For a change I am ignoring our never ending political intrigues, the murky domestic feuding between Arabs and Jews, between the secular-traditional majority and the Haredi sectors and the ongoing Conflict with some of our Arab neighbours backed by their Persian patron.
I’ve chosen to write about my home turf – the kibbutz.
As fitting the occasion the centennial of the kibbutz is being celebrated with more nostalgia than pyrotechnics. However not everyone is rushing to heap praise on this alternative society. Some of its critics berate the kibbutz claiming it has forsaken its ideology and has veered off the course set by its founding fathers. Others say its ideology is outmoded. They take it to task for obdurately maintaining a lifestyle that contradicts human nature.
Search and you will find soothsayers of all kinds who have predicted the demise of the kibbutz and have hurried to eulogise it while it is still alive and kicking.
Martin Buber was kinder when he described it as," An experiment that hasn't yet failed."
Just the same if we bear in mind that less than two percent of Israelis live in kibbutz communities, this homegrown commune hardly deserves to be called an "alternative society."
This morning like most mornings our breakfast table parliament convened in the factory cafeteria. As usual "Z" positioned himself at the hub of the topic discussed, asserting his opinion and predicting what the outcome will be.
Listening to him it occurred to me that he is indeed a chip off the old block.
In 1916 his grandfather, kibbutz pioneer and author Zvi Shatz was sure that the newly formed collective groups would become the dominant settlement community in both rural and urban Palestine. Speaking at a political conference of settlement leaders he predicted that they (the collective groups), "would sprout like mushrooms after rain."
By no stretch of the imagination could Shatz and his generation of pioneers have conjured up a vision of the kibbutz today. Admittedly it hasn't fulfilled his prophesy but in many respects it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Zvi Shatz didn't live to see the outcome of the alternative society, the experiment in communal living he had pioneered. He was murdered in Jaffa at the time of the Arab riots in 1921.
It could be argued that 125,000 people living in 270 communities are no more than a marginal sector of the general population, an insignificant anomaly.
A hundred years after the first furrow was ploughed at Degania the kibbutz is still experimenting, adapting and changing. Defiant and amazingly resilient it simply won’t go away It has survived crises, not the least among them an identity crisis.. In the past the kibbutz filled a pioneering role demarcating the nation's borders, reclaiming and farming the land. The kibbutzim were also the nation's front line of defence, tenaciously "holding their ground" against better armed enemies during Isral's war of independence. No longer required to fill national roles the kibbutz, like the proverbial pensioner was sent home cap in hand. Without a clearly defined goal and unable to formulate a new national purpose the kibbutzim became more introspective, more attendant to the quality of life. The “good life” became a good life too.
At that time one critical observer remarked, "These were people who wanted to change the world. Now, they're content to live a life of carefree irrelevance. That's the Kibbutz today."
There were new challenges facing the kibbutz, notable among them the absorption of the new immigrants that came to Israel in the fifties and sixties.
However most of the new immigrants were not attracted to the strange rural communities. On the other hand the Youth Aliya programme designed to accommodate and foster immigrant children was an unprecedented success.
Some of the youth returned to the kibbutz after their army service others settled elsewhere. All of them benefited from the kibbutz sojourn.
No assessment of the kibbutz enterprise would be complete without some reference to the communitarian settlement in North America.
Some researchers trace its origins to the Dutch Mennonites who settled briefly in Delaware in 1663. Professor Yaakov Oved , (Tel Aviv University) chose not to include them in his definitive history of American communal settlements -
"Two hundred years of American Communes" ( 1988)
Most of the utopian communities were short lived, however some like the Shakers, the New Harmony community and others continued into the twentieth century. Two Shaker communes still exist today.
In the 1880s a few Jewish communal settlements were established in Kansas and Oregon. They too were short lived.
The vast majority of those experiments proved unsuccessful. One study has shown that during the late 19th century, 25% of all utopian communities failed within one year, and 30% of the nonreligious communities lasted no more than a year.
It’s fair to say that all these communities had little or no impact on American society.
The last wave of utopian communities in the United States occurred during the radical social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. At least 4,000 communes developed during this period. Their total membership exceeded 250,000 individuals. Those utopian societies were part of the general counterculture movement that searched for an alternative to war and dependence on technology. Members flocked to communes to experiment with collective living and to achieve personal, often spiritual, fulfillment.
In a lecture given at the 6th International Communal Studies Association conference, in Amsterdam. Yaakov Oved, summarised the communitarian phenomenon as follows:
“We can state, without a shadow of a doubt, that the twentieth century was the richest of all for voluntary communes. In an overall review of the history of communes we can discern a number of characteristic lines:
From the first years of the present century, large communal movements, which developed over the years, have existed continuously. The first of these is the Israeli kibbutz movement which had its beginnings in the first decade of the century and which at present has a total population of 125,000 souls living in 270 settlements.
The second-largest communal group is the Hutterite movement, which is also the oldest communal order, and which was established in Central Europe in the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century its communities in the United States had a population of approximately 2,000 souls, while today the number some 40,000 people living in 400 communes.
A smaller movement that has maintained its stability and growth is the Bruderhof, which had its beginning in Germany in 1920 and which today has a population of 2,500 souls in eight settlements in the United States and Great Britain.
In the present century there has been an uninterrupted series of emergences of communes. Not a decade has gone by without the appearance of new communes. While in previous centuries, new communes were mostly isolated communities, and mainly in the United States, in the present century we have witnessed the extensive establishment of communes in numerous countries on different continents. These waves appeared against the background of significant historical events.”
I doubt if this late revival has had much of an impact on the nation in general and society in particular.
The kibbutz however, despite its later introspective direction has always been and still is highly integrated in Israeli society.
A snippet highlighted in the Israeli news media this week illustrates this well:
“It's now official: The long-rumoured merger of Shamir Optical Industry and Essilor International was announced late last week.
The French company, which dominates the worldwide corrective optical lens industry, will be acquiring 50% of kibbutz-based company Shamir Optimal's share capital.
Shamir Optical will become consolidated into Essilor's operations once the transaction is complete.
Essilor will be purchasing the 37% of the company's shares that are publicly held, and the remaining 13% from Kibbutz Shamir. The kibbutz, which currently holds 63% of the company's stock, will retain 50%.
After the transaction, Shamir Optical will be de-listed from NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. “
Kibbutz companies have been proving resilient in recent years and many have grown from small manufacturers to international corporations. Twenty kibbutz companies are currently traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the number of kibbutz-owned companies traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange is expected to double in coming years.
A case in point is the industry I work in. Ricor is the only Israeli company manufacturing its particular electro-optical accessory. Since the product is defence industries related I can’t describe it in more detail. Suffice to say that the company is doing well. Perhaps Zvi Shatz would be appalled to learn that the company his grandson works in employs more than 120 outside workers.
The principle of self-labour, once one of the basic tenets of the kibbutz is no longer relevant. We could never have developed Ricor if we had strictly adhered to the principle of self-labour. Instead more than 120 people from other kibbutzim and nearby towns together with 60 members of my kibbutz find gainful employment in our factory and contribute to the nation’s security.
Undoubtedly the most controversial change that has taken place in recent times is the privatisation that has taken place in many kibbutz communities.
I can’t possibly do justice to this aspect of the contemporary kibbutz in the narrow confines of this letter, especially the little space I have left. Therefore, I will mention it on another occasion.
Ironically Degania where the kibbutz enterprise started is one of the “reconstructed” kibbutz communities where members are remunerated for their work on a differential scale. The kibbutz movement is divided into two camps the kibbutzim that have been “reconstructed” (privatised) and a smaller number of kibbutzim aligned with the traditional collective philosophy which has incorporated a small degree of privatisation.
Rereading this survey I realise that my comments are disjointed and tend to confuse more than they enlighten. My apologies.
Have a good weekend.
Beni 27th of October 2010.
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