The Great Not-so-white North

After a more or less smooth trip (as smooth as getting up at 3 am for a taxi, two planes, a train and a rental car can be), I made it to Israel and have slept off most of my jet lag. I paused briefly, to rest  and get my bearings at Nes Ammim—a "kibbutz" of German Christians in between Nahariya and Akko. I return there tomorrow for three more days to learn  about their history, their evolution, and the interfaith dialogue workshops they run, as part of their dream of healing the rifts between Germans and Israelis, Christians and Jews.

On Friday afternoon, I drove north to the Hula Valley and my old kibbutz at Shamir. I'm staying with friends and visiting old acquaintances and, later this morning, interview Uzi Tzur, the first-born ben kibbutz (i.e., child of the kibbutz), who has played a huge role in both the defense of Shamir (he shot the terrorists who tried to infiltrate the kibbutz in 1974) and the success of Shamir Optical as a multinational enterprise.

I made it in time foe one more shabbat dinner on Shamir, always one of my favourite nights (the weekend, at last!) when I was a volunteer. The dining hall is privatized (open for lunch and Tuesday and Friday dinners now), and was maybe two-thirds full—not quite the clamouring packed hall from years past, but still alive with conversations between old friends and family members. You pay for your meal now, at the cash register till, and there is no longer free (albeit cheap and watery) white wine to be poured into jugs by the litre from industrial beverage dispensers. 

I'd seen evidence of religious leanings on other kibbutzim, but Shamir seems still to be resolutely secular: no prayers, no candles, no shabbat songs, none of the Jewish rituals I'd witnessed at erev shabbat on Kibbutz Lotan in the Arava or the Ravenna Kibbutz in Seattle. If anything was sacred here, it was the family—Shamir seems in the midst of a baby boom—and Friday night, the communal dinner was honouring the extended family, related by blood or proximity, so central to kibbutz life.

Yesterday, after a restful sleep-in, my friends Kari and Danny took me for a shabbat day trip. We tried to go to the Agamon-Hula Park, but the parking lot was crammed with bird-watchers and other tourists for the annual Hula Bird Festival—the valley's blue sky is alive with migrating cranes and hawks and other Rift Valley migrants—so we headed up north, nearly to the Lebanese border, and walked the forest trails (much quieter) of Tel Dan instead. We had lunch beside one of the streams that feeds the Jordan River. 

The Hula remains as beautiful as I remember, this crook of farm fields and marsh land, peppered with kibbutzes and moshavs, in between the Golan Heights and the Napthali Mountains. It has been a pleasant reminder of my time here 22 years ago, during the same autumn season when I first arrived as a volunteer, the days still sunny and yet the nights cooling quickly, the rainy season and the cold winds off the snowy top of Mt. Hermon on the horizon. Harvest over, a new year marking off its days. 

Nobody seems optimistic about the immediate future of Israel, with the looming showdown with Iran and the uncertain changes in neighbouring countries, with a right-wing government firmly entrenched in power and completely at odds with the traditional values of the kibbutz. But it's hard not to find a certain peace, here in the hills of northern Galilee, amid the tree-shaded lanes and bird-song and cries of children in the playground, here on Kibbutz Shamir.

On the Road Again

I'm excited (and nervous) to be in transit again, for a two-week research trip in Israel. I'm hoping that my interviews there will cap off all the material I need to complete my book. (Actually, what I need is the discipline—and perhaps a manacle around my ankle—to simply buckle down and finish a first draft.)

The next 14 days promise to be a flurry of travel and meetings and interviews and observations. Some highlights from my itinerary:

• Nes Ammim: A German-run interfaith "kibbutz" that coordinates dialogue workshops and peace-building initiatives. I'm hoping to drop in on a session with Arab and Jewish theatre students from Haifa.
• Kishorit: a former kibbutz that has been transformed into a rehabilitation centre and home for adults with physical and mental disabilities, where they can find meaningful work (including producing a TV show) and community.
• Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company: I had brief visit to the studios and rehearsal spaces on Kibbutz Ga'aton 2.5 years ago, but on this visit I will spend time talking to artistic director Rami Be'er and then seeing this internationally renowned troupe perform in Tel Aviv.
• Ran Tal, the director of the "collage" documentary" Children of the Sun, which weds archival footage of kibbutz children, from the 1930s onwards, with interviews with early kibbutzniks (including Tal's mother) about the positives and negatives of growing up (and raising their own children) in these isolated and idealistic communal outposts.
• System Ali, a hip-hop collective, with members who are Arab and Jewish, native-born Israelis and Russian immigrants, that sprung from the Sadaka Reut commune that I visited in the summer of 2010.
• Eliaz Cohen, a poet from Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, one of the most historic settlements, who writes verse informed by his deep spiritual roots and his communal home.
• And more...

First, though, I've got a 10.5-hour flight to Tel Aviv (with an exit-row seat!), negotiate the 20 Questions of Israeli Customs, grab an hour-and-a-half train ride to Nahariya, rent a car there, and make the short drive (thankfully) to Nes Ammim. The next morning I hit the ground running with interviews and then a drive up north to Kibbutz Shamir. No time for jet lag.

Film: Fog

It’s been several weeks since I watched Fog, an hour-long documentary film from 2008 by director Rafik Halabi, and yet I remain haunted by its story, as though I’d been immersed in an epic novel or dramatic film. What I mean is that Fog, a fact-based foreign video project made on what was likely a tiny budget, has all the elements of great literature and art: War! Death! Family! Spirituality! Mystery! And a relentless quest for the truth. It is also one of those true stories that seems, on its surface, so preposterous that it has to be the work of fiction and fantasy.

The fog of the film’s title is the mist that wraps the slopes of Mt. Hermon, on the disputed border between Israel and Syria, into which Sergeant Mu’in Halabi, a Druze Arab soldier in the Israeli Defence Forces from Western Galilee, disappears during the early days of the October War of 1973. It’s the last that his three army companions see of Halabi during an abortive assault on the Syrian-held summit. Weeks later, army officials report to his family that his body has been found, with its eyes gouged out, but it is in an advanced state of decomposition and rapidly buried.

Later, a girl from his village claims to have heard his voice in a radio broadcast from Syria. Might he have been captured and still be alive instead? The story grows more complicated when a four-year-old Druze boy, who had been born just a month after Halabi’s disappearance in a nearby village, reveals striking knowledge of the details of the soldier’s disappearance, as though he had been there, and claims to be the reincarnation of Mu’in Halabi. The Druze religion, a highly secretive outgrowth of Ismaili Islam, includes reincarnation as one of its beliefs. Even largely secular members of the Druze people don’t discount the possibility of being reborn in another body.

At age 22, Roni Ganam, the boy who claimed to be the reincarnated Halabi, has grown up to be a local soccer star, but is killed during his own army service, when his bus is destroyed by a suicide bomber. Again, not long after this tragedy, a new child is born, who reveals, a few years later, intimate knowledge about Roni’s life and sudden death. Has the spirit of Mu’in Halabi found a new incarnation? What seems undeniable is the consolation that the family members of both deceased soldiers take in their faith that their lost boys live on in another embodiment—that death is but a transition into a new life.

Enter Rafik Halabi, a veteran Druze TV news reporter (and author of The West Bank Story), who sets out as the director of this investigative documentary to pick through the evidence, disentangle the varying accounts of Halabi’s last hours and try to reach the truth—but who only finds himself drawn deeper into the mystery. By the end, the documentary sheds new light on what likely happened in the mists of Mt. Hermon, and yet still leaves the viewer looking through shades of ambiguity, too.

I’d ordered Fog mostly because I’d worked with several young Druze on Kibbutz Shamir and finally visited Majdal Shams last summer. The Druze seem to symbolize the immense complexity of life in Israel, which often gets lost in black-and-white accounts we receive in the North American media, let alone the one-sided pro-Israel or pro-Palestine rhetoric that divides the blogosphere and Internet comment boards.

Mu’in Halabi, from Western Galilee, was a Druze Arab and an Israeli citizen and a soldier in the IDF. In the October War, he was fighting against Syrian army units that would have also included Druze soldiers, loyal to Syria. They were fighting over the captured territory of the Golan Heights, where the Druze residents—after centuries of being a minority caught between major powers—are careful to hedge their allegiances. They now live in land that was formerly Syrian, but has been annexed by Israel, but could one day (however unlikely) be returned to Syria. Confused yet? There is little wonder that the Druze religion, and even society, has clung to secrecy (and a belief in the eternal cycle of reincarnation) as a survival mechanism. Fog is both a metaphor and a way of life.

So what’s the kibbutz connection to this fascinating documentary? Okay, beyond my rubbing shoulders with Druze guest workers on Shamir, it’s pretty minor. But there is one: the sumptuous, moving and note-perfect score was written and performed by Yair Dalal, a well-known Israeli musician of Iraqi background (known especially for his oud playing) and peace activist who lived during his thirties on Kibbutz Samar (where encounters with Bedouin musicians sent him off on new artistic directions).

In short, Fog is one real-life tale of death, life and mystery that is worth getting lost in.

Review: Murder on a Kibbutz: A Communal Case

“Anyone who has never lived on a kibbutz doesn’t understand the first thing about it,” one of the characters warns the lead detective in the delightful mystery novel Murder on a Kibbutz, by the late Batya Gur. “It’s impossible to understand from the outside and this whole investigation of yours is pointless. You’re wasting your time.”

Michael Ohayon, the Moroccan-born and Jerusalem-based investigator in Gur’s popular series, has little experience of the closed society of the Israeli kibbutz. But that doesn’t stop him from infiltrating ever deeper into the complex relationships and hidden divisions of this particular community to solve the enigma of how and why one of its most influential members had died.

I’ve meant to read this novel for more than a year now, and now that I have (thanks to Ranen Omer-Sherman, for the final push to move it up on my to-read list), I can whole-heartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in a lively (if somewhat pessimistic) overview of kibbutz life in the early 90s or even just an absorbing summer read. I’m not a mystery buff by nature, but the quality of the writing (Gur taught Hebrew literature and wrote for Haaretz before her untimely death from cancer) and the psychological nuances of its moody hero (a charismatic, driven loner with an existential streak) add up to a page-turner whose narrative engine is as much its vivid, feuding characters as its well-wrought plot.

Batya Gur

And while I don’t believe she was ever a member, Gur also understood the kibbutz at a more than superficial level; her novel, published in Hebrew in 1991, seems prescient in its anticipations of the challenges that would transform the movement over the next two decades. The fictitious commune, located in the northern Negev, is shocked when the sudden death of a widowed kibbutz leader turns out to be a suspected homicide. But then possible motives start emerging, along with other secrets, from beneath the surface solidarity of the seemingly peaceful kibbutz: political, ideological, financial, psychological, romantic. I won’t spoil the ending, but there are enough twists and red herrings to satisfy any reader.

Gur’s imaginary kibbutz also seemed, in many ways, a lot like Kibbutz Shamir when I lived there. (Except for the murder, of course.) Like Shamir, it belongs to the more left-of-centre Artzi Federation (the Givat Haviva educational seminar gets mentioned several times); it is relatively prosperous, as the kibbutz managed to largely avoid (apparently) the devastating financial crisis and grey-market borrowing fiascos of the late 80s; it also developed a profitable factory (like Shamir’s optical plant) that produces cosmetics from cactus plants. Gur wrote the novel and set its action amid the rising tension and violence of the First Intifada (which began in 1988, the year I arrived at Shamir). In the book, the kibbutz’s leaders are debating proposed changes that will unsettle their traditional and ideologically pure way of life: the use of hired outside workers; building an off-site retirement home in tandem with other kibbutzim; and, most controversially, letting kibbutz children live and sleep with their parents rather than in the communal children’s houses. (Characters acknowledge that they are one of the last hold-outs to consider this shift.) There is even a minor character (who plays a major role in the plot), described as an eccentric bachelor, known as “Dave the Canadian”!

I admit I paused when I read the line that, for someone exploring the social dynamics of a kibbutz, it’s “impossible to understand from the outside” and had to wonder if my whole book project isn’t “pointless” too. But then again, I think I have a bit of the dogged curiosity of Michael Ohayon, the perpetual outsider who nevertheless insinuates his way toward the truth, by whatever means necessary. A detective and a writer, especially a nonfiction author, share a few things in common perhaps.

Rumours & Myths

Life as a kibbutz volunteer was sustained by a variety of necessities: cold beer, free cigarettes, chocolate from the shop, all-you-could-eat chicken and rice, bad Jordanian TV, a weekly movie in the sports hall. Mostly, though, we thrived on gossip, rumour and myth.

Gossip, of course, greased the engine of the kibbutz as a whole, just as it does in any small self-contained community, from a rural village to an urban high school. But since volunteers were cut off, by our lack of Hebrew and our transience, from the general circulation of kibbutz news, our gossip tended to be even less rooted in fact. Stories got passed along and embellished with little regard to sourcing. They quickly evolved from eavesdropped speculation to well-established hunch to encyclopedic fact to a story of mythic stature, true beyond all reproach. These stories eased the monotony of the work day and relieved our anxiety about being so far from home.

I can still remember a few of these tales, although I can’t vouch for their veracity. Many involved the secret lives of kibbutzniks or new volunteers. The unassuming Israeli from the apple orchards who had been a heroic tank commander in one of the wars. (Quite likely.) The German who was on the lam from the authorities back home for connections to the Baader Meinhof Gang of left-wing terrorists. (Possible, though perhaps mere slander.)

Some of the rumours and myths were about the place itself. They made the kibbutz seem a little more exotic, even if these “facts” might not hold up under closer scrutiny. One I recall involved the “rock rabbits” that lived in the stony outcroppings that overlooked the Hula Valley. These rodent-like critters (technically called a Hyrax) lacked a rabbit’s floppy ears (or cuteness) and looked more rotundly wombat-like. You’d spot them occasionally sunning themselves, camouflaged against the grey stone, but really noticed the rock rabbits when they “sang” their shrill, gear-grinding mating call, which sounded like a large, tuneless bird getting slowly eaten.

The story exchanged about the rock rabbits—the one snippet of natural history everyone on the kibbutz seemed to know—was that these furry, tone-deaf Tribbles were the closest living relations, on the branching evolutionary tree, to the elephant. It seemed unlikely in retrospect, a connection too absurd to be fact. That elephantine heritage turns out, at least according to the fact-checkers on Wikipedia, to be at least semi-true. 

"Here come the Swedes!": a rock rabbit in action

 Two other myths sprang from the Optical Factory on Shamir where volunteers had to operate the noisy, messy lens-polishing machines. We were told we were making lenses for reading glasses, but how could we be sure? Speculation flourished that—despite the low-key, unkempt look of the factory—we were secretly supplying high-tech glassware for military purposes. Maybe laser sights for missiles. Something cool like that. 

Truth quotient: zero. It turns out that the factory was, in fact, making bifocal lenses for old guys like me and now (in a bigger, fancier factory) is making (fancier, more profitable) progressive lenses for old guys like me. Or at least that’s what they would like you to believe.

Finally, perhaps the most pervasive rumour, one that swept through every kibbutz in the country like the flu on a regular basis, was the news that soon, in a week or two, there would arrive a new group of volunteers—a group with a mythical allure, like the Valkyries or the Sirens—the All-Girl Swedish Group. 

The buzz would build. People would swear they had heard solid “intell” straight out of the Volunteer Coordinator’s office that the news was true. They had seen the paperwork. Young men among the kibbutzniks and volunteers would begin to salivate like Pavlov’s puppies. Male hygiene suddenly improved dramatically. Every flash of blonde hair (even mine) that entered the dining hall would send a pulse of anticipation through the room. Was it them? Kibbutzniks we had never seen before would show up to the volunteer bar, in the hopes that the Swedes had arrived.

And then, almost without fail, there was disappointment when a group did arrive. They were British. They were Danish—which was close, but not quite the same: not as blonde, not as legendary. They were Swedish… but men.

The anticipation would crash and disappear for a few weeks. Then the cycle of rumour would start all over again. 

Next Year in Jerusalem was the cry of the Jewish people during their long exile. Next Week from Stockholm—that was the myth that sustained young male volunteers (and many kibbutzniks), through our monotonous work shifts and our own wanderings, a cry that sounded as comically desperate at times, a note of pure fantasy, as the shriek of the rock rabbit.

Review: The Syrian Bride

It’s not every day that the village of Majdal Shams gets mentioned on the front page of Canada’s national newspaper. (Actually, other than this Monday, it’s probably been never.) Oddly enough, I was thinking a lot about Majdal Shams last week, even before the news that hundreds of Palestinian refugees had marched from Syria, crossed the no-man’s land that divides that country and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, climbed over the “Shouting Fence” and embraced villagers on the other side—before most were dispersed and chased back to Syria by the Israeli army. (At least one of these demonstrators was killed during the clash.)

I had been reviewing video and audio recordings of my visit last summer to Majdal Shams, a village on the slopes of Mt. Hermon, and drafting a chapter about the activists and artists and citizens I’d met there, as well as memories of working (and drinking) with some of the Druze labourers from Majdal Shams who were hired to help in the apple orchards of Kibbutz Shamir. I had also borrowed the library a DVD of The Syrian Bride, a 2004 film by an Israeli director and Palestinian screenwriter set in the town. I’d been told last summer that this fictional tale had been inspired by a real family and real events in Majdal Shams. I finally got a chance to watch it last night.

It’s well worth the time, especially for anyone interested in the complex sociopolitical dynamics of this part of the world, especially for anyone who wants to learn about the Druze and their strange Limbo status in the Golan.

Who or what are the Druze? They are Arabs living mostly in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Their religion is an outgrowth of Ismaili Islam—a splinter off a splinter of the Muslim faith. It’s also highly secretive in its beliefs and practices. Even among believers, there are “initiates” who can learn its tenets and others that can’t. They are not even considered Muslim by many Sunni Muslims. In Israel, they mostly live in the western Galilee: they volunteer in the army, they elect politicians to Parliament, they are full citizens of the nation. (Fun fact: the most famous Druze in the U.S. is Casey Kasem, the Top 40 music personality.)

In the Golan Heights, their situation is different. The 20,000 or so Druze there live in four villages; Majdal Shams is the largest. Many Druze fled from the Golan for Syria, in 1967, after Israel conquered this strategically located plateau (from which Syrian soldiers often took potshots at kibbutzim in the Hula Valley, like Shamir). In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan and extended Israeli citizenship to the remaining esidents, but that declaration has never been accepted by Syria or other nations, and most of the Golani Druze refuse to take up this offer of citizenship. Instead, as the opening of The Syrian Bride explains, their nationality is listed as “undefined”… which can make life tricky.

Druze families have been separated from each other for 40 years now. In Majdal Shams, on the edge of town, they meet on either side of the two fences that define the no man’s land between Israel and Syria (which was breached in the recent protests) and call across to each other using megaphones. Because of this practice, the location became known as The Shouting Hill or (as I heard it) The Shouting Fence. Some Druze prefer to call it the Valley of Tears. These days, such visits are less common, as people can communicate via the Internet or cellphone, or meet in neighbouring Jordan.

The film is fascinating as it explores different tensions within one family in the town. Mona, the bride, is marrying a Syrian Druze actor from Damascus, who she will meet for the first time when she crosses the border from Israel—and exchanges one passport for another, never to be allowed to return to see her family. (Mona is played by Clara Khoury, who also appears in the hilarious and pointed Israeli sitcom Arab Labor.) Her father, Hammed, is a political activist and local leader, recently jailed, who faces a return to prison if he breaks parole and visits the restricted border to see his daughter off.  One brother, Hattem, has become an outcast from their father (and the religious leaders of his community) because he married a Russian woman and lives abroad. Mona’s older sister (the movie’s main focus) is caught in a loveless marriage with a well-meaning but traditional Druze husband who can’t understand her independent streak. (And their teenaged daughter is having a briefly described Romeo & Juliet affair with a young Druze man whose father, an Israeli collaborator, has “disgraced” his family.)

The slow pace of the film reunites the family members as they prepare for Mona’s wedding and departure, and the final Kafkaesque bureaucratic hurdles, on both sides of her divided community, keeping her from an uncertain new life in Syria. (A life that would seem even more uncertain now, given the recent violence and unrest there.) In the end, it’s a story about the fences that divide families as well as nations. And it’s well worth watching.

Trouble in the Fields

[Writing-in-progress about working at Kibbutz Shamir.]

After my stint behind the dishwashing machine, I graduated to the avocado fields. The harvest of Kibbutz Shamir’s orchards had been nearly completed by the time I got assigned to this detail, so there was only another week or two of work left. Our job was simple enough: ascend the broad-branching trees, pluck the last of the ripe fruit, and deposit the avocados into plastic buckets to be carted away to waiting tractors. ...

To be scaling these trees, clambering from the top rungs of the ladder ever deeper into the nest of branches and leaves, was a new experience. I’d always been a clumsy, nervous, fearful climber as a child—not one of those kids who shimmies up flag poles and garage sidings and the tallest trees on the block, just for kicks. Gravity was not to be trusted, so I tended to keep my running shoes on firm ground. But here, in this new land, I took to the novelty of avocado picking, like I’d be born to the job. The kibbutznik in charge of the harvest nicknamed me “Monkey Man”, for my willingness (I hope—perhaps he had other reasons) to pull myself to the topmost reaches of the trunk, for my new arrival’s urge to impress, to leave no fruit unplucked, no collective profits squandered and left to rot on a distant branch.

Working the orchards, circa 1988

There was a satisfaction in seeing, the next morning, sliced fresh avocados in the buffet trays of the dining hall for breakfast or lunch. This was 20 years before the “locavore” movement, before eating lightly on the earth—consuming organically grown, untravelled food, cultivated by the farmers in the neighbouring area code—became the mantra of the middle-class mainstream, even fashionably urbane, not simply hippy-headed back-to-the-landism. Here, on the kibbutz, the community had developed economies of scale to do much of that on its own. It raised cash crops for export: cotton and kiwis and apples and avocados. But like any farm, it could skim the excess for its own kitchen, and add to that bounty vegetables grown in the kibbutz gardens, meat from the cattle operations, honey from its apiaries, eggs from the chicken sheds. Even the table cloths and dish rags came from the kibbutz’s “Shalag” factory, which spat out reams of the non-woven fabric for a variety of uses. Our meals shrunk the radius of the 100-Mile Diet down to 10 miles, often closer. We pulled our own food from the orchards beyond the barbed wire perimeter and the tilled acreage in the valley below. I felt like a farmer at last.

The fieldwork, no matter how sweaty and arduous, held a romantic appeal to international volunteers, who were largely city kids like myself. It fit the vague, sepia-tinted image we had of kibbutz life. It allowed us to PhotoShop our faces into the collective portrait of pioneer life, to assume the role of hardy turf-breaker, even if our “pioneering” consisted of boozy three-month stopovers on the Mediterranean backpacking circuit. It was harder to sustain that image when you were scrubbing pots or cleaning toilets or a cog in a noisy factory. Manual labour, on the other hand, as long as we had a return ticket—that we could romanticize.

My keenest work memories are pulled from morning shifts in the lower fields. My autumn arrival meant that I’d missed most of the harvest season: the apple picking, the cotton plucking, the kiwi selection. Instead, as the number of volunteers dwindled, I was assigned to the post-season trimming and upkeep of the orchards. I hacked out shallow irrigation trenches between the rows of apple trees to channel the coming rains. After a brief lesson in horticulture, I trimmed the low canopy of kiwi branches and fixed their ends, with plastic ties, to parallel lines of steel wire, to shape their growth for next season. I often worked in tandem with Grant, a former volunteer from Scotland and the boyfriend of Zeva, a kibbutznik who also taught us Hebrew every week. Grant had a sly, deadpan wit, and fed me insider gossip of how the kibbutz really worked behind the scenes. In exchange, I detailed for him the sexual escapades and soap-operatic dramas of the Volunteer Ghetto, freely embellishing and turning casual speculation into hard truth for his vicarious enjoyment....

Rarely did I worry about how long my shift had run or watch the clock for its end, like I did in the kitchen or the factory. Instead, the 24 daily slices of clock time were replaced with the more subtle, four-beat rhythm of the seasonal round, a kind of slowed-down square dance or hora, in which spring planting led into summer growth and fall harvest and the “dead time” of winter in the valley, when all was prepared for the renewal to come. My stints in the field were the closest I had ever been, and ever would be, to the seasonal cycles of farm work. Even my own circadian rhythms had to adjust to waking before dawn, to the sun coming up over the valley, to the chores that seemed repetitive and without end and that would not produce results until another nine months from now, when I would likely be long departed from the fields. 

Kibbutzniks from Shamir in the cotton fields, circa 1958

It is harder, perhaps, to feel nostalgic about my shifts in the cotton fields. The cotton itself had been fully harvested before I arrived, so I still have little sense, other than from photos, of what a field of ripe cotton looks or smells or feels like. I can’t really brag that I “picked cotton”. All I remember are the decimated stalks of the plant, like bony claws erupting from the broken soil. And the need to burn away this stubble for fallow. And the tang of gasoline from a trailer-borne tank attached to a tractor, and its hose and nozzle, and how the petroleum reek itched the nostrils and sheened the skin. And the waves of heat as the doused stalks of the depleted plants erupted into flames, a burning bush along the Jordan River, and how we sprinted from this wall of fire to spray and ignite the next row of cotton plants. And how, on the ride back home, sitting in the trailer, we watched a dribble of fuel trace a line from the still-smoking fields and leave a trail all the way home to the kibbutz.

On other days, we were assigned to “harvest” rocks from the cotton fields. In the early years, when kibbutzniks first settled the valley, this was the land’s most fertile crop—a perpetual growth of rocks out of land that had once been swamp and marsh, as though the earth’s mantle were sending its own hard seeds to the surface. More than 40 years later, the Huleh Valley still produced a bounty of stones that needed to be removed before spring planting. Stripped to our shorts, we would trudge behind an idling tractor and hurl skull-sized builders onto the trailer it pulled. Occasionally, we would stop and try to lever a heavier, more deeply embedded rock out of the soil and carry it away. It was dirty, ankle-twisting, mind-fogging work. Rarely did a kibbutznik join us to do anything other than drive the tractor—and even then it wasn’t worth his time, as our slow progress down the length of the fields meant the vehicle only needed to turn around every hour or two. Even a volunteer could do that. It felt like prison work, like we should have been joined at the ankles by iron shackles and crooning soulful spirituals as the sun beat against our bare shoulders. We would curse when we couldn’t dislodge a boulder and curse again when we missed the trailer with a pitched rock and curse once more when someone else’s errant toss struck the toe of our boot.

Yet, for all our complaining, we relished those moments together, taking a break at the end of each row, smoking and laughing and mopping gritty sweat from our brows and necks. We knew that these labours were not as endless as they seemed, that because we were the first to rise and beat the sun to the valley bottom, we would also be the first to quit our shift, the first to raise raw red faces into the stream of the shower, the first to lounge in the shade of the Ghetto porches with cold bottles of Goldstar in our half-rigid hands. 

We didn’t know it at the time, but years later we would run this rock-picking duty through the blender of our nostalgia, too, when these hands of ours had grown soft from massaging computer keyboards instead, and our long days in those burning fields of stone would acquire a patina of pseudo-heroism, like we had been wrestling with the land itself, pitting all that simple strength of youth to tame the earth, rolling one boulder at a time. True pioneers, every last one of us.

Nor could we guess that even this lowly volunteer assignment, like so much of the kibbutz’s fieldwork, would end, too. Soon enough, as the 80s gave way to the 90s and the new millennium, kibbutz farms from Dan to Be’er Sheva hired low-paid guest workers from Thailand to replace the largely free labour of international volunteers or even hired Arab hands. The Thai workers worked harder, complained less, didn’t get drunk and rowdy every other night, and didn’t require the same constant cycle of retraining as our clan of itinerant and often unreliable backpackers. Even as rock pickers, we were about to become obsolete.

The Car and the Kibbutz

I’ve been thinking a lot about cars the past few days. How they control—and often threaten—our lives. These reflections have been rekindled, in large part, because a colleague and friend was badly injured in car accident a week ago. I don’t know the details of the incident and am relieved to hear she is recovering, but it will be a long, slow, healing process, and her life has been significantly altered by this violent event.

A week before that, walking my dog home from the video store at night, I was nearly bowled over by a driver in an SUV who didn’t see me as she accelerated left into the pedestrian crossing … because she had turned her head in the opposite direction to talk to her passenger! She braked a foot away from me (and would have crushed poor Bo if she hadn’t) after I thrust out my hand and started shouting. (My shouting—laced with words I won’t reprint here—continued as I leaned toward her windshield and shared my opinion of her driving skills.) Since then, I’ve been even more hyper-vigilant of careless drivers on my walk to and from daycare, often with my son dawdling behind me on his bike, with vehicles whizzing past on the road beside the sidewalk.

I haven’t owned a car in a decade. However, I’m not sure when my antagonistic relationship with the internal-combustion engine began. I never had that “car gene” that other North American boys seem to be born with. But I didn’t hate them either—certainly not growing up in the suburbs of Ottawa, where you often needed to be driven around to get anywhere, where getting your license remains one of the last rites of passage into adulthood. (Trust me: getting to vote doesn’t count for an 18-year-old.)

It was only on the kibbutz, I suppose, that I first experienced the pleasures of a largely car-free community. While we were taken by bus on volunteer trips and in the back of old Toyota trucks to work the fields, I rarely rode in a car while living in Israel. I didn’t miss it. And I learned to appreciate a community design in which motorized vehicles (aside from the occasional golf cart) were second-class citizens, shunted to the margins of the encircling ring road, and pedestrians ruled the laneways. You could walk everywhere, at any time, and not worry about doing a shoulder check or dodging hasty drivers.

There were, quite simply, few cars in this community. They were all collectively owned and generally reserved for important kibbutz business, not for cruising around or short-hop shopping trips or dragging the kids from school to soccer to play dates—all those activities occurred instead within the barbed-wire enclosure of the kibbutz, in walking or cycling distance. And in that way, you bumped into friends and neighbours and other community members, as you wandered the grounds of the kibbutz and went about your business.

Some of that has changed in the 21st-century privatized kibbutz. People have bought their own cars, so they’re not reliant on using the communally owned vehicles. They have joined the swarm of traffic that chokes the urban streets and nation-crossing highways of this densely populated country. And yet many of these communities have retained a fleet of collective cars and trucks, with high-tech booking systems, that would be the envy of embryonic “car share” operations (like the Victoria Car Share Co-op, which I belong to) in North America. Not owning a car is still not a problem. Being “car-free” is certainly not viewed as the social aberration that it is here in Canada. (I worry that people must think I don’t drive because I lost my license to a DUI or something.)

Aerial view of Kibbutz Urim

The “needs” of automobiles have started to affect how kibbutzim are redesigned in small ways. I noticed more internal roads and parking lots in the centre of Kibbutz Shamir than I remember from 20 years ago. On Kibbutz Urim, near the Gaza Strip, cars remain on the periphery, except now, because the kibbutz runs a licensed daycare for both members and outsiders, authorities are demanding that the community conform to safety regulations and widen the narrow internal lanes so that emergency vehicles can more easily access the daycare. Many of the new neighbourhoods being erected, and then marketed to non-members as suburban getaways, feature North American-style single-family dwellings, with long driveways so you can park your car mere steps from your front door. (In North America, the notion that you might have to take more than 10 paces from your Ford to your foyer borders on insanity.)

Still, most people still get around their kibbutz homes by foot, bike, scooter or the proliferation of electric golf-carts (no longer just used by pensioners or the infirm). In this way, the kibbutz remains an ideal to me of a human-scale “eco-topia”—a place where you can live without the buzz and threat of cars, where all the amenities have been designed with the walker not the driver in mind, where the only collisions that occur are the serendipitous intersections of friends and neighbours amid the network of pedestrian pathways, where children can roam free and explore, in nature, away from the menace of the infernal combustion engine. Where the car is no longer king of the road.

The Kibbutz at 100

Here's an informative (if dry) news report from the Associated Press about the 100th anniversary of the kibbutz movement—and the shift from communalism to capitalism—that has been widely republished in other papers. It also notes the sale of 50% of Shamir's Optical operations to an outside company.

Even more fascinating is this snippet from an interview with social critic Noam Chomsky, in which he reminisces about his own time, many decades ago, on a kibbutz. (It was Kibbutz HaZorea, which I passed many times while staying at a nearly kibbutz last summer and which was documented in the film of the same name.)

Chomsky makes an interesting observation about the paradox that the early hardcore socialist kibbutzniks found themselves in, between the ideals of founding a bi-national Arab-Jewish state and of not wanting to employ Arab labour in their communities for fear of becoming just another capitalist overlord:

If you know the history, you know that most idealistic anti-nationalist settlers insisted on a closed Hebrew society, you can't hire outside labor, that sort of thing. You could see the motivation. They didn't want to become what the first settlers were: landowners who had cheap Arab labor. They wanted to work the land. Nevertheless, there's an exclusionary character to it. Which then led into the policy of the state and became quite ugly later. So it was kind of an internal conflict that was never resolved.

Post #100: Sunrises and Sunsets

Mentions of Kibbutz Shamir, in Upper Galilee, often describe an unusual celestial phenomenon: a sunrise in the west. Each morning, when the early rays emerge over the Golan Heights and the steep eastern slopes of the valley, on which the kibbutz sits, they first strike the taller ridges on the far side of the Jordan River, on the border between Lebanon and Israel, and then spread across the Huleh, giving the illusion that the sun is about to make its grand entrance from the wrong direction.

I don’t remember people talking about this effect when I lived on Shamir. I do remember the sunrises and sunsets, though, from our perch on the slopes of the Golan, and how they illuminated the rich earthen palette of the valley, from autumn, through winter and into the spring. I probably watched more sunrises in Israel than anywhere else, thanks to pre-dawn shifts in the cotton fields and the apple, kiwi, or avocado orchards. 

We would drag ourselves from our cots, alarm clocks screaming, and descend into the valley amid the murk of first light, in the back cab of an old Toyota truck. The light would begin to illuminate our surroundings as we shook off sleep (and often hangovers) with caffeine, nicotine, small talk or silence—whatever it took. And there we were, as the day began to warm, in the wide embrace of the Huleh: pulling stones from the cotton fields, burning stubble, trimming the branches of the kiwi trees, digging irrigation trenches past the apple stands, clambering up the long limbs to reach the last avocado. 

The end of the day, long after our work shift had finished, tended to be more dramatic. I’d often have a siesta and go for a jog around the kibbutz’s ring road (or perhaps I’m embellishing my athletic activity—I did do a few circuit loops), as the sun started to descend into Lebanon, a burning ball extinguished against the mountains’ silhouettes, and the rock rabbits would release their surreal, almost mechanical squeals from their warrens and farther away, amid the hills and the scrub, the wild dogs would take up a howling call and response. 

Night would fall. The electric lights of the valley would flicker on. Qiryat Shmona would appear as a constellation across the river. And I would get anxious for activity: a drink (or more), a conversation, some gossip, laughter around the TV or the bar, a friend or two to fend off the loneliness of the night. And then, the next day, the sun would rise again in the east.

* * *

I lost track for a few days and realized that this post marks the 100th of my blog—and my goal of writing 100 to celebrate the centenary of the kibbutz movement. Of course, I never intended to end at 100—especially when I’m only halfway finished describing my trip to Israel this summer and have barely begun to relate my experiences (and embarrassing journal entries) from more than 20 years ago. So I thought it best (especially before taking time off for two weeks of family vacation) to mark Post #100 by looking back to Galilee from a more personal perspective and touching once again on some of the images and memories burned into my own imagination by the kibbutz I once called home.

The Dining Room as Parable

To a visitor who has never eaten regularly at one, a kibbutz dining room might look like a glorified (or even unglorified) cafeteria: the stainless-steel smorgasbord of salads and meats and breads, the long table-clothed tables and conversation-filled open room, the noisy conveyor-belt dish-washing machine. Echoes of high school perhaps, with more gossip and fewer food fights.

But for a longtime kibbutznik (and even a nostalgia-drunk volunteer like myself), the dining room is so much more. It’s the heart and soul of the kibbutz. It’s the centre of activity. It’s the thrice a day (sometimes more) gathering place. It’s as much a symbol as a setting. It is, as the title of a recent exhibition at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv suggests, a parable. So it’s little wonder that the dining room has proved the fascinated focus for many artists, like the photographers in the Eretz Israel show, or Avraham Eilat (who uploaded a time-lapse film sequence of the dining room at Kibbutz Shamir, with the members gathering around the TV for news of a terrorist attack by the Red Brigade), and others. 

Over the past two years, I also “read” the dining rooms at the different kibbutzim I visited as parables. I tried to discern the state of their social and community life from the state of their dining room. At Kibbutz Hanita, my host took me to the dining room explicitly to show me how life there had declined since privatization: there was a cash register, half the room was closed off, the remaining side was half-empty and occupied mostly with retirement-age kibbutzniks, and he admitted that since most of his friends had left the kibbtuz, he rarely ate there himself.

Kibbutz Lotan, by contrast, had a small but lively dining room, still communal, still free, and packed shoulder to shoulder, with challa and wine on the table, for Shabbat dinner. I watched two male friends hug warmly as they met near the kitchen. The heart of this dining room was still beating strongly. It felt the same at Kibbutz Samar, although the dress-code was more hippie-chic, and its kitchen is probably unique in the entire country for being open and unlocked at all hours of the day or the night: anyone can drop by for a snack at the anarchist dining room. 

Kibbutz Ketura was a bit more complex. It had a more spacious dining room, but the social geography of the space was carefully sub-divided, likely unconsciously, perhaps because of the many different groups who coalesce at the kibbutz: international volunteers sat at one table, students at the Arava Institute at another (and Mulsim students tended to cluster together amongst themselves), several tables were reserved for one of the many tour groups (in this case, young Swedes) who come through, and there was food station reserved for guests of the hotel—we got a slightly choice of food fixings, because we were paying for our meals.

Kibbutz Urim’s dining room was lightly attended for breakfast, but during our meal, our host ran into his university-aged son, who is living in a student apartment on the kibbutz, and they had coffee together—a nice moment. Urim is struggling to stay communal and considering different statuses for different members, to give some flexibility and freedom without fully embracing privatization: the dining room seemed to mirror that trend.

Kibbutz Revadim was the most depressing. Jerry and I were the only people eating in its huge dining room, because we were staying at the guest house. The dining room’s kitchen were privatized, and only used for catering functions and guest-house breakfasts. A panorama of photographs outside the entrance showed the kibbutz’s expansion, from an aerial view, over 60 years, with the dining room at its hub. But now that hub is empty of its original purpose.

Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek has a huge L-shaped dining room, usually busy, with stacks of high-chairs and newspapers to be picked up outside. It remains the proud centre of this bastion of the kibbutz movement. Kibbutz 

Kibbutz Shamir’s dining hall was much like I remembered it, with its sun-filled vertical windows and huge tapestry, although the kitchen itself has been renovated and cash registers added to pay for the (heavily subsidized) meals. It was open for breakfast and lunch and two dinners per week. Workers from the factory, in their blue overalls, still used it, although because agriculture plays a smaller role, with far fewer workers, in the kibbutz economy, I didn’t see the lines of muddy field-hands in their sun-hats and work-shirts, a cigarette tucked behind their ears, trundle in for a meal like I used to do. We were only there four days, but it wasn’t long before we were chatting to and nodding at friends and acquaintances that we had met—the social glue of eating in the same place was starting to set.

Journal: "Swan Lake" at Purim

The Jewish holiday of Purim was more than a month ago. But I've been transcribing my old journal from my time as a volunteer and came across a brief description of the festivities on Shamir. It reminded me that, as I research the history and economics and sociology of the movement, not to forget about the life of the kibbutz. 

So many of volunteers' best memories, like my own, centre around the shared cultural events that the kibbutzniks organize to reinforce their sense of community. And no event is more booze-laden and bizarre than Purim. I'm glad I remembered to jot down a few notes afterwards. And while the photos are embarrassing, they do bring back memories, too. 

Here is an excerpt from my journal of March 25, 1989:

Yesterday was Purim, a Jewish religious festival celebrating the story (possibly apocryphal) of Mordechai’s saving the Jewish people from the persecution of the king’s advisor Haman. It is the one holiday that the Jews are not only allowed but expected to get drunk on. As part of the evening’s festivities, the volunteers performed a pair of acts. The first, starring Tim [from Chicago] on guitar and Emma, Mandy [British volunteers], & co. singing backup, was a song about life as a volunteer, sung to the tune of “My Generation”, entitled “Ghetto Creation”. The grand finale to the live entertainment segment of the Purim party was presented by Jim, Mattias, Wolf, Bruce and myself. We danced a unique version of “Swan Lake” to a medley of music that included Mendehlson, Little Richard, and the theme from “The Magnificent Seven,” as well as various rude bodily noises. Our costumes were complete with swan heads, flowing feathers, downy feet, pink tutus, dark shades and cigarettes. Mattias [from Sweden] had the choice role as the dying baby swan whom we discovered, pranced about, and eventually tore to shreds. Renowned drama critic Yoav [a kibbutznik friend] applauded us as “the best act”. Wolf [an older German volunteer] had gotten himself completely pissed as we were waiting for our stage call, sitting awkwardly in full costume, and was blurting out bizarre comments such as “Johnny hates goldfish” and “Get warm Swede!”

A Complaint

The director of the Centre where I'm a fellow fielded an email complaint about the content of my talk last month about my research into the kibbutz movement and the lessons that could be applied to Canada's co-operative economies. Or rather the complaint focused on the lack of context I provided about the situation of the Palestinian people. While preserving the author's anonymity, I've pasted the letter below:

As I mentioned when we spoke after the "Return to Galilee" talk, I ... have lived and worked in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. The Palestinian community in Lebanon numbers approximately 400,000, and are the descendants of the almost 100 000 refugees who fled what we now consider Northern Israel in 1948 into Lebanon. One of the dominant founding myths of Israel is that Israel was a "land with no people for a people with no land". Israeli historians Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris address the causes of the refugee "problem" in their work, and debunk these ridiculous assertions. In Jonathan Cook's new book Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair , he chronicles the intentional and systematic dispossession and destruction of Palestinian villages following Israeli statehood. You can read up on the whole scale theft of Palestinian land and moveable goods in the following excerpt from Cook's book. 

While many of the early kibbutz were founded on land that was purchased legally in British mandate Palestine (as stated by an audience member at the talk), this does nor render kibbutz in modern day Israel politically neutral. Kibbutz Shamir is a complicit and contributing community within the state of Israel. A state that continues to flagrantly break international law by continuing the illegal occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, and the construction of a wall that the International Court of Justice deemed illegal and ordered torn down in 2004. A state that uses policies of collective punishment against Palestinians, deploys white phosphorous weaponry and one of the world's most powerful militaries against civilians (leading to Judge Richard Goldstone's UN report, accusing Israel of crimes against humanity), and maintains a system that President Jimmy Carter (among reputable others) acknowledges as apartheid. There is nothing sustainable or cooperative about this broader context. Removing a small and economically viable element from the Israeli state (i.e. Kibbutz Shamir) and holding it up as an example of cooperative development in 2010 is morally and intellectually questionable. It is dangerous and irresponsible to decontextualize information in this way.

This is not an attack on yourself, Prof. Leach, kibbutz, kibbutzim or Israeli society. This is a criticism of the state of Israel, which has created a context and a situation deeply rooted in injustice and the violation of human rights - which no university should herald as sustainable. 

While I disagree with many of her points, I appreciate that the email writer didn't resort to the fiery rhetoric or personal attacks that too often mar discussions about Israel and Palestine, especially on campuses across North America. (Concordia U. even banned talks on the subject because they were so often sources of conflict.) I tried to be equally respectful in my response:

[The director] forwarded your message and concerns about my recent talk at UVic that discussed the kibbutz movement. As I mentioned in the talk, I appreciate all feedback and debate.

In defence of my approach, I would emphasize that the mandate of my fellowship and talk was to draw lessons from the history of the kibbutz movement (whose principles were established well before 1948) that might inform the current thought and future actions of the co-operative movement and university system in Canada. Based on the range of questions I fielded after the talk and at our Friday tea, I think I accomplished that goal.

Tackling the divisive issues of contemporary Middle East politics was well beyond the scope of a 40-minute presentation. Even if I had 40 hours to “contextualize” that topic, I would be unlikely to change anyone’s opinions, which tend to be set in stone. Anyone who wanted to hear the context you suggest had plenty of opportunities; there were at least four talks on the topic as part of “Israel Apartheid Week” activities around the city.

 That said, I agree with your claim that the kibbutz movement is not “politically neutral”— and disagree that the kibbutz can be dismissed as a “complicit and contributing community within the state of Israel”.

 In fact, throughout its 100-year history, the kibbutz movement has been one of the strongest and most consistent voices, on either side of the debate, for peaceful co-existence in Israel/Palestine. For that context, you must start with the kibbutz’s anarchist roots and vision of a binational commonwealth (mentioned in my talk and documented in James Horrox’s recent book A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement). You can then look at the views of the Mapam Party (founded by Kibbutz Artzi members) that objected to the destruction of Arab villages in 1948 and argued that all refugees should be allowed home.

You can track the involvement of kibbutzniks and federation leaders in various peace initiatives since that time. These would include the Four Mothers Movement (of kibbutz activists) that precipitated the military withdrawal from Lebanon right up to the current efforts of the Kibbutz Movement spokesman to pressure both the Israeli government and Hamas to broker an exchange of Palestinian detainees for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit—one of the major obstacles to peace negotiations.

 In this debate, every context can be further “recontextualized”. Firstly, I’d suggest that any mention of the Goldstone Report is incomplete if it doesn’t acknowledge how the judge also cited Hamas for war crimes for targeting rockets at civilian populations in Israel—often kibbutzim. (In fact, the most immediate context to my talk was the death of a kibbutz worker that morning from a Qassam rocket launched from Gaza.) Secondly, while you cite both Ilan Pappé and Benny Morris for their revisionist histories of 1948, I’d point out that Morris has more come to very different conclusions about the root causes and consequences of that war—views that likely no longer align with your own perspective.  

Finally, Ilan Pappé himself was the founder and director of the Institute for Peace Studies at Givat Haviva, an educational centre (which I’ve visited) devoted to Arab-Israeli co-existence and funded by the kibbutzim in the Artzi Federation, of which Shamir is one of the most prominent members. So, some of the evidence you cite has been bought and paid for in a real and direct way by kibbutzniks on Shamir. To turn around, then, and claim that “Kibbutz Shamir is a complicit and contributing community within … [a] state that continues to flagrantly break international law by continuing the illegal occupation and settlement of Palestinian land” is both morally and factually indefensible.

It’s like saying that you or I — or the entire co-op movement in Canada for that matter — is complicit with and contributes to the actions and policies of the current Harper government, because we are citizens and communities under its democratically elected, albeit minority, mandate. What sliver of truth might lie in that claim is buried under the sheer weight of an over-generalization that denies the possibility of individual conscience and dissent. Perhaps I’m naïve, but I continue to believe in the possibility for change from within a society. In fact, that belief forms the basis for my research into utopian thought throughout Israel/Palestine.

I don’t consider the kibbutz beyond criticism. In fact, part of my talk focused on how the movement has evolved away from some of its founding ideals. In the end, the tragedy of the kibbutz movement is how its original vision of equality and justice has been shunted to the margins, since 1977, by the rise of right-wing and religious parties in Israel—and violence on both sides. So I find it strange and self-defeating that anyone genuinely committed to peace in the region would similarly seek to diminish and deny this collective voice of compromise and cooperation.

Thanks for attending my talk and engaging in a dialogue on these important issues.

Subdividing Happiness

A friend and colleague passed along a fascinating news story, from two years ago, about the development of subdivisions on Israel’s kibbutzim. These are new neighbourhoods, with lots or houses sold to non-kibbutzniks, attached to the kibbutz. The owners have access to the kibbutz facilities—the grocery store, the dining hall (if it’s still operating—many have been shut down), the daycare and schools, the gym and swimming pool, etc.—but aren’t part of the collective ownership of the kibbutz’s agricultural and industrial enterprises.

The kibbutzim are developing these subdivisions as a way to survive financially. The kibbutz gets money from the sale of the houses (although not the land—that is still owned by the state) and then for providing municipal services to the new residents. But this trend also causes social friction, as newcomers begin to mingle with kibbutz members, both of whom have differing levels of emotional and financial investment in the community. (Some kibbutzniks, however, see the developments as a chance for kibbutz-born children who are reluctant to be members to return and live on the kibbutz with their extended families.) One scholar told me of how religiously inclined residents at one of these new neighbourhoods demanded that "their" kibbutz—founded by members who were not just non-religious but all-out anti-religious—build them a synagogue.

Last summer, I certainly saw evidence of construction wherever I went. I walked past the bulldozed ground of new lots at Kibbutz Hanita. I saw an attractive Santa Fe style development on Kibbutz Shamir. Like communities near the Gaza Strip, both of these northern kibbutzim (and many others ear the border with Lebanon) have been the target of rocket attacks. Yet that doesn’t seem to bother prospective buyers, who are quickly buying up kibbutz-based properties. As one kibbutz scholar told me, “The kibbutz is a name, a kind of social good. It’s a brand.” Even if kibbutzniks aren’t as respected as they once were in Israel as pioneers, the communities they’ve created—with high-quality daycare and schools, stores and dining rooms, swimming pools and libraries and other amenities within walking distance, all in an often-picturesque rural setting—are seen as enviable locations to live and raise a family.

The benefits of that way of life, despite the turmoil over “privatization” on many kibbutzim over the past decade, was confirmed by a just-released study (based on 2009 surveys) from the University of Haifa that found that 70% of kibbutz members are satisfied with their lives, only 5% are unsatisfied, and that 78% are happy at their jobs. That compares with 58% of members who said they were satisfied in 2002, the last time the survey was conducted and a turning point in the evolution of the “new kibbutz”. As the movement marks its 100th anniversary, with many changes to its original communal ideals, the kibbutz itself still carries a utopian attraction, it seems, for anyone who hopes to escape the lonely crowd of city life and pursue happiness in a more self-consciously integrated community.

Purim Photos

I've been buried away the last week or so, devoting all my free time to preparing for my upcoming (yikes!) talk about kibbutz life for the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy on March 28th. But I did want to take a moment and post a link to a wonderful collection of photos taken of the Purim celebrations on Kibbutz Merhavia in 1963.

It reminded me of the Purim festivities on Shamir that I participated in. The whole story will take more time than I have now to tell, but sometimes an image really is worth a thousand words, so let me include a photo from my experience of Purim, airborne and dancing a mashed-up version of Swan Lake for the entire kibbutz. It was one of the craziest moments of my life... And as you can tell, while more than 25 years separate the photos from Merhavia and Shamir, the irreverent spirit of Purim remains the same. I wish we had the goy-ish equivalent in Canadian culture!

History of Shamir

I only vaguely realized at the time how lucky I was to land at Kibbutz Shamir. During my months there, I heard rumours about the long days, rough conditions and general dissatisfaction of volunteers at other, less well-off kibbutzim. In 1988/89, when I lived in Israel, the whole movement was undergoing a profound financial crisis. The nation had emerged from several years of recession and hyper-inflation, and many kibbutzim were saddled with huge, oppressive debts. Cutbacks were necessary. Standards of living plummeted. Many members lost confidence in the movement, in their kibbutz, and left for Israel's cities or immigrated overseas. Numerous kibbutzim struggled in this tailspin of economic, demographic and ideological decline.

Shamir wasn’t one of them. As volunteers, we were treated well. The kibbutz organized Hebrew lessons, educational sessions, and took us on Shabbat day trips and, twice a year, an extended five-day trip down to the Gulf of Aqaba and back. We were buffered from the economic anxiety experienced on many other communities. When I returned last June, I had the opportunity to interview Itzhik Kahana, who had been in charge of the orchards when I was a volunteer and is now serving as the kibbutz director. I include here an exercpted transcript of our talk about the past, present and future of Kibbutz Shamir.

What is the story of Shamir?

It was founded in December 1944 by the group Hashomer Hatzair from Romania. Most of the people were from two groups, of different ages, but the same movement. They knew each other well. They came to Israel and started building the kibbutz near Haifa. Gathering there, not building a kibbutz. They were in the port and in factories for about five years from 1939 until they were assigned to this spot because the other spot was not frontier enough. The movement gave them a few options and eventually they chose this one because there was completely nothing except rocks. That seemed to appeal to their frontier mentality.

How many people were in that first group?

About 160 people. About 40 to 50 left quite early. It was very harsh in the first few years. Other people joined the kibbutz, like my mother, who came out of Romania after the war, after she was in a British prison for six months for illegal immigration. After she got out—after she was sent here—then she met my father.

Was this the time of the "tower and stockade" movement?

A bit later. This land was bought by the Jewish National Fund. The main areas of farming in the beginning was on this hill, which is not much. For the first five years, they just took out stones out of the fields. There were fields for livestock, but the standard of living was very low. Nineteen-forty-eight made a big difference because all the Arabs of the valley left the villages and went to the mountains to wait for the Syrian army to kick out the Jews, which didn’t happen, so we got fields in the valley. All our agriculture is in the valley. The field-growing is in the valley.

On the Arab fields?

No. Some of them were fields, some of them were swamps we couldn’t use. Whatever they could use, they’d use. There was a lot of digging of canals. We had to spend a lot to make this land arable, so you could work on it. … We were living on agriculture basically until the beginning of the 1970s.

The post 1948 border [with Syria] must have added another level of tension.

Some people left because of it. It was too much for them. There used to be shooting almost daily. Just random. Sometimes it was more—mortars. That’s one of my first memories, the shooting.

In 1972 we opened the optical factory. The idea is to get work for the peple that are getting older and can no longer work in agriculture and it went on like this for about 10 years. It was bifocal lens. Then, at that time, the group that led the optical factory decided they needed something more sophisticated and decided to develop multi-focal lenses. It wasn’t easy. It took 10 [more] years.

So by the beginning of the ‘80s, there still was nothing there. We invested money into new technologies that we bought, in ’83, and then we bought another line, and another, and another. In the early ‘90s we finally had a breakthrough in the production of the multi-focal lenses. It’s climbing up.

But you’re still doing agriculture?

In the ‘90s, it started to go down as a main source of income and a main source of jobs.

And until the ‘90s?

There was a lot of people working there.

In the orchards?

Orchards, fish ponds. We tried almost everything. Cattle, sheep, pigs.

What was more successful?

The pigs were successful. But in 1963 the Knesset passed a law that Jews are not allowed to raise pigs, so we had to close it. The beef is very successful. It’s run by professionals who do it right, out of tradition.

In 1999 we accepted an investor in the optical factory. … Then, we got a partner in Shalag [fabric-making factory], which is a group of investors. That was the basic idea—that we go to public offering to capitalize on our success.

To raise money?

Basically, but first the money goes to the partners. Then it went to two things: the pension fund for the members, which was almost empty, and [our debt], which was very heavy and very annoying.

Was this a result of ‘80s financial crisis?

No, we just lived beyond our means. We didn’t run our financial things right.

Do you still run a volunteer program?

No. Farming went down… We now use a lot of Thai workers. The margin of profits is much lower and you cannot support volunteers in the system. Kibbutz members need all the jobs. Someone can work in the dining room for income. Before, it was a volunteer job.

Has the ideological vision of kibbutz movement changed? Are kibbutzniks still leaders in Israel?

Unfortunately not. We are one of the most hated groups in the country. We are not leading anymore, like it was in the army, in government, and we don’t have the pretenses to lead. We tried to. Whoever wants to be a politician goes into politics. Now we try to be successful in what we do, and eventually that helps you to lead. ... The country is built; we don’t have to rebuild it. We have to find new challenges.