Intentional Communities in Israel—Current Movement

Causes of the Move Away from Communal Patterns

From their earliest days, the kibbutzim saw themselves—and were seen by others—as the spearhead of the Zionist enterprise. They were among the leaders of those aspiring to create a new Jewish society in Palestine, the biblical Land of Israel. They also sought to alter the structure of Jewish society, which existed in Russia and Eastern Europe, by replacing the craftspeople and tradespeople with Jewish agricultural workers. From the [Page 728]outset, the kibbutz was a pragmatic society, without a specific blueprint, seeking ways to implement its principles of equality, mutual assistance, and cooperation, for the most part without a rigid dogma. Despite the initial lack of a systematic doctrine, an ideology did develop in the course of time, particularly after the creation of kibbutz-linked youth movements. Although features of kibbutz life, such as the raising of children in their own communities and eating in the communal dining hall, were originally adopted for practical reasons, they became in time compulsory dogmas. For some seventy years of dynamic social development, numerous changes were made in the kibbutz way of life, without, however, abandoning the underlying credo. The increasing importance of the nuclear family within the community, eventually resulting in the abandonment of communal sleeping arrangements for the kibbutz children, did not affect the basic principles of egalitarianism and cooperation. Nor did a number of alterations in the patterns of consumption, involving transferring items from the community budget to the private purse. All in all the basic ethic of the kibbutz was preserved.

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