. ..........

.

At Heatherwood, we offer a warm,
wonderful atmosphere, and
provide all the services our resi-
dents need to remain as active in
the community as they wish.

• 2 ,

, f,„ •

On the ,front liyles Kibbutzniks acre leaders
economy.
in the Israeli military and the

Kibbutz Glory

The agricultural cooperatives face
an uncertain future, but have made
a stunning impact on the state.

ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent

4111

1 erusalem — In the 1967 Six-
Day war 12.8 percent of
Israeli soldiers killed in action
were members of kibbutzim.
In the Yom Kippur War, six years later,
the kibbutz paid with 12.6 percent of
the dead. At that time kibbutzim
accounted for barely 3.5 percent of
Israel's population.
Their losses were so disproportionate
because more of their sons volunteered
to serve as officers, pilots and comman-
dos. They led from the front. It is esti-
mated that one-fifth of the pilots and
one-third of the officers in the first two
decades of the Jewish state were kib-
butzniks.
These are figures worth remembering
amid the crocodile tears over the
"decline" of the kibbutz and the "failure"
of its pioneering socialist ideals. But as
the state lumbers into its second half
century, the movement is indeed com-
promising itself to the verge of extinc-
tion.
Before and after 1948, the kibbutzim
peopled the open spaces and the fragile
borders. Unlike the immigrants from
Arabic-speaking countries, who were
drafted from absorption camps, the kib-
butzniks went to the military by choice.
They were eager to serve and ready to
sacrifice.
In the 1948 War of Independence,
besieged kibbutzim like Negba and Yad

Mordechai guarded the road to Tel Aviv
from the south. It was Deganya, the
birthplace of Moshe Dayan, and Ein
Gev, founded by Teddy Kollek and his
Austrian friends, which held the Syrian
tanks rolling towards the Galilee in the
north. Ramat Rahel and Mialeh
Hahamisha guarded the roads to
Jerusalem.
After the war, the kibbutzim set
the pace in industry and agriculture.
"In the first five years of the state,"
says Henry Near, the author of a two-
volume Oxford University Press history
of the movement, "the kibbutzim fed
the nation. After that they switched very
efficiently to export and cash crops like
cotton, sugar beet and avocados. From
the fifties to the seventies, their factories
were the most progressive, profitable and
innovative in the land."
And all this within a collectivist
framework that flourished for eight
decades from the founding of the first
kibbutz, Deganya, in 1908.
Well into the 1980s, the kibbutz
waved the flag for a wholesome, secular
Judaism, which devised its own ways of
celebrating Shabbat and the festivals, its
own roots in the soil. It was the most
potent symbol of the new Jew fathered
by the Zionist revolution.
The award-winning novelist Amos
Oz made his name while a member of
Kibbutz Hulda, near Rehovot. He and
his young kibbutz comrades probed the
consequences of their 1967 Six-Day tri-
umph. The fruit of their anguished

South field's Most Distinguished
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• On site staffing 24 hours a day

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• Weekly housekeeping & linen service

• Personal care assistance and medication
administration provided by Advanced Home
Health Care, the on-site health care staff

• On-site physical therapy available through

Ann Arbor Rehab Services

or information, call Kathy Ostrowski

(248) 350 1777

22800 Civic Center Drive • Southfield !VII

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