The Catholic Times

I imagine that by this time
the word kibbutz has entered
the vocabulary of almost everyone and that it is scarcely necessary to define the term.
At any rate,
for the sake
of my readers
whose Hebrew is a bit hazy, it means a collective or group settlement, and represents one of the most interesting and original of social experiments in Israel.

The fact that the system of
the kibbutz has been widely
publicized and become almost synonymous with contemporary Israel, may lead us to assume that practically all Israelis live on these collective farms
and spend their time drawing
water and breaking rock with
no compensation other than the fulfillment of the ideals of Zionism. This is a most inaccurate picture. The official statistics of the Israeli government show that there are about 848 settlements in the entire country,
of which only 227 are kibbutzim with a total population of 73,
229 people.

Kibbutz Most Dramatic Type

There is a variety of other
types of agricultural and village organizations such as
the smallholder's settlements,
workers' cooperatives and numerous transitory settlements
for the reception and orientation of the newly arrived immigrants. The authentic kibbutz involves less than 75,000 people out of a population of 1,700,000
but is, far and away, the most
dramatic of the numerous initiatives that have been taken in Israel.

I have seen some of the oldest and some of the newest of these settlements. Degania—in
the north of Israel, not far
from Syria—is the oldest of
all. Founded in 1908 and still
functioning on the same, traditional collective basis, this
kibbutz has had all the rough
edges worn off. Today it is being run by the grandchildren of its founders, so that there is
an air of stability and permanence about it that contrasts totally with the frontier spirit say, in the Negev or on the Gaza strip.

Absolute Community Control

My own ideas about kibbutzim before I went to Israel
were a little vague. I had read,
among other things, two rather interesting books on the subject, one by Murray Weingarten called "Life in a Kibbutz" and
another, much more historical
and theoretical, by Henrik Infield entitled "Cooperative Living in Palestine." These made it plain that the kibbutz, as a form of social and economic organization, dates from early in this century and served as the only method of agricultural settlement when there was precious little capital to invest and the probability of profits was practically nil. The appeal had to be made to sheer heroism and self-sacrifice and nothing else.

The young Jew who came out
of Minsk or Warsaw, hot and
bothered about Zionism, could
be induced to take up the shovel and man the plow without any idea of making a cent on the deal. Moreover, the essence
of kibbutz economy is the absolute community control of everything. No money circulates and everyone works according to a division of labor that is determined by the group. Children are placed for care in a center within the kibbutz and
spend only a few hours a day
with parents who are relieved
from all chores and activities
of the household. Everyone
eats in a common dining hall.
In some of the kibbutzim, small industry and all sorts of by-product activities have developed.

Defense Value

I saw some kibbutzim down
Gaza way which have just been established. It should not be
forgotten that the system is
part military as well as economic and has served as a
means of populating the frontier areas and assuring adequate defense. The value of the kibbutzim in this respect was eloquently revealed in 1948-49.

I am frank to say that before seeing a kibbutz I was prepared for a lot of fanatics who
eat nothing but nuts or live on some sort of root. I feared that I might find all sorts of faddists and people who talk about the simple life far from the comforts of civilization. I was very much afraid that in every kibbutz I would be welcomed by bronzed chaps who never shave or who believe in free love.
This was not the case at all.

Prosaic and Routine

Kibbutz life struck me as
very prosaic and routine, just
another job that has to be done.
Many young people like it and
many leave, for there is no
compulsion. In many ways a
kibbutz is like a club to which
one must be admitted to membership, but there is no coercion whatever in the formal
sense although an ex-kibbutznik may be regarded somewhat as one who could not take the gaff.

The main problem, it seemed to me, is just how Israel is going to manage to raise up
generations of one group in the ordinary capitalist-competitive
economy and, at the same time,
another group that never sees
money. One or the other is
probably possible. But just how the two can be adjusted within the same nation is not entirely clear to me.