The Kibbutz And Its Future: Historical Perspective

Dr. Michael Livni

International Communal Studies Association
Eighth International Conference
Amana, Iowa

Session 5, Wednesday, June 30.

June 28-30, 2004
ABSTRACT

The kibbutz movement is perceived as the "flagship" of the intentional communal movement worldwide. Today this 95-year-old phenomenon appears to be foundering. 
The relative success of the kibbutz was due to its being an integral part of the Zionist movement. The Zionist movement was both a national political movement for establishing a state for the Jews (political Zionism) as well as a movement for Jewish cultural renewal (cultural Zionism). The kibbutz was a result of a “marriage of convenience” between a certain vision of Jewish cultural renewal (cultural Zionism) and the practical needs of political Zionism.  During the period preceding the Second World War and until immediately after the establishment of Israel in 1948 the “marriage of convenience” evolved into a full partnership of vision and purpose. This was the period when Martin Buber described the kibbutz as “an experiment that did not fail”.
After the establishment of Israel, the kibbutzim increasingly diversified into industry and strengthened their economic base. However, with the passing of the founding generation, their ideological elan began to decline. The functional importance of the kibbutzim for the State of Israel became marginal. 
The founding generation of the kibbutzim was motivated by an ideology based on faith. The following generation of sons and daughters related to practical challenges and eschewed ideology. The kibbutz began to stagnate ideologically. A major negative contributing factor was the Holocaust, which destroyed the European reservoir of recruitment for new ideologically oriented kibbutz members.
The mass immigration to Israel after the establishment of Israel, particularly from the Arab countries, was unsuitable for kibbutz life and largely became aligned with the right wing nationalist movements that toppled Israel’s Labor government in the 1977 elections. These elections also spelt the end of the special relationship between kibbutzim and government. The kibbutz proved incapable of building bridges to the new Israeli society. It was associated with the “patronizing” elites that had absorbed the mass immigration. The kibbutz’s rigidly secular stance negated the traditional bent of many of the new immigrants especially those from the Arab countries. After 1977 new neo-liberal economic policies undercut Israel’s agricultural sector including the kibbutzim. Ideological stagnation and economic over-extension went hand in hand and caused the economic crisis of the mid-eighties.
Economically, much of the kibbutz movement is undergoing partial privatization. However, the essential change is that the kibbutz, whatever its economic framework, is no longer a focus for social-cultural Zionist vision. “Where there is no vision, the People become unruly” (Proverbs 29:18). 
Currently there appear to be three possible foci of kibbutz regeneration.
1)	The collective stream within the general organization of the kibbutz.
2)	The orthodox religious kibbutz movement.
3)	Urban kibbutzim founded mainly by Israeli youth movement graduates and the sons and daughters of veteran kibbutzim. 
The verdict is not yet in with regards to their ability to revivify the most prominent communal movement of the Twentieth century. 

OUTLINE

1.	Background

2.	The Zionist Movement: Jewish Response to Modernity

a.	The Path of Political Zionism
b.	Cultural Zionism and Jewish Redemption
c.	The Concept of a Messianic Movement
d.	Zionism as a Unique Messianic Movement
e.	Collective Settlement as an Instrument of National Redemption

3.	The partners to a “Marriage of Convenience”

a.	Political Zionism and the Pioneers (Chalutzim)
b.	The Chalutzim as Men and Women of Faith
c.	Practical Considerations of Political Zionism
d.	The Demarcation Between the Partners in the “Marriage of Convenience”.

4.	The Kibbutzim Come of Age

5.	The Impact of Statehood

6.	The Kibbutz until 1977

a.	The State-Kibbutz Relationship until 1977
b.	Internal Developments
c.	The Kibbutz and Judaism

7.	After 1977 – Ideological and Economic Crisis

8.	Perspective and Prognosis

9.	Against the Stream – the Unknown Future

a.	The Collective Stream
b.	The orthodox kibbutz movement
c.	The new urban kibbutz framework

	THE KIBBUTZ AND ITS FUTURE: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1. BACKGROUND
The kibbutz movement is perceived as the “flagship” of the intentional communal movement worldwide.  The first kibbutz was established in 1910.  During three generations, its size and influence on its surrounding society have been without precedent.   The words “without precedent” demand immediate qualification in terms of absolute numbers.  The kibbutz movement at its relative peak in May 1948 numbered 177 kibbutzim with a population of 49,160 in a Jewish population of 650,000 (7.6%).  It was perceived as the Zionist elite of the State of Israel that had just been established.  Until the end of the Seventies the kibbutz maintained much of its leadership image within its surrounding society even though its percentage in the total Jewish population had declined to 3.5%.  Since the mid-Eighties we have witnessed a radical decline both in the self-image of the kibbutz as well as the status of the kibbutz in Israeli society.  In terms of numbers, the kibbutz population peaked in 1994 with a population of 124, 600.  In the year 2002 the population of the 268 kibbutzim had declined to 115,600, just 2.1% of Israel’s Jewish population.
Today this 95-year-old phenomenon appears to be foundering.  The rise and apparent decline of the kibbutz can be understood only within the context of its place in the national movement of the Jewish people - Zionism.
2. THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT: JEWISH RESPONSE TO MODERNITY
A comprehensive view of modern Jewish history is beyond the scope of this presentation.  In terms of  “stimulus - response” two different paths led to the Zionist response.  These were political Zionism and cultural Zionism.   These paths often intertwined -- both in public events as well as in the life stories of individual participants in the Zionist saga.  The history of the Kibbutz movement and its current quandary cannot be understood without reference to its evolving relationship with these two facets of Zionism.  Ultimately, the relevance of Zionism as perceived in the Israeli and the Jewish world today is part of the kibbutz dilemma as well.  
2a. The Path of Political Zionism
In modern Jewish history, the better-known Zionist path is that of political Zionism.   It is political Zionism that has impacted on international affairs during the past century.  It is associated with the name of Theodor Herzl, 1860 - 1904, the founder of the World Zionist Organization (WZO).    To a considerable extent, the stimulus that led to its formation was the rise of militant modern anti-Semitism, a byproduct in many European national movements of the Nineteenth Century.  
The Herzlian political Zionist response was based on the assumption (reinforced by the hostile environment) that the Jews were one people - a group with a common past, present and future.  The only answer to antisemitism was a state for the Jews where they would be free and secure.  The aim of a State was adopted at the first Zionist Congress held in Basle in 1897.  At its outset, political Zionism concentrated on political lobbying in the international arena in order to further its aims.  
2b. Cultural Zionism and Jewish Redemption
In 1791, the French National Assembly, bent on dismantling all vestiges of feudalism, set the historic precedent of granting all Jews equality before the law as French citizens.  Just as the serfs had been emancipated from the authoritarian feudal structure, so the Jews were “emancipated” from the authority of the Jewish community.  Napoleon’s armies spread the anti-feudal message throughout Europe.    The authority of Jewish communal institutions was restricted to matters of religious ritual.  The existential dependence of the individual Jew on his/her community came to an end.  Jews became exposed to the Enlightenment. Many left Judaism and assimilated. Others began to confront the challenge of reconciling their Judaism with modernity.  
Cultural Zionism was a response to the disintegration of Jewish society which resulted from the Emancipation and the Enlightenment.  It was associated with the name of Achad Ha’am (“one of the people”), the pen name of Asher Ginsberg, 1856-1927.  Achad Ha’am’s thesis was that the impact of modernity could be confronted by Judaism only by reviving the prophetic aspect of Judaism.  The purpose of the Jewish National Home was to enable redemption of the prophetic spirit and its manifestation in a way relevant to the modern day and age.
In Jewish tradition, a portion of the Torah (the Pentateuch) is read three times a week.  On returning the Torah to its ark, the congregation chants a prayer which ends with the words: “Renew our Days as of Old”.  The cultural Zionism of the kibbutzim sought to realize this prayer of messianic longing and redemption in a non-orthodox framework.  Cultural Zionism in general and the kibbutz movement in particular had characteristics of a messianic movement.   
2c. The Concept of a Messianic Movement
The term “messianic” is used here in a sociological and historical sense as proposed by Bernard Barber in his study of messianic movements among the North American First Nations during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.  
A messianic response or movement is the countering of a recognized cultural impasse by a doctrine of hope which seeks to re-assert the values of the culture in the face of the impasse.  The cultural impasse must give rise to “an experience of ‘deprivation’ - the despair caused by inability to obtain what the culture has defined as the ordinary satisfactions of life… Deprivation may arise from the destruction not only of physical objects but also of socio-cultural activities.”  Clearly, Zionism fits into this mold.
The First Nations’ messianic movements embodied a whole system of ghost 
dances and shamanistic rituals, the purpose of which was to rid the land of the white man, bring back the buffalo, and in general redeem and re-establish the culture of the First Nations  as a continuing significant force.   
The messianic movements of America’s First Nations, as well as the messianic cults of other indigenous peoples which arose in the confrontation between them and the expanding West, were (certainly in retrospect) not in a realistic relationship with the political and social reality of the day.   Zionism is a messianic movement that succeeded at least in part.
2d. Zionism as a Unique Messianic Movement
The Zionist movement is unique in the annals of modern history in that its messianic response to physical and cultural impasse (deprivation) actually succeeded. Walter Laqueur has documented this unlikely story.
As a messianic movement, Zionism differed from other messianic movements and cults in a number of respects:
1. There was no one person identified as the infallible messianic leader. (Even Herzl during his short life faced opposition on tactical questions within the WZO that he founded.)
2.  The physical and cultural redemption of the Jewish people was to be realized in social and political frameworks compatible with modernity.
Nevertheless, a majority of the Jewish people were suspicious and doubtful.  In the West, many saw Zionism as a threat to their integration as citizens in their countries. They believed that Zionism was removed from the extant social and political realities.  Both political and cultural Zionism remained minority movements until after World War One.  Even after Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish National Home, mass support for the movement came only with the cataclysmic events of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
2e. Collective Settlement as an Instrument of National Redemption
The first decade of the last century witnessed the exodus of a million Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia. A few thousand ideologically oriented (mainly) Russian Jews were prepared to personally commit themselves to a messianic cultural Zionist program of redemption of the Jewish people in what was then Turkish Palestine.  Within that group, a few hundred believed that the land of Israel, in particular its agricultural settlement, should be rebuilt on collective foundations.  They began to establish communal groups (kvutzot) for mutual support.  They saw themselves and came to be known as chalutzim - pioneers. Their interpretation of cultural Zionism was:  Hebrew land, Hebrew language, Hebrew labor and Hebrew social justice. Hebrew social justice meant their interpretation of the spirit of the prophets.  This was the recipe of the chalutzim for the cultural redemption of the Jewish people in the face of the cultural impasse of continuity and creativity in the Diaspora.  
However, Near’s compilation of communal group membership in Turkish Palestine at the outbreak of the First World War, shows less than 400 individuals involved in the kvutzot which constituted the initial potential of the first kibbutzim.  (The word Kvutza, pl. kvutzot, denotes a small collective group.  The word kibbutz, pl. kibbutzim, began to be used in the Twenties for larger collective groups settling on the land).

3. THE PARTNERS TO A “MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE”
	Kibbutzim could not have been established without the active support (sometimes grudging, never enough) of the WZO. This was a marriage of convenience between two very disparate partners.
3a. Political Zionism and the Pioneers (Chalutzim)
Philanthropically funded settlement by proto-Zionist groups called the “Lovers of Zion” had begun in the Eighties of the Nineteenth century but was foundering by the beginning of the Twentieth century when the WZO began to function.   It was not until 1907, ten years after it’s founding, that the WZO decided to undertake practical settlement work in Palestine in tandem with its political lobbying for an internationally recognized   juridical framework for a Jewish National Home.  
Arthur Ruppin, a young German-Jewish sociologist, was retained by the WZO to establish an office in Palestine in order to further the practical work of Jewish settlement.   He demanded and was given a free hand in promoting settlement.  It was Ruppin who recognized the potential inherent in the commitment of young Russian-Jewish pioneers, the chalutzim, and entrusted them with the responsibility for settlement of lands purchased with limited WZO funds.  Thus, he became the “marriage broker” between funds donated by middle-class Jews in Europe and America and a marginal group of radical socialist idealists in their late teens and early Twenties.  This “marriage of convenience”, brokered by Ruppin, was a decision criticized by many in the WZO and Ruppin had to defend it constantly.  
3b. The Chalutzim As Men And Women Of Faith
Maurice Samuel’s eyewitness description of these Zionist chalutzim in Eastern Europe describes their world outlook.
 “I met them (the chalutzim) first in Eastern Europe, more than thirty years ago (1920)--young men and women preparing themselves for the role of builders of the Jewish homeland.  They were in revolt against the Jewish ghetto, against the Jewish exile, against the evils of the capitalist world.  They were caught up in the fever of a great mission; they were going forth to show that a Jewish life could be built in Palestine cleansed of the particular curse of Jewish homelessness and of the general or all-human curse of an exploitative economy... It was altogether extraordinary to encounter in them an equal passion for the Bible and Karl Marx, for the morality of the prophets and the materialistic interpretation of history, for the deliverance from Egypt and the Bolshevik revolution”.
In reviewing the background of the kibbutz movement and that of the select few who initiated it (and much of the Zionist enterprise) the question of their faith is too often avoided.  Indeed, the word “secular” when used to describe the chalutzim confuses the issue even further.   For the average contemporary Israeli, “secular” is perceived as being the opposite of “religious”.  The latter world is associated with religious ritual performance.  
The chalutzim rejected most religious (Orthodox) Jewish ritual. However, they did not see themselves as “secular”. If the antonym of secular is holy, the chalutzim felt that they were engaged in a holy task. They saw themselves as “free” Jews.  In this context, the term “free” meant that they saw themselves as free of the injunctions of orthodox Judaism - in particular as interpreted by the rabbis.  The rabbis and the wealthy constituted the power elite of the traditional Jewish community and the chalutzim rejected both.
The true prism through which the chalutzim must be seen is the question of faith. As Paul Tillich, the German Protestant theologian has pointed out that: 
Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern... In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern about the truly ultimate; while in idolatrous faith preliminary, finite realities are elevated to the rank of ultimacy...”
Tillich differentiated between the finite aims of worldly success, both at the level of the individual and the level of the nation-state as distinct from the infinite aims of social justice inherent in the prophetic ideals of the Old Testament.
A.D. Gordon (1856-1922) was the outstanding philosopher among the chalutzim.   He juxtaposed life in the “here and now” with “life everlasting” and then demanded a synthesis between them.
“Insofar as I have not yet experienced a change in my purpose for living, there is no reason for me to seek a new life, as I will not find it...They say that it is up to the worker to clarify for himself what it is he wants - if he wants to work and live by/for himself, or if he wants to work so that others may live; that is to the say for the general good or for the good of future generations.  These types of questions distract the mind from the essence of it all - from the here and now which contains life everlasting; for insofar as the here and now is itself real life it contains life everlasting.  (Emphasis in the original)
For A.D. Gordon the pursuit of the prophetic social ideals upon which the new Jewish society was to be built were ”life everlasting.”   He also believed in the necessity of the Jewish return to a life of labor on the land to achieve this aim.  However, the pursuit of such an ideal falls into Tillich’s category of true faith. It was the nature of that faith which Maurice Samuel observed and described.
For most of the original chalutzim, the future state (the aim of political Zionism) was a finite aim and a framework for the realization of their prophetic ideals in socialist garb - their interpretation of cultural Zionism.   (Indeed, at a certain stage, some chalutzim felt that their ultimate aims could be realized within the finite framework of a bi-national Arab-Jewish state.)
The “generation of faith” itself came to be partially converted to a generation of practicalities, a merging of political Zionism with a particular variant of cultural Zionism.  However, the distinction is of critical importance for the understanding of the crisis in the kibbutz movement today and for a prognosis of the resolution of that crisis.
3c. Practical Considerations of Political Zionism
Clearly, Arthur Ruppin, the “point-person” of the WZO establishment in Turkish Palestine, was also imbued with belief in the Zionist enterprise.  This gave him the ability to work with the chalutzim.  However, Ruppin was a practical man and it is as such that he had the confidence of the Zionist executive.
In 1924 Ruppin gave the following practical reasons, in terms of maximal results with minimal resources, for supporting the chalutzim and their form of collective settlement, the Kvutza:
1.	Shortage of experienced and dedicated candidates for agricultural work.
2.	Initial investment for a group was less than for establishing individual farmers.
3.	Within the group, individuals could specialize in particular areas.  The individual farmer could not be an expert in all areas.
4.	The economic success of the groups was not less than that of private settlement.
5.	By virtue of shared ideas and ideals with regard to settlement on the land, settlement groups could create tradition and norms which would bind them to the soil.
6.	The WZO was in direct contact with groups - not with individuals.  Each group was responsible for sifting and choosing suitable members.  There was no contractual relationship between the individual and the WZO.
In my opinion, the last reason weighed heavily given the difficult and primitive circumstances in which the initial settlement effort took place.
3d. The Demarcation Between the Partners in the “Marriage of Convenience” 
The idea of the collective settlement group with a particular social vision rooted in prophetic ideals of social justice in socialist garb was funded by a skeptical middle class organization.  This marriage of convenience was the basic factor that made the development of the kibbutzim possible.  The kibbutzim became the willing servants of a political Zionism which did not always subscribe to their particular brand of messianic, socialist and cultural Zionism.
In retrospect, the clear demarcation between the two partners in the “marriage of Zionist convenience” continued until the early Thirties.  The political Zionist establishment represented that minority of the Jewish people who were dues paying members of the WZO.  Most of these belonged to the middle class - mainly the lower middle- class. The chalutzim and their settlement form, the kibbutz, represented a particular variant of cultural Zionism with a particular (decentralist) socialist vision of the kind of society that should develop in the Jewish state. The social origins of the chalutzim lay mostly within the East European lower middle class. However, in confrontation with existing Jewish class structure on the one hand and with various streams of socialism on the other hand, the chalutzim had undergone a process  which led them to adopt values and a way of life  totally at variance with their origins. Therefore, the “marriage of convenience” remained a controversial subject within the WZO.  

4. THE KIBBUTZ COMES OF AGE
From the mid-Thirties a sea change occurred in the relationship between the kibbutz and the Zionist movement.  Forces from without created dramatic changes in attitudes and demography within Jewish Palestine.  The rise of Hitler in 1933 resulted in a major influx of German-Jews including many with some capital. A controversial “transfer agreement” between the Zionist movement and Nazi Germany enabled significant investment in the economic infrastructure of the agricultural sector including the kibbutzim.  Paradoxically, Palestine was one of the few locations in the Western world unaffected by the Depression. Between 1931 and 1935 Jewish Palestine doubled in size --from 175,000 to 350,000.  This resulted in an Arab revolt (1936 - 1939).   From 1937 a further partition of the Palestine mandate became a possibility.  (The first partition had taken place in 1921 with the British decision to separate Transjordan from the original Palestinian mandate). The kibbutzim became a major instrument in the service of political settlement of outlying areas as it became clear that the future borders of the Jewish state would be influenced by facts (settlements) on the ground. 
In 1935, David Ben Gurion, of the Labor Zionist Mapai party was elected Chairperson of the Jewish Agency - in effect the Jewish state in embryo.  The leadership of the Labor Zionist movement was in fact the idealistic youth of twenty-five years before.  They now became the “establishment”.  The kibbutzim were a core element (arguably THE core element) in that establishment.  
Hence, this was the period when the kibbutz  movement came of age. Between 1932 and 1940 the kibbutz population rose from 4,400 to 26,500, just over 5% of the Jewish population of Palestine.  
A network of Zionist youth movements had developed both in Palestine and in the Diaspora.  Their aim was to inculcate values and norms which would lead to self-realization within the framework of the kibbutz movement. They constituted the main continuing source of committed young pioneers.
The kibbutz economy became much stronger.  From a collective loss of 114,00 Pound Sterling in 1929, the movement registered a profit of 30,000 Pound Sterling in 1939. However, Daniel Rosolio has noted that the cumulative debt of the kibbutzim remained greater than their annual production.  The kibbutzim were chronically under-financed in terms of investment.   They were seen (and saw themselves) as a social unit based on prophetic ideals, an instrument for furthering Zionist aims, and as an economic unit that would try and break even.  However, economic considerations took a back seat.
Nevertheless, during the fifteen years that preceded the establishment of the state, (from the rise of Hitler) there was a majority consensus both in the Palestine Jewish community and the WZO that the kibbutz movement constituted an elite essential to the nation building process.  
Within the context of these dramatic developments, the social and political demarcation between the political Zionist establishment and the socialist, cultural Zionist chalutzim of the kibbutzim became blurred.  The “marriage of convenience” blossomed into a full mutuality of ideals and purpose.  
It was during this period that Martin Buber described the kibbutz as “an experiment that did not fail”. It was at this time that the kibbutzim approximated Buber’s communitarian vision of true community: Land in common, work in common, way of life in common and belief in common.

5. THE IMPACT OF STATEHOOD
The establishment of Israel impacted on the kibbutzim (and the state) demographically, ideologically, and economically.  
In the period between May 1948 and May 1949, 57 new kibbutzim were established.  The total number of kibbutzim rose from 177 to 234 and for a short time they constituted 7.6% of the Jewish population.  In the main, these kibbutzim were established with the purpose of occupying lands from which the pre-existing Arab population had either fled or been expelled during Israel’s War of Independence.
However the Kibbutz movement was drastically affected by the wave of immigration and in particular by the nature of that immigration.  Between 1948 and 1953, 722,000 Jews immigrated into the newly established Jewish state.  Israel’s population more than doubled.   
Almost half of these immigrants were Holocaust survivors from Europe and Russia.  They were reluctant to opt for a committed group framework.  For many, the kibbutz was associated with the Soviet collective farm - the kolkhoz.  Understandably, many concentration camp survivors only wanted to get on with their private lives.  Although many among the surviving remnants of the youth movements did join kibbutzim, the East and Central European youth movement reservoir had been wiped out. 
Half of the immigrants were from the Muslim lands of North Africa and the Near East.   Rising nationalism and increasing instability in these lands resulted in the immigration of an additional 350,000 Jews from Morocco in the West to Iran in the East, in the following decade.  Because of their roots in a family- based patriarchal traditional society, they were not generally candidates for collective settlements.   In the long run, these immigrants and their descendants were to be the decisive element in ending Labor Zionist political hegemony in 1977.
Future kibbutz members were to come from the Israeli youth movements, the small Zionist youth movements in the West, and from the second-generation kibbutz members.
Government allocation of resources to the rural sector decreased.  It became clear that a majority of the immigrants would have to be absorbed in the cities.  Of the planned 20% who were envisaged as part of the rural sector, most were to be settled on the moshavim and smallholder cooperatives, where each family had its homestead.
6. THE KIBBUTZIM UNTIL 1977
6a. The State-Kibbutz Relationship until 1977
With the establishment of Israel, much of the political Zionist movement morphed into the government of Israel. That government was forced to deal with the immediate priority of defense and the absorption of mass immigration.  At most, the kibbutzim became a secondary instrument for relating to the immediate problems facing the new nation.   There was a growing recognition, within and outside of the kibbutzim, that the kibbutz would not have a central role in the nation-building process.  Many left the kibbutzim in the early Fifties as a result.  Internal ideological dissension in the kibbutzim  (pro-Soviet, anti-Soviet - Which socialism?) added to the disarray.
Nevertheless, the government was a Labor Zionist government.  Kibbutz members held key roles at all levels.  There was still a significant degree of ideological and personal congruence between government and kibbutz leadership.
6b. Internal Developments
The removal of immediate existential threats, affirmative government action in promoting the agricultural sector and the channeling of kibbutz energy into industry led to a continued economic strengthening of many (not all) kibbutzim.
On the other hand, from the Sixties on, the passing of the founding generation of Labor Zionist pioneers resulted in the dissipation of the cultural Zionist messianic elan of Israel’s leadership - including that of the kibbutz movement.  
The generation of Shimon Peres and Itzchak Rabin, which inherited the Labor Zionist leadership mantle in government and on the kibbutzim, were rooted in practicalities.   They were not molded in the pressure cooker of ideological conflicts, national and social, which rocked the Jewish  (and non-Jewish) world during the era before the rise of Hitler.  
A personal memento.  When this author joined a kibbutz in 1963, the provinciality, the narrow horizons, the kibbutz youth of that period, especially those whose parents were Israelis, was striking.   On the other hand, one could not question their rootedness and love for the country or their outstanding performance in the elite units of the Israeli Defense Forces.  However, they were neither capable nor interested in relating to their grandparents’ cultural Zionist vision.  
The end of the Sixties and the beginning of the Seventies witnessed additional changes that impacted on the kibbutz.  Television came to Israel in 1968.  This represented a major incursion into the relatively isolated world of the kibbutz - and of Israel as a whole.  
A more dramatic impact on the youth of the kibbutz were the waves of volunteers that came to the kibbutzim in the years after the Six Day War of 1967.  In part, their coming was an expression of youth and young adult turmoil in the late Sixties.  The interaction between these volunteers and the de-ideologized kibbutz youth was a major factor in stimulating kibbutz youth to question their way of life and identity.   This de-ideologization of the kibbutz has been summarized by this author elsewhere.
6c. The Kibbutz and Judaism
	Perhaps one of the tragedies in the internal development of the kibbutz movement was the failure to develop a rationale in dealing with its Jewish heritage. One might say that the rejection of Orthodox Judaism by the founding fathers and mothers was so total that they “threw out the baby with the dirty bath water”. Although, there was a rejection of form and symbol associated with Orthodox Judaism, there was an effort to emphasize the agricultural symbolism embedded in many of the Jewish festivals. Shalom Lilker explored this relationship of the kibbutz to Judaism in the Seventies. 
As Maurice Samuel noted (see footnote no.9), the founding generation was totally immersed in Jewish culture. Its Jewish identity, commitment and concern for its Jewish creative continuity lead that generation to the decision of self-realization in Turkish Palestine. That personal commitment did not wane. However, the atheism of the founding generation of pioneers and its determination to create a new type of Jew established a commitment to the land of Israel but not to Judaism. It also raised barriers to possible understanding with the masses of traditional Jews from North Africa and the Near East who immigrated to Israel after the establishment of the state. The “Jews of the East” were to be molded in the image of the secular Israelis. The backlash came in the elections of 1977. 
	This author is a member of one of only two kibbutzim associated with the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (Reform). There is hope that a liberal egalitarian form of Judaism might strike root in Israel and the kibbutzim. However, this stage of the Reform Movement is only beginning to have an impact on Israeli society. 
7.  AFTER 1977 – IDEOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS
	The atrophy of the Labor Zionist elan and the coming of political age of the mass immigration of the Fifties (in particular those from the Arab countries) led to the Labor Movement’s defeat in the elections of 1977. 	
 “The political ‘turnabout’ of May 1977 exposed the ideological disarray of the kibbutz movement for all to see – but in fact the kibbutz movement has been in an ideological quandary since the establishment of the state … the unceremonious toppling of the Labor regime suddenly exposed the kibbutz movement to the true extent of its ideological isolation both within the Israeli Labor Movement and within the Israeli public at large”.
With the advent of a right wing government, the weakening “marriage of convenience” between kibbutz and the government establishment ended. The kibbutzim did not internalize this fact and related to the new reality as a temporary aberration. The “ideological anemia”, a term coined in the late Seventies by Stanley Maron of Kibbutz Maayan Zvi, also made the kibbutz movement vulnerable to the inflationary policies (“cheap” money) pursued by the new government in order to fuel development.  Borrowing money at negative rates of interest because of inflation came to an abrupt end in 1985. The kibbutz movement had over extended itself and there was no realistic relation between its assets and its accumulated liabilities. (Daniel Rosolio dealt with the subject at this conference.) The kibbutz debt became so great that it threatened the stability of the kibbutz’s creditors, including the major banks in the country. The humiliating negotiations for a bailout of the movement with an indifferent and sometimes hostile government devalued the kibbutz image even further in the eyes of the public. The effect of the ideological vacuum compounded by the economic crisis has characterized the kibbutz movement for the past fifteen years.
8. PERSPECTIVE AND PROGNOSIS
	The kibbutz movement is down but it is not yet out. From the point of view of the international communal movement, the semi-privatization of the majority of the kibbutzim simply aligns those kibbutzim with the majority of contemporary communities in the communal movement. The majority of these communities are not collective. Of course, those kibbutzim who have opted for more privatization, including the registration of residential property in the name of the individual are really, in this author’s opinion, in a gray area.
	Unfortunately, the above observation while true is probably not relevant. After all, the cardinal success of the kibbutz in its heyday was the impact of its vision (and the partial acceptance of that vision) by a majority within the surrounding society – including the elected government.
	 It is in this sense that there is no historic parallel in modern history between the kibbutz movement and other communal movements. The particular historical circumstances that led to the partial realization of messianic cultural Zionism were specific to the impact of modernity in Judaism and the emergence of the Zionist movement.  The kibbutzim were at the epic center of this phenomenon – both as a means for political Zionism and as an end, exemplifying a particular option within cultural Zionism. The kibbutzim had a vision and saw themselves as instruments of Jewish Zionist destiny. Even though their daily life was bereft of many material comforts – life on the kibbutz had meaning. It is the internal loss of vision which has lead to an emphasis of “life in the here and now” and on the material, neo-liberal norms of contemporary western society. “Where There is No Vision, the People Become Unruly” (Proverbs 29:18). 
9. AGAINST THE STREAM – THE UNKNOWN FUTURE
	There are three identifiable foci within the kibbutz movement which may have the potential for sparking modest renewal.
9a. The Collective Stream
Some 80 kibbutzim are still collective. Of these, 28 are formally affiliated with the cooperative stream of the kibbutz movement. Its goals are:
i) To ensure the continuation of the cooperative ideal and its 
implementation in changing conditions.
ii) To help kibbutzim and kibbutz members to maintain a cooperative way of life.
iii) To function as successful partnerships and to provide a living example of a way of life based on the principles of the equal value of all members and their equal contributions as well as comprehensive mutual aid.
As a member of Kibbutz Lotan, which is one of the kibbutzim affiliated with the collective stream, this author has attended a number of the collective stream’s meetings. Is the stream a rear-guard action or a harbinger of a possible future? The question remains open. There is currently (2004) a good deal of internal tension in the kibbutz movement between the collective stream and the privatizing kibbutzim. In the opinion of this author, as of this writing, the collective stream has been mainly reactive. It has not yet proactively formulated a Zionist vision for the Twenty First century.
See this author’s presentation at this conference: Case Study: Kibbutz Lotan: Eco-Zionism and Kibbutz.
9b. The orthodox kibbutz movement
Of the 260 kibbutzim in Israel, 15 are organized within the framework of the “Kibbutz Dati” – the religious kibbutz movement. Significantly, the “Kibbutz Dati” did not partake in the financial adventurism of the early Eighties. Thus it  avoided economic crisis. They serve as a “control” example that the economic crisis was preventable. 
	A majority of the religious kibbutzim are collective. Their concept of community was always based on their interpretation of Orthodox Judaism rather than on an interpretation of socialism. While most (not all) of the orthodox kibbutzim are economically stable, their potential outreach is limited to those who observe Orthodox Judaism. Their youth is very much affected by two totally opposed tendencies. On the one hand, they are affected by radical nationalist orthodoxy (the “Land of Israel” movement), which opposes a Palestinian State. On the other hand, many decide to leave Orthodox Judaism. The internal tension within the movement limits it potential even more. 

9c. The new urban kibbutz framework
The first urban kibbutz, Tammuz, was established in the development town of Beth Shemesh in 1985. Its founding members were predominately second generation kibbutz members who rejected their veteran home kibbutzim because they felt that they were no longer relevant to Israeli society. Today a few hundred young people live in such urban kibbutzim. All are engaged in some type of educational outreach as part of their economic program. The Israeli youth movements are attempting to organize their graduates in such settlement groups.
Conclusion 
As Yaakov Oved, founder of the International Communal Studies Association noted in his closing address at the Eighth International Conference “There will always be those who seek to realize the communitarian vision. This is also true for Israel”.
The open question remains: Will those communities who are going “against the stream” succeed in generating a cultural Zionist vision (or visions) that will impact significantly Israeli society?
	The ancient Hebrew sages said: 
“Everything is foreseen; but free will is given”. (Ethics 3:19).
REFERENCES