Kibbutz

A kibbutz (Hebrew: קיבוץ; plural: kibbutzim: קיבוצים, "gathering" or "together") is an Israeli collective community. Although other countries have had communal enterprises, in no other country have voluntary collective communities played as important a role as the kibbutzim have played in Israel; indeed, kibbutzim played an essential role in the creation of Israel.

History

Origins

Conditions were hard for all subjects of the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but they were especially difficult for Jews. It was the official policy of the Russian government to "cause one-third of the Jews to emigrate, one-third to accept baptism, and one-third to starve." Except for a wealthy few, Jews could not leave the Pale of Settlement; within the Pale of Settlement, Jews could neither live in large cities, such as Kiev, nor any village with fewer than 500 residents, even if a person needed rural medical recuperation. In case any Jews made their way into the Russian capital city, in 1897 the Moscow Chief of Police offered a bounty for the capture of an illegal Jew equal to the capture of two burglars. (Dubow, Vol. III, 15)

Related Topics:
Russian Empire - Jew - Pale of Settlement - Kiev - Moscow

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The Tsarist government disproportionately conscripted Jews into the Russian army. While in other countries soldiers of all kinds would be honored, in Russia, Jewish soldiers suffered severe discrimination. Jews had to leave the Pale of Settlement to serve with their units, but while their units were given furlough Jews had to return to the Pale of Settlement, even if their service was in the Russian Far East. There were other laws in effect which allowed the expulsion of Jewish families that had no breadwinner. During the Russo-Japanese War, many magistrates in Ukraine took advantage of the fact that Jewish men were away at the front to expel their families. Only this was too much for the Russian government. The Interior Minister at the time, Vyacheslav Plehve rebuked his subordinates, saying "the families of mobilized Jews should be left in their places of residence, pending the termination of the war." (Ibid, 95)

Related Topics:
Russo-Japanese War - Ukraine - Vyacheslav Plehve

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Most ominously, beginning in the aftermath of the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the Russian autocracy allowed and encouraged its discontented peasants to take out their frustrations on their Jewish neighbors. In May 1882, Tsar Alexander III issued the so-called "May Laws." The May Laws forbade Jews to live in towns with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants and systematized the anti-Jewish quotas that kept thousands of Jews out of the professions and out of university. The consequence of the residency laws was that hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from towns and villages that their families had resided in for generations. The turn of the century marked a high point for Jewish oppression in Russia.

Related Topics:
Alexander II - 1881 - 1882 - Alexander III - May Laws

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Jews responded to the pressures on them in different ways. Some saw their future in a reformed Russia and joined Socialist political parties. Other Jews saw the future of Jews in Russia as being out of Russia, and thus emigrated to the West. Other Jews took little notice of the changing world and continued in orthodoxy. Still other Jews took the opposite course and became assimilationists. Last but not least among the ideological choices that presented themselves to Jews in late 19th century Russia was Zionism, the movement for the creation of a Jewish homeland in the cradle of Judaism, Palestine, or, as Jews called it, Eretz Yisrael.

Related Topics:
Zionism - Palestine - Eretz Yisrael

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Prior to this time of increased persecution, Jews had gone to Palestine either late in life to die or as young people to attend the various yeshivas clustered in Jerusalem and Hebron. These individuals were religious and had no political ambitions. In fact, instead of having livelihoods, they relied on charitable contributions of Jews from abroad.

Related Topics:
Yeshiva - Jerusalem - Hebron

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Although Zionism's antecedents can be traced back into distant Jewish history, the ideology emerged as a significant force in Jewish life only in the 1880s. In that decade approximately 15,000 Jews, mostly from southern Russia, moved to Palestine with the two intentions of living there, as opposed to dying and being buried there, and of farming there, as opposed to studying. This movement of Jews to Palestine in the 1880s is called the "First Aliyah", and its members are called "Biluim".

Related Topics:
Jewish history - 1880s - First Aliyah - Bilu

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Zionism is usually understood to mean a kind of nationalism, but Zionism also had economic and cultural aspects. Zionism's chief economic program was for Jews to abandon inn-keeping, pawn-brokering, and petty selling in favor of a return to the land and its cultivation.

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The Jews of the First Aliya generation believed that Diaspora Jews had sunk low due to their typical disdain for physical labor. Their ideology was that the Jewish people could be "redeemed"—physically as well as spiritually—by toiling in the fields of Palestine. It was believed that the soil of Palestine had magical properties to metamorphosize feeble Jewish merchants into strong, noble farmers. In 1883, The London Jewish Chronicle wrote of the new Jewish agriculturalist in Palestine that he had been transformed from "the pallid, stooping Jewish pedlar and tradesman of a few months back ... into the bronzed, horny-handed, manly tiller of the soil." (Silver-Brody, 33,36)

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In harmony with the "religion of labor," the Biluim manifesto proudly called for the "encouragement and strengthening of immigration and colonization in Eretz Yisrael through the establishment of an agricultural colony, built on cooperative social foundations." In harmony with the yet unnamed ideology of Zionism the Biluim called for the "polico-economic and national spiritual revival of the Jewish people in Palestine."

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The Biluim came to Eretz Yisrael with high hopes of success as a peasant class, but their enthusiasm was perhaps greater than their agricultural ability. Within a year of living in Palestine the Bilium had become dependent on charity, just as their scholarly brethren in Jerusalem were. The difference between the charity that sustained the Bilium and the charity that sustained the scholars was that the Bilium used donations for land and agricultural equipment purchases.

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Thanks to donations of regular Jews who read the above quotation from the London Jewish Daily Chronicle and extremely wealthy Jews like the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, the Biluim were able to eventually prosper. Their towns, Rishon LeZion and Zichron Yaakov developed into attractive, healthy communities. Unfortunately, something had happened to the Biluim between their arrival in the country and the turn of the 20th century. Instead of cultivating the soil on their own land, the Biluim found themselves hiring Arabs to cultivate the soil in their place. The Zionist economic revolution was yet to occur.

Related Topics:
Edmond James de Rothschild - Rishon LeZion - Zichron Yaakov

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The Second Aliya and founding the first kibbutzim

Pogroms flared up once again in Russia in the first years of the 20th century. In 1903 at Kishinev peasant mobs were incited against Jews after a blood libel. Riots again took place in the wake of Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution. The occurrence of new pogroms inspired yet another wave of Russian Jews to emigrate. As in the 1880s, most emigrants went to the United States, but a minority went to Palestine. It was this generation that would include founders of the kibbutzim.

Related Topics:
Pogrom - Kishinev - Blood libel - Russo-Japanese War - 1905 Revolution

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Like the members of the First Aliya who came before them, most members of the Second Aliya wanted to be farmers in Palestine. Those who would go on to found the kibbutzim first went to a village of the Biluim, Rishon LeZion, to find work there. The founders of the kibbutz were morally appalled by what they saw in the Jewish settlers there "with their Jewish overseers, Arab peasant laborers, and Bedouin guards." They saw the new villages and were reminded of the places they had left in Eastern Europe. Instead of the beginning of a pure Jewish commonwealth, they felt that what they saw recreated the Jewish socioeconomic structure of the Pale of Settlement, where Jews functioned in clean jobs, while other groups did the dirty work. (Gavron, 19)

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Joseph Baratz, who would go on to found the first kibbutz, wrote of his time working at Zikhron Yaakov:

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:We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us. This was not the way we hoped to settle the country — this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn't be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way. (Baratz, 52)

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Though Joseph Baratz and other laborers wanted to farm the land themselves, becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option in 1909. As Arthur Ruppin, an proponent of Jewish agricultural colonization of Palestine would later say, "The question was not whether group settlement was preferable to individual settlement; it was rather one of either group settlement or no settlement at all." (Rayman, 12)

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Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment, quite unlike the Russian plains the Jewish immigrants were familiar with. The Galilee was swampy, the Judean Hills rocky, and the South of the country, the Negev, was a desert. To make things more challenging, most of the settlers had no prior farming experience. The sanitary conditions were also poor. Malaria was more than a risk, it was nearly a guarantee. In addition to malaria, there were typhus and cholera.

Related Topics:
Ottoman - Judean Hills - Negev - Malaria - Typhus - Cholera

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In addition to having a difficult climate and relatively infertile soils, Ottoman Palestine was in some ways a lawless place. Nomadic Bedouins would frequently raid farms and settled areas. Sabotage of irrigation canals and burning of crops were also common. Living collectively was simply the most logical way to be secure in an unwelcoming land.

Related Topics:
Nomad - Bedouins

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On top of considerations of safety, there were also considerations of economic survival. Establishing a new farm in the area was a capital-intensive project; collectively the founders of the kibbutzim had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently they did not.

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Finally, the land that was going to be settled by Joseph Baratz and his comrades had been purchased by the greater Jewish community. From around the world, Jews dropped coins into little "Blue Boxes" for land purchases in Palestine. Since these efforts were on behalf of all Jews in the area, it would not have made sense for their land purchases to be conveyed to individuals.

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In 1909, Joseph Baratz, nine other men, and two women established themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near an Arab village called "Umm Juni." These teenagers had hitherto worked as day laborers draining swamps, as masons, or as hands at the older Jewish settlements. Their dream was now to work for themselves, building up the land. They called their community "Degania," after the cereals which they grew there. Their community would grow into the first kibbutz.

Related Topics:
1909 - Sea of Galilee - Degania

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The founders of Degania worked backbreaking labor attempting to rebuild what they saw as their ancestral land and to spread the social revolution. One pioneer later said "the body is crushed, the legs fail, the head hurts, the sun burns and weakens." At times half of the kibbutz members could not report for work. Many young men and women left the kibbutz for easier lives in Jewish Palestinian cities or in the Diaspora.

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Despite the difficulties, kibbutzim grew and proliferated. By 1914, Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea of Galilee and the nearby Jezreel Valley. The founders of Degania themselves soon left Degania to become apostles of agriculture and socialism for newer kibbutzim.

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Kibbutzim during the British Mandate

The end of the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I, and the coming of the British Mandate of Palestine was good for the yishuv and kibbutzim. The Ottoman authorities had made immigrating to Palestine difficult for Jews, and they had also made land purchases problematic. This had affected Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike. The Ottomans were poor administrators as well.

Related Topics:
British Mandate of Palestine - Yishuv - Muslim - Christian

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Aside from the change in government in Palestine, kibbutzim and the whole yishuv grew as a result of the increase in Anti-Semitism in Europe. In contrast to the prediction anti-Zionist Jews had made prior to World War I, the spread of liberal ideas was not irreversible and the position of Jews in many Central and Eastern European societies actually deteriorated.

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Jews suffered severely in the Polish-Soviet War and the Russian Civil War. Though the deaths were small compared to the recent bloodletting of World War I, the pogroms of 1918-1920 would actually make the pogroms of the 1880s and 1900s look like scuffles.

Related Topics:
Polish-Soviet War - Russian Civil War - 1900s

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"The first major pogroms took place in Zhitomir and Berdichev, old Jewish centers," Walter LaQueur wrote in his A History of Zionism,

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:whence they spread to Proskurov (where fifteen hundred Jews were killed) and neighboring places. Altogether about fifteen thousands Jews were killed in these attacks and many more wounded. Much Jewish property was destroyed. The number of deaths was far higher than in the prewar pogroms. Human life had become very cheap after 1914, and whereas the death of a few dozen victims in Kishinev had aroused a storm of protest in the civilized world, the murder of thousands 1919–1920 caused hardly a ripple. (LaQueur, 441)

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As the pogroms after Alexander II's death and the pogroms of Kishinev caused mass aliyas, so did the pogroms of the Russian civil war. Tens of thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine in the early 1920s, in a wave called the "Third Aliya."

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After the Bolshevik consolidation of power, Jews of Russia and Ukraine were assured of their physical safety, though none could emigrate. In the rest of the 1920s Jewish immigrants to Palestine would come from the rest of Eastern and Central Europe, the "Fourth Aliya." These Third and Fourth Aliya immigrants would actually do more for the growth of the kibbutz movement than the immigrants of previous immigration groups.

Related Topics:
Bolshevik - 1920s

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The three million Jews of Poland suffered as a result of large-scale boycotts of their businesses. The number of Jews practicing medicine and law was deliberately reduced. By 1930, before the Great Depression had even set in, one-third of the Jewish community of Poland was unable to pay nominal Jewish community taxes. The Polish government usually maintained law and order, but there were several minor pogroms.

Related Topics:
Poland - Boycott

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Jewish Romanians also were victims of intense anti-Semitism. Jews were displaced from many occupations and groups formed, such as the National Christian Defense League and the Iron Guard, whose goal was the eviction of all Jews.

Related Topics:
Romania - National Christian Defense League - Iron Guard

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In other countries institutional anti-Semitism was not as disabling as it was in Poland or Romania, though there was virulent anti-Semitism in the public at large.

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Partly based on German youth movements and the Boy Scouts, Zionist Jewish youth movements flourished in the 1920s in virtually every European nation. Youth movements came in every shade of the political spectrum. There were rightist movements like Betar and religious movements like Bachad, but most of these Zionist youth movements were socialist such as Dror, Brit Haolim, Kadima, Habonim, and Wekleute. Of the leftist youth movements the most significant in kibbutz history was to be the Marxist Hashomer Hatzair. In the 1920s the left-oriented youth movements would become feeders for the kibbutzim.

Related Topics:
Boy Scout - Betar - Habonim - Hashomer Hatzair

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In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliya, these youth group members had some agricultural training before embarking. Members of the Second Aliya and Third Aliyas were also less likely to be Russian, since emigration from Russia was closed off after the Russian Revolution of 1917. European Jews who settled on kibbutzim between the World Wars were from other countries in Eastern Europe, including Germany. Finally, the members of the Third Aliya were to the left of the founders of Degania, and believed that voluntary socialism could work for everyone. They considered themselves to be a vanguard movement that would inspire the rest of the world.

Related Topics:
Russian Revolution of 1917 - Germany

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Degania in the 1910s seems to have confined its discussions to practical matters, but the conversations of the next generation in the 1920s and 1930s were free-flowing discussions of the cosmos. Instead of having a meeting in a dining room, meetings were held around campfires. Instead of beginning a meeting with a reading of minutes, a meeting would begin with a group dance. Remembering her youth on a kibbutz by the Sea of Galilee, a woman remembered "Oh, how beautiful it was when we all took part in the discussions, nights of searching for one another—that is what I call those hallowed nights. During the moments of silence, it seemed to me that from each heart a spark would burst forth, and the sparks would unite in one great flame penetrating the heavens…. At the center of our camp a fire burns, and under the weight of the hora the earth groans a rhythmic groan, accompanied by wild songs." (Gavron, 45)

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Kibbutzim founded in the 1920s tended to be larger than the kibbutzim like Degania which were founded prior to World War I. Degania had had twelve members at its founding. Ein Harod, founded only a decade later, began with 215 members.

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Altogether kibbutzim grew and flourished in the 1920s. In 1922 there were scarcely 700 individuals living on kibbutzim in Palestine. By 1927 the kibbutz population was approaching 4,000. By the eve of World War II the kibbutz population was 25,000, 5 percent of the total population of the yishuv.

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The growth of kibbutzim allowed the movement to diversify into different factions, although the differences between kibbutzim were always smaller than their similarities. In 1927, some new kibbutzim that had been founded by HaShomer Hatzair banded together to form a countrywide association, Kibbutz Artzi. For decades, Kibbutz Artzi would be the kibbutz left wing. In 1936, the Kibbutz Artzi Federation founded its own political party called the Socialist League of Palestine but generally known as Hashomer Hatzair. It merged with another left-wing party to become Mapam once the state of Israel was established.

Related Topics:
HaShomer Hatzair - Kibbutz Artzi - 1936 - Socialist League of Palestine - Mapam

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Artzi kibbutzim were also more devoted to equality of the sexes than other kibbutzim. A 1920s, 1930s era kibbutz woman would call her husband ishi — "My man" — rather than the usual Hebrew word, ba'ali,, which literally means "My master."

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In 1928 Kibbutz Degania and other small kibbutzim formed together a group called "Chever Hakvutzot," the "Association of Kvutzot." Kvutzot kibbutzim deliberately stayed under 200 in population. They believed that for collective life to work, groups had to be small and intimate, or else the trust between members would be lost. Kvutzot kibbutzim also lacked youth-group affiliations in Europe.

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The mainstream of the kibbutz movement became known simply as "United Kibbutz," or "Kibbutz Hameuhad." Kibbutz Hameuhad accused Artzi and the kvutzot of elitism. Hameuhad criticized Artzi for thinking of itself as a socialist elite, and they criticized the kvutzot for staying small. Hameuhad kibbutzim took in as many members as they could. Givat Brenner eventually came to have more than 1,500 members.

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There were also differences in religion. Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim were secular, even staunchly atheistic, proudly trying to be "monasteries without God." Most mainstream kibbutzim also disdained the Orthodox Judaism of their parents, but they wanted their new communities to have Jewish characteristics nonetheless. Friday nights were still "Shabbat" with a white tablecloth and fine food, and work was not done on Saturday if it could be avoided. Later, some kibbutzim adopted Yom Kippur as the day to discuss fears for the future of the kibbutz. Kibbutzim also had collective bar mitzvahs for their children.

Related Topics:
Secular - Atheist - Orthodox Judaism - Shabbat - Yom Kippur - Bar mitzvah

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If kibbutzniks did not pray several times a day, kibbutzniks marked holidays like Shavuot, Sukkot, and Passover with dances, meals, and celebrations. One Jewish holiday, Tu B'shvat, the "birthday of the trees" was substantially revived by kibbutzim. All in all, holidays with some kind of natural component, like Passover and Sukkoth, were the most significant for kibbutzim.

Related Topics:
Shavuot - Sukkot - Passover - Tu B'shvat

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The kibbutz movement developed an overtly religious faction late in its history, a group now called Kibbutz Dati. The first religious kibbutz was Ein Tzurim, founded in 1946. Ein Tzurim was first located by Safad, then by Hebron in what is now the West Bank, then finally in the Negev. Religious kibbutzim are obviously religious, but they were and are no less collectivist than secular kibbutzim. Some religious kibbutzim now identify with the "hippie Hasidism" of rabbis like Shlomo Carlebach.

Related Topics:
Kibbutz Dati - Safad - Hebron - West Bank - Negev - Hasidism - Shlomo Carlebach

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Kibbutzim in Israeli statebuilding

In Ottoman times kibbutzim worried about criminal violence, not political violence. The lack of Arab hostility was due to the small number of Jews in the country at the time. Arab opposition increased as the Balfour Declaration and the wave of Jewish aliyas to Palestine began to tilt the demographic balance of the area. There were bloody anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem in 1921 and in Hebron in 1929. In the late 1930s Arab-Jewish violence became virtually constant, a time called the "Great Uprising" in Palestinian historiography.

Related Topics:
Balfour Declaration - Great Uprising

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During the Great Uprising kibbutzim began to assume a more prominent military role than they had previously. Rifles were purchased or manufactured and kibbutz members drilled and practiced shooting. Yigal Allon, an Israeli soldier and statesman, explained the role of kibbutzim in the military activities of the yishuv.

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:The planning and development of pioneering Zionist settlements were from the start at least partly determined by politico-strategic needs. The choice of the location of the settlements, for instance, was influenced not only by considerations of economic viability but also and even chiefly by the needs of local defense, overall settlement strategy, and by the role such blocks of settlements might play in some future, perhaps decisive all out struggle. Accordingly, land was purchased, or more often reclaimed, in remote parts of the country. (quoted in Rayman, 27-8)

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Kibbutzim also played a role in defining the borders of the Jewish state-to-be. By the late 1930s when it appeared that Palestine would be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, kibbutzim were planted in remote parts of the Mandate to make it more likely that the land would be incorporated into Israel, not a Palestinian state. Many of these kibbutzim were founded, literally, in the middle of the night. In 1946, on the day after Yom Kippur, a dozen new "Tower and Stockade" kibbutzim were hurriedly established in the northern part of the Negev to give Israel a better claim to this arid, but strategically important, region.

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Not all kibbutzniks worked to expand the amount of territory that would be given to the Jewish state. The leftwing, Marxist faction of the kibbutz movement, Kibbutz Artzi, was the last major element in the yishuv to favor a binational state, rather than partition. Kibbutz Artzi, however, still wanted free Jewish immigration, which the Arabs opposed.

Related Topics:
Marxist - Binational state

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Kibbutzniks were considered to have fought very bravely in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, emerging from the conflict with enhanced prestige in the nascent State of Israel. Members of Kibbutz Degania were instrumental in stopping the Syrian tank advance into the Galilee with homemade gasoline bombs. Another kibbutz, Maagan Michael, manufactured the bullets for the Sten guns that won the war. Maagan Michael's clandestine ammunition factory was later separated from the kibbutz and grew into TAAS (Israel Military Industries).

Related Topics:
1948 Arab-Israeli War - Syria - Gasoline bomb - Sten gun - Ammunition - Israel Military Industries

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Kibbutzim in independent Israel

The establishment of Israel and flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Muslim world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim. The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new members and inexpensive labor, but it also meant that Ashkenazi kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different from their own.

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The first challenge that kibbutzim faced was the question of how to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews, or mizrahi. Until the 1950s, nearly all kibbutzniks were from Eastern Europe, culturally different from their cousins from places like Morocco, Tunisia, and Iraq. Many kibbutzim found themselves hiring Mizrahim to work their fields and expand infrastructure, but not actually admitting very many as members. Since few mizrahi would ever join kibbutzim, the percentage of Israelis living on kibbutzim peaked around the time of statehood.

Related Topics:
Mizrahi - 1950s - Morocco - Tunisia - Iraq - Mizrahim

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Another dispute occurred solely over ideology. Israel had been initially recognized by both the USA and the Soviet Union. For the first three years of its existence, Israel was in the non-aligned movement, but David Ben-Gurion gradually began to take sides with the West. The question of which side of the Cold War Israel should choose created fissures in the kibbutz movement. Dining halls segregated according to politics and a few kibbutz even saw Marxist members leave. This controversy cooled once Stalin's cruelty became better known and once it became clear that the Soviet Union was systematically anti-Semitic. The disillusionment particularly set in after the Prague Trials in which a envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried in an anti-Semitic show trial.

Related Topics:
USA - Soviet Union - Non-aligned movement - David Ben-Gurion - The West - Cold War - Marxist - Prague Trials - Anti-Semitic - Show trial

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Yet another controversy in the kibbutz movement was the question over Holocaust reparations from West Germany. Should kibbutz members turn over income that was the product of a very personal loss? If Holocaust survivors were allowed to keep their reparation money, what would that mean for the principle of equality? Eventually, many kibbutzim made this one concession to inequality by letting Holocaust survivors keep all or a percentage of their reparations. Reparations that were turned over to the collective were used for building expansion and even recreational activities.

Related Topics:
Holocaust - Reparations - West Germany

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Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s, kibbutzim actually saw their standard of living improve faster than Israel's general population. Most kibbutz swimming pools date from the good decade of the 1960s.

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Kibbutzim also continued to play an outsize role in Israel's defense apparatus. In the 1950s and 1960s many kibbutzim were in fact founded by an Israel Defense Forces group called Nahal. Many of these 1950s and 1960s Nahal kibbutzim were founded on the precarious and porous borders of the state. In the Six-Day War, when Israel lost 800 soldiers, fully 200 of them were from kibbutzim. The prestige that kibbutzniks enjoyed in Israel in the 1960s was reflected in the Knesset. When only 4 percent of Israelis were kibbutzniks, kibbutzniks made up 15 percent of Israel's parliament. (Bettelheim, 15)

Related Topics:
Israel Defense Forces - Nahal - Six-Day War - Knesset

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As late as the 1970s, kibbutzim seemed to be thriving in every way. Kibbutzniks performed working class, or even peasant class, occupations, yet enjoyed a middle class lifestyle.

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