Page 18 - C.A.L.L. #33 - Winter 2010/2011

KIBBUTZ SHORTS
for all, especially for the elders, heavy subsidies for health and education expenses and
more.

Praise from the Right

Most Kibbutz members belong to the left-wing parties, and had to withstand often vicious
attacks from the right. This year the centenary carried with it a broader appreciation of the
Kibbutz movement, and we listened with wonder to the short speech by the Knesset member
Orly Levy, who could not deny the great part the Kibbutzim contributed to the building of
Israel, especially by their agricultural task of "turning the desert into flourishing gardens". I
myself live on a Kibbutz, she said (not as a member!) and love the place, especially the well-
organized and progressive education there that my children enjoy.

Against any Form of Discrimination

Lately we see with much joy and satisfaction, new feminists: members of the religious
Kibbutzim. Lali Alexander, member of Kibbutz Ein Tzurim (where she was born and raised),
works at the national center for victims of sexual attacks, but tries to bring about changes
on all fronts: the Kibbutz: as a girl I already refused to work in the kitchen or as childrens'
help, as an adult I joined the movement for religious women's equality, and I am happy to
note that this movement conquers an ever larger area in the Kibbutz Dati (Religious
Kibbutzim). This opens new vistas for the feminists in Israel and the world.

No Life Without Change?

A new, very well-written book, Tabula Rasa, appeared lately
(and will probably soon be translated from Hebrew into
English). Its veteran Kibbutz writer Nathan Shaham, is the
first one who deals with the "New Kibbutz" (some say "No
Kibbutz"), that leads a life of "privatization", including Nathan Shaham
differential wages and paying for everything you need. For about 80 years such an
arrangement was unheard and un-imagined on a Kibbutz, but in the last 25 years thorough
changes brought forward a Kibbutz type that nobody thought possible before. The life our
writer describes so realistically is still being opposed by many, especially the founding and
other older members, but fully accepted and subscribed to by the younger generation.
The book’s hero, Hanan, is an artist whose paintings were enthusiastically accepted by all and
used to be displayed on the walls in all public places, but at some stage Hanan joined, heart
and soul, a modern school of abstract, and from that moment found himself under heavy
criticism from all sides, all members, including his own wife. His maxim "I don't want to
display reality, but the scratches that reality leaves on my heart", stays without power of
persuasion. At the age of 70, when he finds out that he can live on the Kibbutz pension but
certainly not pay for all his frames and papers and cloth and colors, he gives in and goes back
to his original realistic "beautiful" art, because that is "the kitch that ordinary people in the
Israel love and pay for".

Today the majority of Kibbutzim have undergone these or similar changes, and the discussion
goes on: are we still entitled to call ourselves Kibbutz? What do you think? Nearly all of you
readers of C.A.L.L. are members of communes and other communities, and I imagine that
your thoughts and answers might help us see ourselves more objectively. So please, voice
your opinion, write and enrich our internal soul-searching!

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