Page 4 - C.A.L.L. #28 - Spring 2007

As oxymorons go, business ethics, civil war, educational TV and junk food are all concepts that
commune dwellers the world over can appreciate with a wry smile. But put competition together
with communal living and some communards will tell you that, with all seriousness, they look
forward to it all week. Over the next two pages we feature two communities that have found
competitive sport to be in sync with community building.

Football in the (Urban) Kibbutz by Robin Merkel

Saturday night, 7 PM. A group of
anywhere between six and sixteen kibbutzniks
are gathered on the cement, floodlit pitch,
warming up. The challenge is more than just
scoring goals; a combination of busy members,
the geographical spread of our kibbutz over two
towns, and neighbourhood youth, makes for a
varied sporting experience.

Football (soccer) is an old kibbutz tradition,
normally played on a grass pitch on Friday
afternoon at the end of the working week. The as
yet unnamed urban kibbutz of Migdal-Ha'emek / Upper Nazareth plays on Saturday night because
members travel on the Friday-Saturday Israeli weekend. We live in rented apartments scattered
throughout the two towns, so instead of grass we play on public playing fields that double as
basketball courts. If we are lucky, the lights are
working, we can find a reasonably empty pitch, and
have booked enough cars that everyone can get there
on time.
Our kibbutz is young, and rapidly growing
due to the constant influx of members from the
youth movement. In the four years that we have
been playing, people who used to turn up every week
have found themselves with work and family
commitments and have been replaced by a younger
crowd. We play co-operatively (though it can get a bit physical), four against four, rotating who
sits out after each ten-minute game.
As an urban kibbutz whose mission
is education and improving society from
within, a unique issue surrounds football.
Local teens, many from disadvantaged
backgrounds, often turn up at the pitch
during a game. They are used to the losing
team sitting out (and are usually better
than us!), and often stop the game to argue
over who will play in goal, or tactics, or
just about anything. We never know what
to do in this situation - sometimes we need
a few extra players, sometimes we find a
different pitch, sometimes we take the
educational angle and explain our rules,
sometimes we simply argue. In fact,
football is a real-world example of a major issue on our agenda for the past few years, as we try to
build a permanent kibbutz: whether we should create our own “fenced-in” community or should
live in the communities we are active in. Is the desire for a co-operative game three hours a week
enough to justify “fencing-out” the neighbours? Football has become a topic of some controversy!

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