This article was published in the Toronto Star

Idan Ben Shalom’s “company car” is nothing but a dilapidated and rusty bicycle. His dusty shoes and the wrinkled flannel shirt that he wears even when hot winds heat the air to 42 degrees in the shade easily let you forget that this taciturn and shyly smiling Israeli is a senior partner in a multi-million dollar enterprise. Ben Shalom is the spokesperson and administrator of Kibbutz Degania B, the smaller and younger sister-village of the world’s first Kibbutz Deganiah A. Just a couple of days ago, the whole cabinet convened in the sister Kibbutz to mark its hundredth birthday. To some, the centennial of the idea of the communal Kibbutz is a reason to celebrate. But for many others, like Ben Shalom, the festive mood darkens as they take stock of the movement’s current state of affairs. Once, the Kibbutz epitomized the newly emerging Jewish state. Its 273 agricultural settlements were the foundries that forged the country’s political, social and military elite. But today, the Kibbutzim have become an indebted, fragmented and marginalized group of villages who seem to barely hang on in a perpetual state of crisis.

The beginnings of Deganiah A go back to a group of twelve pioneers who established this first communal settlement on the swampy fields the Zionist organization had acquired from the Arab village of Beit Juni. Seven years before the Bolsheviks rebelled against the Tsar in Russia, these ten young men and two women from Ukraine aimed to erect a Marxist Utopia. Since its inception, the Kibbutz movement understood itself as the vanguard of the socialist brand of Zionism. Fiercely anti-religious, they regarded Jews as a people, and physical labor became their creed. They aimed to give rise to a “new Jew”, who toiled the land once ploughed by his heroic biblical ancestors. But just like Ben Shalom’s appearance today is full of discrepancies, life in the Kibbutz was full with paradox. They wanted to liberate all workers, but drove Arab peasants off their land. They were fighters of elite fighting units, and founded the peace movement. They implemented grass-root democracy, where women were nominally equal decades before suffragettes succeeded in Europe. But their puritan common spirit sometimes turned into the dictatorship of the majority pressing for conformity. “Everyone will give according to his abilities and receive in accordance with his needs”, was the motto strictly enforced, and everything, including underwear, belonged to the commune. Even children did not belong to their parents, but were separated at an early age and raised in the Kibbutz’s centers.

Even at their prime, the Kibbutzim only housed 7.5% of Israel’s population, yet their spiritual influence on the fledgling Jewish state was enormous. A visit to the Kinnereth cemetery close-by suffices to substantiate the elitist claim of the Kibbutzniks. Serenely overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Kinnereth houses the graves of spiritual giants, like the father of the worker’s party Berl Katzenelson, the founder of German socialism and prophet of Zionism Moses Hess, national poets like Naomi Shemer and Rahel. Up to the seventies, when a quarter of the cabinet were Kibbutzniks, most Prime Ministers, state and army officials had spent at least several months living and working on a Kibbutz. The legendary military genius Moshe Dayan was Deganiah’s first child in fact, followed by many who hailed from Kibbutzim. Minister of defense Ehud Barak hails from a Kibbutz just as best-selling author Amos Oz. The Kibbutznik was the ultimate Israeli, and Israeli children grew up on the myths of Kibbutz Deganiah in the North and Yad Mordechai in the South, whose outgunned inhabitants single-handedly repelled the invading Syrian and Egyptian armies in Israel’s bloody war of independence in 1948, saving the incipient state from certain annihilation.

But today, much of that luster has been lost. When the Labor party lost power in 1977, government subsidies dried up. Ideology became a thing of the past as young sons and daughters of the Kibbutzim pursued their fortunes outside: “Only three from my class stayed here”, says Ben Shalom. Today, only 3.5% of Israelis live on a Kibbutz. The movement fell into a deep crisis, from it never recovered. “Deganiah B used to have 420 members, now we are 195”, says Ben Shalom. In the past 30 years, not a single house has been added to the Kibbutz. “We have four children, and we have to make do with an 80 square meter apartment.”

Crisis brought change to the socialist paradise. First, children moved back in to sleep with their parents. Later, the majority of Kibbutzim was forced to enact harsh reforms to cover their debts. Today, most members pay for their own electricity, water and food, and get paid according to the work they perform. Many communes however still limit the income gap to 25%. Private initiative is welcome. A gourmet confiserie has opened in the first cow shed of Deganiah, where Zionist pioneers once produced egalitarian milk for the masses. The remaining sheds, the banana- and date plantations that in the days of yore advanced the idea of “Hebrew labor”, are now tended to by 13 Thai guest workers. Most Kibbutzim have turned their back to toiling the soil and have erected more lucrative factories or hotels instead. Deganiah Silicone’s 300 employees produce medical products, only few of them belong to the Kibbutz, however.

The idyllic communal form of life, an integral part of Israeli nostalgia, has utterly changed. But it may be too early to eulogize the Kibbutz. According to figures released by the movement, 2500 new members have joined one of the 273 Kibbutzim in the past two years alone. Many young Israelis move to the Kibbutz looking for the relaxed kind of life in the leafy, rustic settlements where no cars drive and children play with dogs outside until the sun goes down. Kibbutzim have become real estate dealers, as urban yuppies erect their villas close to them to profit from their excellent schools and communal sport facilities and swimming pools. Many of them would like to become members of a successful Kibbutz like Deganiah, but this has become almost impossible, but not because their ideology differs so much from the original denizens: “The whole Kibbutz belongs to all its members. Everyone who joined us would immediately have a stake in everything, turning him into a millionaire on paper overnight without having contributed anything”, explains Ben Shalom and adds: “We have not found a way to solve this problem yet.” The founders’ original ideals have ceased to play a role here long ago.

© 2010 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

See the pics for the article here