Abstract
As a controversial high-rise complex is planned in a large Israeli kibbutz,
Ma’agan Michael, a Mediterranean beachfront commune 30 kilometres south of Haifa, will be the first kibbutz to have a high-rise apartment building. A plan to build a high-rise addition, to make more room for married children of kibbutz members and their families, recently raised concerns it would erode communitarian ideals. In the spirit of egalitarianism, it came down to a vote; the new building was approved.
Over the years, kibbutzim have been influenced by broader national social and economic reforms. Many have changed to keep pace with Israel’s more individualistic society.
“There is a saying by [philosopher] Martin Buber that when you look at the slogans of the French Revolution – liberté, égalité, fraternité – the West took the freedom and forgot the equality, while the East took the equality and forgot the liberty, and everyone forgot the fraternity,” Muki Tsur, a historian and former secretary-general of the kibbutz movement, told Index. “The idea of the kibbutz was that through fraternity, you can have freedom and equality together. People united out of free will to have equality between them.”
According to Tsur, this idea “created an infrastructure for freedom of expression”. The traditional kibbutz model, under which everyone is equal, encouraged open dialogue at communal meetings. If an argument concerned an issue that had a practical impact on the kibbutz, a vote was generally held. And since the kibbutz was entirely voluntary, people could leave if they seriously disagreed with the result of a vote or chafed against the social conformity.
“Leaving is also part of freedom of expression,” Tsur said.
Yet the pressure to conform undermined free expression for many members. For example, for decades there was one shared pool of clothing for each gender in most kibbutzim.
“Take any small town in the world and there will be a strong base of conformity,” Tsur said.
In Yael Neeman’s book We Were the Future, a memoir of life on a kibbutz in northern Israel in the 1960s and 1970s published last year, she shows the idealism of kibbutz life, but also the terms of the project: religion was banned in most (though there was a separate Orthodox kibbutz movement); jobs were allocated; and communal activities were mandatory. In some kibbutzim, children lived separately from parents – an attempt to bypass the nuclear family – and would be submitted to sessions where they learnt about the evils of capitalism. Hence, the kibbutz’s unfolding happened partly because people demanded more freedom and individualism.
Children at a kibbutz in Beit She’an valley in northern Israel, 1967
CREDIT: Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos
There were differences between kibbutzim and communes in a broader sense, too. The simple fact that the kibbutz movement was the spearhead of Zionism, requiring members to speak Hebrew in public spaces in an effort to build a Jewish national home, was a major divergence from the Soviet interpretation of a stateless, borderless order.
That didn’t prevent the kibbutz’s political representatives, including first Israeli Prime Minister and Sde Boker kibbutz member David Ben-Gurion, from expressing identification with the Soviet Union at certain points. The far left United Workers’ Party (Mapam), which included the left flank of the kibbutz movement, called the USSR “the second homeland”.
However, Ben-Gurion moved towards a more Western orientation even before the State of Israel was established in 1948. The final straw, which split Mapam and left Soviet supporters as a tiny minority among kibbutzniks, was the Slánský Trial and Doctors’ Plot in 1952 and 1953 that resulted in a purge of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Mapam split was a prominent but rare instance of people being expelled from a kibbutz because of political opinions, when Soviet supporters were no longer welcome.
The kibbutz movement was always a minority among Israelis. At its height, only 7% of Israeli Jews were members. Today, the kibbutz movement is far from what the 11 men and women who founded the first kibbutz, Degania Alef, in 1909 envisioned. At a political level, kibbutznik parliamentarians have dropped from 20 in the first Knesset to just one today. The change is more democratic, said Tsur, noting their political representation reflects the small minority kibbutzniks make up in Israeli society.
The fall in kibbutz numbers has occurred in tandem with a move to the political right in Israel. Dov Henin is the only Jewish parliamentarian in the Knesset who identifies as communist, though he is not a member of a kibbutz. He told Index he felt he could express communist views freely.
“I think today there is a greater space to express things than in the past, but at the same time they are the stances of a smaller minority,” Henin said. “On socioeconomic issues, the fact that [far] left-wing criticism is from a small minority makes it less dangerous to the establishment, so it bothers them less.”
Tsur pointed out that the left-right divide in Israel is less about socioeconomic issues and more about views on the Palestinian conflict. That’s where issues of free speech, especially on the margins of Israeli society and politics, come into play. Henin implied as much, saying that “the establishment”, which he used to refer to anyone to his political right, sees criticism on diplomatic and security issues as “dangerous”. Reactions are more aggressive because “these criticisms are attacked much more than socioeconomic ones”, he added.
Back in Ma’agan Michael, the new apartment block should be completed within five years. Even though Ma’agan Michael is considered by many as a kibbutz that has remained close to the movement’s ideals, with shared property and a communal dining hall, it would probably be unrecognisable to those who founded it 68 years ago.
