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.”

Volunteers invited to Kibbutz Centenary

I seem to have jumped the gun with my recent visit to Israel. The Kibbutz Movement is just now inviting former volunteers to return to the country to help mark the centenary of Degania, the first kibbutz. They plan to organize an event, for this fall, to attract a thousand or more former volunteers.

Sadly, most kibbutzim no longer employ international volunteers. The agricultural jobs that were the staple of the volunteer experience—I did everything from picking avocados to removing rocks form the cotton fields—and that were part of the attraction for the often city-raised visitors from abroad are now largely mechanized or done by cheap Thai labourers who drink less and work harder.

Depending on who you ask, the influx of international volunteers during the 1970s and 1980s either had a positive influence (new multicultural perspectives, youthful enthusiasm, etc.) or a negative one (sex, drugs and rock and roll, corruption of kibbutz youth!). One thing is certain, as the coordinator of the Volunteer Office told me last year: volunteers often returned home and became unofficial diplomats for the State of Israel, because their experience living and working with Israelis (and particularly some of the most educated and liberal citizens of the state) gave them a more intimate and complex view of the country than what is depicted in the international media.

Israel could use some of that good P.R. again. Perhaps a nostalgic return to the country for some of the 350,000 volunteers who worked on a kibbutz might help. 

An Irish Writer Looks Back to Galilee

The Independent in Ireland ran an interesting column by a writer who spent time on a kibbutz, when he was 19, as a volunteer during the early 80s. He looks back on the nearly 30 years of increasing tension and violence between Israelis and Palestinians, while recognizing the complex society—or rather network of societies—that constitute modern Israel. He also contrasts the pastoral life of the kibbutz with the tension of current events.

His point of view is essentially the same as mine: a non-Jewish outsider who fell under the thrall of Israel—its landscapes, its cultures, its peoples, its history—as an idealistic young international volunteer, and who is now struggling to hold onto that idealism despite the grim tit for tat violence in the region and the decreasing hopes for peace.

As he writes, looking back on life on a kibbutz in the Galilee:

As someone who has visited Israel frequently and who spent a formative six months on a kibbutz at the age of 19, all of this saddens me. For despite the conflict, there is something magical about this tiny state, created by the Jewish immigrants of over 120 countries and built on the beautiful desert of their biblical homeland.

It is a country of paradoxes: an ancient land, steeped in the animosities of some the world's largest religions, and yet a dynamic sun-drenched country, with a booming agriculture and IT economy, a thriving gay scene and a celebrated dance culture.