Page 22 - C.A.L.L. #28 - Spring 2007

This is a translation of parts of an interview with Amos Oz, the best-known Israeli
novelist, a former kibbutz member, and which was published in Hadaf Hayarok, (a
kibbutz weekly) on 23.3.06. Amos Oz personally gave C.A.L.L. permission to
translate and publish these excerpts:

How do you interpret what is happening in the kibbutz movement today?
"There is a correlation between the spirit of solidarity that used to be in the kibbutz society and
the whole of the Israeli society and solidarity within the home. When one is weakened, the other is
weakened, too. I won't try and say which began to deteriorate first, but it is quite clear that when
the kibbutz movement began to feel that it was no longer the moving force responsible for
everything that was happening in the country, responsible meaning involvement, then the internal
solidarity between individuals within the kibbutz cracked.

Without solidarity, all that was left of the kibbutz was a collection of rules and regulations. I have
nothing against rules and regulations, and I don't contend that a kibbutz that exists only according
to its set of rules has no right to exist. Rather have a form of living organized by rules than a
jungle. I don't scorn that, but we all know that once upon a time it was much more than that, and
it has been lost."

What is it that we had and has been lost?
"We have lost the very ambitious attempt to function as an
extended family. The kibbutz was always a problematic experiment
and I won't idealize the first generations. They are not worthy of
idealization. It was based on great hopes, but also on great
mistakes. They had an almost childlike view of human nature. The
founders of the kibbutz were young boys and girls who somewhere
in their hearts hoped to establish a sort of continual summer camp.
They weren't properly equipped to deal with such issues as families,
and certainly not with human nature. In some cases they tried to
reinvent the wheel. It was partly out of ambition, partly out of
naivety, but also out of ignorance in some instances."

Such as? Amos Oz
Such as the ancient idea of creating separate authorities. The legislator is not the judge, and the
judge is not the executor. The kibbutzim didn't separate the authorities. The general meeting was
actually the legislative body, and also the judge and the executor, especially the judge and the
executor. If two neighbours on a certain kibbutz disagreed regarding a bower that one of them
built in their garden, the subject would be brought to a committee, and then to the general
meeting where divisions could be a result of personal connections, family bonds or even revenge,
and the deep wounds caused by this, poisoned kibbutz life. It took many years until the penny
dropped, and the simple possibility of bringing in a mediator from another kibbutz, was deemed
possible. For example, if two members of Kibbutz Nachson were fighting over a bower in their
garden, someone from Kibbutz Hulda could decide who was right. Such things could have saved
much bad blood in kibbutz life.

I think that the present generation of leaders in the kibbutzim have a more realistic view of human
nature, maybe even more intelligent as far as how to organize things and learning from others.
The second generation went with the flow, and reforms which could have saved the kibbutzim
from themselves, if they had been carried out thirty or forty years ago, were too late, and were
postponed until signs of decay appeared causing a major confidence crisis regarding the very
essence of this way of life. When people undergo a crisis of confidence regarding the essence of
their way of life, when they perceive themselves as being trapped, and ask themselves how to
escape or how to stay there without getting hurt while coping the best they can, that is a terrible
situation. Terrible, but not impossible."

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