News from Oz

[Yes, it's finally time to emerge from my teaching shell and update my blog!]

A new book by Israeli author Amos Oz is cause to celebrate for any lover of world literature. But for a kibbutz-o-phile obsessed with the inside story of communal life, a fresh collection of Oz’s wry, ironically observed stories of life set on a rural commune can seem heaven-sent. And then you realize it’s still only in Hebrew. Which you don't read.

  
Oh well, at least the weekend magazine of the newspaper Ha’aretz has published a long interview with the the 73-year-old ex-kibbutznik and elder-statesman of Israeli letters about his life, his politics, his literary influences and his new anthology of stories, Between Friends, set on apocryphal Kibbutz Yikhat. (Why it is so hard to find this level of literary discussion, let alone 5,000 words devoted to a writer, in a Canadian publication is another story…)

In the article, Oz talks about the utopian dreams of the kibbutz founders:

The first ideal of the kibbutz was sharp: to transform human nature instantaneously. Effectively, they [the founders] set out as a youthful camp, in the innocent belief that they would remain 18 and 20 forever. A camp of young people who were liberated from their parents, from all the prohibitions and inhibitions of the Jewish village and Jewish religion − a camp in which everything is permitted, suffused with perpetual ecstasy, and where life is always at a peak. You work, argue, love and dance until your strength runs out. It was childish, of course. In time, it became dulled. And then what came to the fore were the constants of human nature. The vulnerability, the selfishness, the ambition, the materialism and the greed. It was a forlorn dream, imagining that it would be possible to triumph over all those forces, be reborn and create a new human being without the shortcomings of the old one

He discusses why he left Kibbutz Hulda (because of his son’s health), and how his new collection allowed him to reflect on what he left behind, good and bad:

There were a few things I didn’t like about kibbutz life. But I feel the absence of those things that I did like. And in this book I wanted to go back and look at them. Especially at the loneliness in a society where there is ‏(supposedly‏) no place for loneliness. In a few of the stories a situation is portrayed of “almost touching”: People very nearly touch, but something blocks it. Like in the painting by Michelangelo where finger almost touches finger.

I am very curious about loneliness and grace, or a moment of grace amid loneliness, because that is a description of the human condition. The stories are set on a kibbutz, but they tell about universal situations, about the most basic forces in human existence. About loneliness. About love. About loss. About death. About desire. About forgoing and about longing. In fact, about the simple and profound matters which no person is unfamiliar with.

He explains how curiosity can make us more “moral”—that, in effect, literature’s ethical function isn’t necessarily to teach us lessons but to let us see the world through another’s eyes:

I think a person who is curious is slightly more moral than one who is not curious, because sometimes he enters into the skin of another. I think a curious person is even a better lover than one who is not curious. Even my political approach to the Palestinian question, for example, sprang from curiosity. I am not a Middle East expert or a historian or a strategist. I simply asked myself, at a very young age, what it would be like if I were one of them.

He admits he still has no regrets about living (and leaving) on a kibbutz. Writers will be especially interested to hear Oz discuss how communal life offered the ideal milieu to develop his literary ear and eye:

I do not regret it for a second. I regret a few of the experiences my children underwent on kibbutz. There were some hard bits, but I left Hulda without anger. For me, the kibbutz was an ultimate university of human nature. I spent 30 years with 300 people in intimate proximity. I saw everything − them and their lives − and knew their secrets. If I’d spent 30 years in Tel Aviv, or New York, I would not have had the slightest chance of becoming so intimately acquainted with 300 souls. The price was that they knew more about me than I would have wanted them to know. But that’s a fair price. In terms of my writing, I learned much of what I know about human nature on kibbutz.

And I love his metaphor for how he has come, if not exactly to praise the kibbutz, then definitely not (like so many critics in recent years) to slay this once-legendary institution:

Unlike others, I am no longer slaughtering sacred cows. There was a time when I did. Not today. Besides which, in every cowshed there is one sick old cow left, surrounded by a herd of exultant, gung-ho slaughterers. I am almost always on the side of the cow. It’s not that I don’t know what a foul smell that cow gives off. And it’s not that I worship it. But between the cow and the slaughterers who gather around − I prefer the cow. I am talking about Zionism, the kibbutz and the labor movement.

The Kibbutz in the News

There is plenty to catch up with in news of the kibbutz. Most recently, Ha'aretz printed an interesting article about the evolving volunteer programs on kibbutzim—how more volunteers are now coming from places like India or Latin America, and how these new volunteers fit within the 21st-century economics of privatized kibbutzim now more likely to use cheap imported labour (usually Thai workers) for agricultural field work that was once the domain of itinerant volunteers from North America, Australia and Europe.

As the director of the kibbutz movement's volunteer department explains the pros and cons of inviting volunteers into a community: "Kibbutzim want to feel young again, and the universality of the volunteers, their vivacity. Volunteers require a bigger investment of energy; you have to see to their conditions, to trips, vacations - not every kibbutz [is willing to] do this. Some say, 'It doesn't suit us to run a kindergarten.'"

The Guardian in the U.K. published a short memoir, by novelist Noam Shpancer, about growing up on a kibbutz in the communal children’s house. He lauds the freedom to explore that he experienced as a child:

Entertainment was mostly of the found, not manufactured, sort. Our playgrounds were junkyards. We played with defunct tractors, old boxes, used clothing and discarded tools. We roamed the yard, mostly barefoot. We built tree houses. We took turns on the lone communal bicycle. In winter we collected mushrooms in the forest and brought them to the communal dining room to be cooked.

He also describes the stultifying effects of the relentless pressure to conform, to be one with the peer group:

Individuality and competition were looked down upon. Children who were unusual, eccentric or sought to distinguish themselves, were shunned. We were socialised to be strong and sunny, simple and similar. Emotional expression was demeaned as weak and self-involved. We learned to numb ourselves. I haven't cried since I was 10. I'd like to but I can't.

He writes about how the kibbutz system gave his parents, his father especially, the stability and purpose (beyond mere survival) that they had lost in their escape from Nazi Germany. He also describes how these pioneers failed to prepare for the “second day” of the revolution—“in which the self-defining project of their youthful rebellion would become a mundane, constricting ‘home town’ to their children, propelling the children to seek their own identities and adventures elsewhere.”

Ultimately, nearly an entire generation of kibbutz children (like Shpancer) sought their own identities and adventures beyond the wire of their home kibbutz. Only now are some of them returning to a much-changed movement that has abandoned the strict enforcement of collective child-rearing and other communal ideals. For someone who experienced it first-hand, Shpancer doesn’t think such changes are a bad thing.

The plight of Sudanese refugees who escaped to Israel over the Egyptian border is a complicated issue. A recent Jerusalem Post article describes efforts (including some kibbutz-based programs) to retrain and help refugees resettle back in southern Sudan. One former refugee hopes to found not one but a series of Sudanese kibbutzim, inspired by his experiences in Israel:

Emanuel Logooro, who returned to Southern Sudan nearly a year ago after four years at Kibbutz Eilot, said he was in the process of starting up a kibbutz back home. “I want to contribute to my country, and a kibbutz would be a great contribution,” he said while visiting Israel. “My family said I could have some of their land – Sudan is a very, very big country, and they gave me enough land to start seven kibbutzim. I got a bank loan to start building the facilities, and now I’m hoping to find about 40 families to join,” said Logooro, who came to Israel with his wife and is now back home with her and their three children.

Finally, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company performed this week in Vancouver. I wish KCDC had made it to Victoria. In 2009, I was lucky enough to tour the company’s facilities on Kibbutz Ga’aton and catch a sneak peek at a few rehearsals. There is no better symbol of the change at this now-privatized kibbutz than that, when I was there two summers ago, the dining room—once the social hub of the community—was about to be renovated into another rehearsal/performance space for the internationally acclaimed dance troupe. Artistic director explained to a reporter from Vancouver’s Georgia Straight that while his troupe isn’t political per se, it’s hard to separate geopolitical realities from a cultural group coming from Israel:

So while Be’er doesn’t necessarily want his work seen as a literal commentary on the Israel that surrounds him, he does relish the thought of bringing his country’s perspective—and talent—to the rest of the world. “It’s important that we arrive from Israel and it’s not just the Israel you see in the news with crisis and bombing—that there is another side to it,” he says with heartfelt conviction. “There’s a lot of creativity and activity here, and I believe we can create communication—we can create a bridge.”

The Taxman Cometh

Sigh, it's that time of year again: tax time. (Actually, because I claim self-employment income as a freelance writer, I get a couple months breathing room here in Canada.) Apparently, that could mean some unexpectedly high tax bills for the 75% of kibbutzim that have voted to become mitkhadesh (aka, "innovating" or "privatized") rather than stay fully communal, according to a news article in today's Ha'aretz—upwards of 200 to 250 million shekels all together. (I just did the conversion: that's roughly 54 to 68 million U.S.) Here are details:

Starting in 2009, the kibbutzim were required to attach a statement detailing their financial management to their annual reports. Any kibbutz reporting its management met the description of a privatized kibbutz would then be taxed as such, and not as a collective. Taxes for a collective are calculated after dividing the income among all the members. Kibbutzim that did not pay taxes when operating collectively may be required to pay a pretty sum once privatized, a financial official from the kibbutz movement said.

It reminds me of stories I heard from kibbutzniks related to the debate about privatization. Before the big vote, many members get enticed by the estimates and prospects of more money in their pockets. After privatization goes through, they are less thrilled when that same money quickly disappears to pay for the various services (e.g., meals at the dining hall, electricity, upkeep, laundry, etc.) that were once provided for gratis by the kibbutz but that members—like the rest of us—now have to pay for out of their own budgets.

I wonder how many privatized kibbutzim will have second thoughts about the shinui (aka, The Change) when they get their tax bills this year. Maybe I could offer some tips on creative tax write-offs!  :)

Editorializing a Century of Communal Life

The Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz ran an unsigned editorial to mark a hundred years since the founding of the original kibbutz. I'm not sure if it's damning or not, but it does feel like faint praise. Still, the editorial does acknowledge the important role the kibbutz movement played in establishing the State of Israel. "One hundred years after its birth, this may not be the kibbutz's finest hour," the editorialists conclude, "but without the kibbutz, Israel would look very different today." The handful of comments posted about the story suggest the range of emotions that this experiment in socialism can still provoke today.


The newspaper also ran a report on Shimon Peres's visit to Kibbutz Degania, including a long quote about his nostalgia for kibbutz life:

"When I ask myself 'Why do I miss it?' I remember why I should me miss it," Peres said to the assembled group of kibbutz veterans. "I miss savoring the experience of a day's work that I learned in Kibbutz Geva. I miss Alumot, from whence we beheld the astonishing beauty of Emek Hayarden. I miss the simplicity of the long walks, the wrinkled khaki clothing. I miss the flowerbeds of Kibbutz Ashdot, the bushels of bananas on Kibbutz Degania, the plywood of Kibbutz Afikim. I miss the dates of Kibbutz Kinneret. I miss the green fields of crops and orchards." 

"I miss the dairy barn, the animal pens, and the chicken coops - from which various smells emanated," Peres continued. "I miss the wonderful hikes just before dawn and the grazing excursions to Wadi Fijas, where I fixed my eyes to the stars that were born with the new dawn. To this day a vibration courses through my body whenever I hear the name 'Degania' - whether it's Alef or Bet. The order does not matter."

"I ask myself why I miss it, just so I can figure out to whom I belong," the president said. 

State of the Movement

There was an informative news item in Ha-Aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers, about the state of the kibbutz movement as it celebrates its 100th anniversary. The article offers a clear summary plus supporting statistics of how many kibbutzim have voted to "privatize" and what that really means. ("Privatize" has a connotation in English that doesn't capture exactly what's happening in these communities, once run as anarcho-socialist communes—it makes it sound like they're being sold off to McDonald's or Procter-Gamble, which simply isn't true.)

Most interesting, while the trend of the past 10 years has been toward increasing privatization, so that it once seemed that the death of communalism was inevitable in the movement, last year only five more kibbutzim voted to differentiate their salaries and loosen their communal arrangements. That still leaves 65 "traditional" communities and nine half-and-half "integrated" kibbutzim.

One commentator suggests that 2009 may mark the "peak" of privatization and a realization that moving from a cooperative economic model to a more market-driven one often only benefits a fraction of any community in the end. Dr. Shlomo Getz, the head of the Institute for the Study of the Kibbutz and the Communal Idea in Haifa, cautioned not to make too much of these numbers and assume that privatization has "stalled" -- several more communities are considering, and will likely vote on, altering their economic structure.

Along with two American colleagues at the University of California (an idealistic institution suffering through its own financial crisis), Dr. Getz has been surveying kibbutzim for 20 years and documenting 50 types of changes that have been implemented. Dr. Getz is a member of Kibbutz Gadot -- which privatized not long ago -- and a hospitable exemplar of the kibbutz ideal. On my visit to Israel last summer, he took me under his wing, tutored me on the essential context of his research, introduced me to his colleagues at the institute, and even had me over for dinner with his wife when I stayed at Gadot.

As Dr. Getz reminded me during our interview, the kibbutz has never been a static phenomenon. It has always been an open, evolving society, unlike insular religious communes, which tend to coalesce around a hard kernel of unchanging faith or dogma. In the 1970s, industry and higher education became part of the agricultural kibbutz movement. In the 1980s, the sleeping arrangements in the children's houses gave way to traditional parenting.

"But now, from the beginning of the 1990s," Dr. Getz explained, "the change is total change—multi-system change. There are three or four crises at the same time. You have to make changes in different aspects at the same time."

An anniversary, like 2010, makes a good opportunity to look back and reflect on where a community (or an individual) has come from, and what has been lost and found on the journey. So it will be interesting to see, if it's true that the sense of crisis has largely passed and that many kibbutzim—both privatized and traditional—have found economic stability, whether the urge to privatize will continue or whether a nostalgia for the communal life of the near and distant past will once again come to the fore.

"This stage of the kibbutz, it's not the final stage," Dr. Getz told me. "It's the new kibbutz now. In 20 years, it will be another one."