spend two hours a day, typically in the afternoon, with their
children. In Kibbutz Artzi parents were explicitly forbidden to put
their children to bed at night. As children got older, parents would
sometimes go for days on end without seeing their offspring, except from
chance encounters on the grounds of the kibbutz.
Some children who went through Children's Societies said they loved the
experience, others are ambivalent, but a vocal group says that growing
up without one's parents was very difficult. Years later, a kibbutz
member described her childhood in a Children's Society:
Allowed to suckle every four hours, left to cry and develop our lungs,
we grew up without the basic security needed for survival. Sitting on
the potty at regular intervals next to other children doing the same, we
were educated to be the same; but we were, for all that, different…. At
night the grownups leave and turn off all the lights. You know you will
wet the bed because it is too frightening to go to the lavatory.
(Gavron, 168)
Aversion to sex was not part of the kibbutz ideology, in fact, teenaged
boys and girls were not segregated at night in Children's Societies, yet
many visitors to kibbutzim were amazed at how conservative the
communities tended to be. In Children of the Dream, Bruno Bettelheim
quoted a kibbutz friend, "at a time when the American girls preen
themselves, and try to show off as much as possible sexually, our girls
cover themselves up and refuse to wear clothing that might show their
breasts or in any other fashion be revealing." Kibbutz divorce rates
were and are extremely low. (Bettelheim, 243)
Kibbutzim have always been very cultured places. Many kibbutzniks were
and are writers, actors, or artists. Kibbutzim have theater companies,
choirs, orchestras, athletic leagues, and classes. In 1953 Givat Brenner
staged the play My Glorious Brothers, about the Maccabee revolt,
building a real village on a hilltop as a set, planting real trees, and
performing for 40,000 people. Like all kibbutz work products at the
time, all the actors were members of the kibbutz, and all were ordered
to perform as part of their work assignments.
Psychological aspects
In the era of independent Israel kibbutzim attracted interest from
sociologists and psychologists who attempted to answer the question:
What are the effects of life without private property? What are the
effects of life being brought up apart from one's parents?
Two researchers who wrote about psychological life on kibbutzim were
Melford E. Spiro (1958) and Bruno Bettelheim (1969). Both concluded that
a kibbutz upbringing led to individuals' having greater difficulty in
making strong emotional commitments thereafter, such as falling in love
or forming a lasting friendship. On the other hand, they appear to find
it easier to have a large number of less-involved friendships, and a
more active social life.
Bettelheim suggested that the lack of private property was the cause of
the lack of emotions in kibbutzniks. He wrote, "nowhere more than in the
kibbutz did I realize the degree to which private property, in the deep
layers of the mind, relates to private emotions. If one is absent, the
other tends to be absent as well". (See primitivism and primitive
communism for a general discussion of these concepts).
Other researchers came to a conclusion that children growing up in these
tightly knit communities tended to see the other children around them as
ersatz siblings and preferred to seek mates outside the community when
they reached maturity. Some theorize that living amongst one another on
a daily basis virtually from birth on produced an extreme version of the
Westermarck effect, which subconsciously diminished teenage kibbutzniks'
sexual attraction to one another. Partly as a result of not finding a
mate from within the kibbutz, youth often abandon kibbutz life as
adults.
It is a subject of debate within the kibbutz movement as to how
successful kibbutz education was in developing the talents of gifted
children. Many kibbutz-raised children look back and say that the
communal system stifled ambition; others say that bright children were
nonetheless encouraged. Bruno Bettelheim had predicted that kibbutz
education would yield mediocrity: "[kibbutz children] will not be
leaders or philosophers, will not achieve anything in science or art."
Bettelheim's prediction was certainly wrong about the specific children
he met at "Kibbutz Atid." In the 1990s a journalist tracked down the
children Bettelheim had interviewed back in the 1960s at what was
actually Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan. The journalist found that the children
were highly accomplished in academia, business, music, and the military.
"Bettelheim got it totally wrong." (Gavron, 166)
Kibbutz and child rearing
Despite reports by individual journalists or reporters, there is a large
body of empirical research dealing with child rearing in kibbutzim. Such
research has been criticial of the way children are raised in a Kibbutz.
In a 1977 study, Fox compared the separation effects experienced by
kibbutz children when removed from their mother, compared with removal
from their metapelet (The care giver in an Israeli Kibbutzim is called
as metapelet). He found that the child showed separation distress in
both situations, but when reunited children were significantly more
attached to their mothers than to the metapelet. The children protested
subsequent separation from their mothers when the metapelet was
reintroduced to them. However kibbutzim children shared high bonding
with their parents as compared to those who were send to Boarding
schools because in a kibbutz a child spends 3 hours every day with his
parents.
In another study by Scharf (2001) The group brought up in communal
environment within a kibbutzim showed less ability in coping with
imagined situations of separation than those who were brought up with
their families. This has far reaching implications for child attachment
adaptability and therefore institutions like kibbutzim.
Kibbutz economics
Kibbutzim in the early days tried to be self-sufficient in all
agricultural goods, from eggs to dairy to fruits to meats. Through
experimentation, kibbutzniks discovered that self-sufficiency was
impossible.
Kibbutzniks were also not self-sufficient when it came to capital
investment. At the founding of a kibbutz, when it would be opened on
land owned by the Jewish National Fund; for expansion, most kibbutzim
were dependent on subsidies from charity or the State of Israel. Most of
the subsidies took the form of low-interest loans or discounted water.
In Israel, when interest rates were routinely over 30 percent until the
1990s and where water is expensive, these gifts came to a very great
amount indeed.
Even prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, kibbutzim had
begun to branch out from agriculture into manufacturing. Kibbutz
Degania, for instance, set up a factory to fabricate diamond cutting
tools, it now grosses several million dollars a year. Kibbutz Hatzerim
has a factory for drip irrigation equipment (a technique that was
invented on the kibbutz). Hatzerim's business, called Netafim, is a
multinational corporation that grosses over $250 million a year. Maagan
Michael branched out from making bullets to making plastics and medical
tools. Maagan Michael's enterprises earn over $100 million a year. A
great wave of kibbutz industrialization came in the 1960s, and today
only 15 percent of kibbutz members work in agriculture.
Kibbutzim industrialized at a time when agricultural jobs were not
enough to absorb everyone on the kibbutz. Kibbutzim also industrialized
due to pressure from the State of Israel. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s
Israel had one of the world's highest trade deficits, the state was
desperate to grow its exports and kibbutzim were asked to play a role.
The hiring of seasonal workers was always a point of controversy in the
kibbutz movement. During harvest time, when hands were needed, was
hiring someone permissible? Most kibbutzim compromised with practical
exigencies and began the practice of hiring non-kibbutzniks when work
was at its peak.
Hiring non-Jews was especially contentious. The founders of the kibbutz
movement wanted to redeem the Jewish nation through work, and hiring
non-Jews to do hard tasks would not be consistent with that idea. In the
1910s Kibbutz Degania vainly searched for Jewish masons to build their
homes. Only when they could not find Jewish masons willing to endure the
malaria of their location did they hire Arabs.
Today, kibbutzim have changed dramatically. Only 38 percent of kibbutz
employees are kibbutz members. By the 1970s, kibbutzim were frequently
hiring Palestinians. Currently, Thais have replaced Palestinians as the
non-Jewish physical work element at kibbutzim. They are omnipresent in
various service areas and in factories.
As kibbutzim branched out into manufacturing in the 1960s, they are
branching out into tourism and services today. Kibbutz Hatzerim even has
a law firm. Virtually every kibbutz has guest rooms for rent. Some of
these rooms are spartan and are intended for travelling students, but
Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim has a luxury hotel with a view. Several kibbutzim,
such as Kibbutz Lotan and Kfar Ruppin, operate bird-watching vacations.
They brag that a European visitor can see more birds in one week in
Israel than he or she would in a year at home. It is not lost on the
modern kibbutz movement that kibbutzniks today are working in
occupations which the first kibbutz generation condemned.
Contrary to the predictions of classical economics, kibbutzim had no
dearth of entrepreneurship. Many kibbutzim aggressively put money into
building new enterprises, even playing the stock market. This borrowing
spree caught up to the kibbutz movement in the 1980s, forcing kibbutzim
to retreat from collective ideas. Today, most kibbutzim are at the
economic break-even point, a dozen or so are very wealthy, and several
score lose money.
Today, many people who live on kibbutzim have to work outside the
kibbutz. They are expected to return a percentage of their earnings to
the collective. One urban kibbutz, Kibbutz Tammuz, has no enterprises;
all of its members work in the non-kibbutz sector.
Future
Decline of the kibbutz movement
Kibbutzim have gradually and steadily become less collectivist in the
past twenty years. Rather than the principle of "from each according to
his ability, to each according to his needs," kibbutzim have adopted
"from each according to his preferences, to each according to his
needs."
The first changes to be made were in utilities and in the dining hall.
When electricity was "free" kibbutzniks had no incentive to save energy.
People would leave their air conditioners running constantly. In the
1980s kibbutzim began to meter energy usage. Having kibbutzniks pay for
energy usage required that kibbutzniks actually have personal money.
Hence returned private accounts.
The dining hall also was one of the first things to change. When food
was "free," people had no incentive to take the appropriate amount.
Every kibbutz dining hall would end the night with enormous amounts of
extra food; often this food would be fed to the animals. Now most
kibbutz dining halls are a la carte cafeterias.
Kibbutzniks see their neighbors more than most other Israelis, but they
have begun to live private lives. Several kibbutz dining halls are no
longer even open for three meals a day. Kibbutz families have DVD
players and the internet like other Israeli families. Group activities
are much less well attended than they were in the past. Instead of
all-night discussions of cosmic issues, kibbutz general meetings are now
infrequently scheduled.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of how kibbutzim have abandoned the
principle of equality is the implementation of differential salaries. A
manager of a factory would now receive a much larger personal allowance
than a factory worker, or agricultural worker.
In the 1970s nearly all kibbutzim abandoned Children's Societies in
favor of the traditional nuclear family. The reasons were many. Some
kibbutzim believed that communal life for children led to psychological
problems; some said that giving up one's children was too great a
sacrifice for parents. The children themselves said that they remembered
being fearful at night in the dark, away from their parents.
Although kibbutzim abandoned the Children's Societies, kibbutz children
do not grow up like their non-kibbutz peers. Many kibbutzim give
children their own apartments when they turn sixteen. Other kibbutzim
still have Children's Societies for youngsters who are older than
twelve.
Since the late 1970s kibbutzim have lost prestige in the eyes of
non-kibbutz Israelis. The image of the kibbutznik has gone from
self-sacrificing pioneer and guardian of the state's borders to that of
a non-mainstream, idealistic subsidy consumer.
There are several causes of the loss of prestige. One reason is that as
Israel’s Mizrahi (also called “Sephardic”) and religious populations
have become larger and more assertive. For various reasons, kibbutzim
never attracted large numbers of non-Ashkenazi Jews. By the 1980s, when
virtually every other institution in Israel was fully integrated between
Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, kibbutzim stood out as Ashkenazi bastions.
Kibbutzim, nearly all of which are secular also have become less
respected as Israel has become more religious. In the 1980s kibbutzim
were not allowed to participate in the absorption of Ethiopian Jews, as
there were fears that the secularism of the kibbutzim would influence
the religiosity of the Ethiopian immigrants.
Kibbutz industrialization in the 1960s led to an increase in the kibbutz
standard of living, but that increase in the standard of living meant an
end to the self-sacrifice which regular Israelis had so admired. In his
1977 campaign for prime minister, Menachem Begin attacked kibbutzniks as
“millionaires with swimming pools” and was rewarded with the right's
first ever electoral victory.
Finally, the need for government bailouts harmed the kibbutz image. In
the 1970s and early 1980s Israel experienced hyperinflation– up to 400
percent per year. During that period kibbutzim borrowed excessively with
the expectation that inflation would virtually eliminate their debts.
When the Israeli government implemented an austerity program that
brought inflation down to 20 percent per year kibbutzim were left with
billions in debt that they could not repay. The ensuing bail-out by the
government, banks, and profitable kibbutzim cost the kibbutz movement
considerable respect.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were a bad time for the kibbutz movement
as the kibbutz population aged and shrank, yet there were still areas of
vibrancy in the movement. In that time, several new kibbutzim were
founded in the Arava, in far southern Israel, near Eilat. One notable
new Arava kibbutz is Kibbutz Samar.
Kibbutz Samar does not call itself an anarchist kibbutz, but in effect
that is what it is. Instead of members being assigned to various tasks,
members work where they feel they are needed, without any formal
assignment. Kibbutz Samar still also has an open cash box. Kibbutz Samar
maintains a trust among members that is seldom seen in other kibbutzim.
Kibbutzniks no longer expect to transform the rest of Israel, or the
globe, into one large collectivist project, but they have not given up
on changing the world in smaller ways. Kibbutzniks are prominent in
Israel's environmental movement. Some kibbutzim try to generate all
their power through solar cells. Kibbutzniks are also prominent among
Israel's peace activists.
Beginning in 2003 the kibbutz population began to rebound from its long
decline. The increase in population that began that year has continued
to the present. Most kibbutzim that are seeing an increase in population
are reformed kibbutzim.
Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava adds environmentalism to the ideological legs
of the kibbutz movement. This wall is made from recycled materials.
Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava adds environmentalism to the ideological legs
of the kibbutz movement. This wall is made from recycled materials.
While some kibbutzim lose money, kibbutzim are an integral part of
Israel's defense apparatus, particularly those kibbutzim which lie in
border areas. It is likely that the Israeli government will continue to
support them for military as well as political and historical reasons.
Kibbutzniks defend subsidies by pointing out that every developed nation
subsidizes its agriculture.
Legacy
In his history of Palestine under the British Mandate, One Palestine,
Complete, the post-Zionist "new historian" Tom Segev wrote of the
kibbutz movement:
The kibbutz was an original social creation, yet always a marginal
phenomenon. By the end of the 1920s no more than 4,000 people, children
included, lived on some thirty kibbutzim, and they amounted to a mere
2.5 percent of Palestine’s Jewish population. The most important service
the kibbutzim provided to the Jewish national struggle was military, not
economic or social. They were guardians of Zionist land, and their
patterns of settlement would to a great extent determine the country’s
borders. The kibbutzim also had a powerful effect on the Zionist
self-image. (Segev, 252)
Segev’s view might be cynical, but he is correct that the story of Tel
Aviv, which, coincidentally, was founded in the same year as Degania,
would be more representative of the yishuv experience than the stories
of the kibbutzim.
Kibbutzim have been criticized for falling short of living up to their
own ideals. Most kibbutzim are not self-sufficient and have to employ
non-kibbutz members as farm workers (or later factory workers). What was
particularly controversial was the employment of Arab labourers while
excluding them from the possibility of joining the Kibbutz as full
members.
In more recent decades, kibbutzim have been criticized for abandoning
socialist principles and instead attempting to be competitors in the
market. Kibbutz Shamir owns an optical products company that is listed
on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Numerous kibbutzim have moved away from
farming and instead developed parts of their property for commercial and
industrial purposes, building shopping malls and factories on kibbutz
land that serve and employ non kibbutz members while the kibbutz retains
a profit from land rentals or sales. Conversely, kibbutzim which have
not engaged in this sort of development have been criticized for
becoming dependent on state subsidies to survive.
Nonetheless, kibbutzniks played a role in yishuv society and then
Israeli society, far out of proportion to their population. From Moshe
Dayan to Ehud Barak, kibbutzniks have served Israel in positions of
leadership. David Ben Gurion lived most of his life in Tel Aviv, but
Kibbutz Sde Boker, in the Negev, was his spiritual home.
Kibbutzim also contributed greatly to the growing Hebrew culture
movement. The poet Rachel rhapsodized on the landscape from viewpoints
from various Galilee kibbutzim in the 1920s and 1930s. The kibbutz dream
of "making the desert bloom" became part of the Israeli dream as well.
Likewise, kibbutzim disproportionately affect the views that the rest of
the world has of Israel and the image Israelis have of their country.
One reason socialists were very supportive of Israel in its first two
decades of existence was that kibbutzim represented socialism in its
purest form. Books and movies about Israel, from James Michener's The
Source to Leon Uris' Exodus, all feature kibbutzniks prominently. The
stereotypical image of the kibbutznik—tanned and wearing a "zimple"
sunhat with a fold-down brim—became the stereotypical image of all
Israelis, even being used in anti-Zionist propaganda. As for the image
Israelis have of themselves, once, when asked what he proposed doing
about the thousands of Israelis who did not have enough food to eat,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak proposed that Israelis simply open their
pantries to the hungry, as if Israel were one big kibbutz.
Since there are still over 250 kibbutzim in Israel, it may be premature
to address the legacy of the kibbutz movement. However, although there
may be hundreds of entities in Israel calling themselves kibbutzim, the
collectivist impulse is gone. As the largest secular collectivist
movement ever, kibbutzim arguably prove that the model itself is
economically sustainable, while the ideological fervor is not.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
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