64 Friday, December 10, 1982

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Growth of the Kibutz Traced

By DAVID MATTHEWS

Israel Govt. Tourist Office

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JERUSALEM — It's the
place where everyone is per-
fectly equal — so much so
that everybody wears the
exact same shirt, regardless
of size.
That's an old Israeli joke
about the kibutz. Its point is
that Israel's collective farm
settlements are not, as
many outsiders are inclined
to believe, the utopian
society. Yet no other aspect
of Israel in all of the state's
34-year history has gener-
ated so much worldwide
interest as the kibutz.
The kibutz (literally,
group) is actually more than
twice as old as the state of
Israel. The idea dates back
to pre-World War I days,
when young pioneering
Jews from Russia and East-
ern Europe began returning
to the land of their
forefathers, determined —
in the words of a popular
song of the day — to rebuild
the land and to be rebuilt.
They accepted what-
ever land they could get,
purchasing malarial
swamps and rocky hill-
sides from absentee land-
lords. Local herdsmen in
the Galilee and Jezreel
Valley referred to these
newcomers as "the chil
dren of death" because so
many succumbed to dis-
ease and physical hard-
ship. Isolation, loneliness
and backbreaking labor
caused a high suicide
rate. Many left.
But the hardiest ones,
like Moshe Dayan's parents
who helped found the first
kibutz, Degania, on the
shores of the Sea of
Galilee, stuck it out. And
soon others arrived to fill
their ranks.
Survival under such
harsh physical, psychologi-
cal conditions demanded a
cooperative way of life.
Their ideologue was A.D.
Gordon, a philosopher-
farmer who came to De-
gania at age 48 from Russia,
preaching elements of
Marx's socialism, Tolstoy's
belief in the virtues of labor,
and Jewish ideals of social
justice.
The central idea that
emerged from all this was
that kibutz members would
own everything on the set-
tlement collectively, would
do all the work themselves,
and would share in the
fruits of the labor equally.
The idea sounds uto-
pian — and not entirely
original. Ideal communes
have periodically been
set up since the time of
Plato, and they can be
found in numerous
places today, from Asia
to South America to the
hills of West Virginia. Yet
they never seem to catch
on as a popular idea, and
most often they tend to
fall apart.
In Israel, however, they
thrive. Yehuda Paz, a
member of Kibutz Kissufim
in the northern Negev, is
writing a history of the
kibutz movement and has
some ideas about why the
kibutz seems to be an excep-

•i

14;444,4

tion to the upopian rule:
"First, of all," he says,
"the founders of the kibutz
were not dreamers. They
didn't aim for a perfect
society, only a fair and
equitable one. To this end,
they were always very prac-
tical and adaptable people.
"For example, they were
never romantic about farm-
ing or getting back to the
land. They didn't shun mod-
ern agricultural technology
as some other communal

,

groups do — because they
were neither running away
from the modern world nor
making a virtue of poverty.
They also knew early on
that a sound economy isn't
(Continued on Page 65)

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