All change at the kibbutz

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 14

All change at the kibbutz

From

BEN BARBER,

at Kibbutz Ginnegar

Jossi Schnitzer saunters down to the communal office to sign out the car keys, revs up a dusty 1968 Dodge Dart, and wheels out of the kibbutz heading for a movie in Haifa, an hour to. the west.

He pays one shekel a kilometre for'use of the car (about $6 for the round trip) but when he stops at another kibbutz for two friends, -he disdains their offer to share the cost.

Despite Jossi’s pride in himself and his kibbutz, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this year, he faces a difficult choice now that he is 23 years old and his military service is over. Will he spend the rest of his life in the kibbutz along with his parents and three brothers?

As the third generation of kibbutz dwellers comes of age in the 1980 s, .the.dynamic experiment of., communal economic units in a capitalist country is undergoing change. The 280 kibbutzim are struggling to find the route ahead. The kibbutz now has individual televisions and telephones, factories, and old people’s homes, and must cope with desires for university education and foreign travel. Thanks to its democratic framework and financial success, kibbutz ideology has not put a brake on innovation The experiment goes on

Jossi falls asleep during "The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” after a long day working in the kibbutz plastics factory. On the way home he says: “I’m, a little screw in a big machine. It’ll be a long time before I’m important. Thirty years ago anyone who left the kibbutz was seen as a traitor. Now it’s felt that one should be happy, even if you go to the city or to the United States.” Like many of his contemporaries, he is thinking of half a year off to wander South America or Asia, working where he can and seeing the world beyond the sealed borders of his homeland.

But, like about half the kibbutz children, he expects to return to Ginnegar to live, and to help in its evolution. Spread put over 2000 acres of the fertile Jezreel Valley of north central Israel, kibbutz Ginhegar’s cotton and grain fields, citrus orchards, plastic-covered tomato huts, chicken coops, dairy barns, and plastics factory surround a centre where 500 people live in single-storey “garden apartment” cottages separated by asphalt patiis arid lawns with flower beds. It resembles most other kibbutzim, its communal din-

ing hall at the centre and children’s quarters nearby, each with a concrete defence bunker underneath.

The biggest change, especially for the 70.000 Israelis living in 110 kibbutzim of the T.A.K.I.M. (centre-left) movement, like Ginnegar, has come with the bringing home of the children to sleep with their parents. So far 10 have changed and 20 more have begun the process. In' the 1920 s when Ginnegar and other early' kibbutzim were created by Jewish immigrants to Palestine, the need for collective security against Arab attack, plus the labour requirements of developing agriculture on swampy or barren lands, combined with a socialist ideology to develop a unique social structure.

Children at the age of six weeks lived in children’s houses, guarded by night and taught by day, not by their parents but by appointed kibbutz members. At 4 p.m., after the parents had finished work, the children would go to their parents’ home for two hours.

The family would then go to dinner together, but after that the children returned to their separate quarters to sleep, although parents

would read stories and tuck them in. “I liked the children’s house.” says Jossi. “It was the parents who wanted the change. In discussion at the kibbutz meetings (which govern the kibbutz) I was against it. I thought it would make the family the centre of all activity — which is what happened. It helped ruin the social life of the kibbutz.”

According to the secretary of the social committee of the T.A.K.I.M. movement, David Avnieri, the kibbutz movement is growing slightly faster than Israeli society as a.whole. In 1967, when Israel’s borders were greatly expanded by the addition of captured Arab lands, the kibbutz began losing many youngsters, but in the past 10 years the “runaways” have been drifting back. “Daily we get kibbutzim asking us how to receive back these members,” he says. “As benefits such as televisions, holidays, and housing depend on seniority, the kibbutz must find a way not to penalise those members wanting to return to the fold.”

There are other problems. For the first time, the kib-

butzim have large numbers of old people to care for, some in their 80s and without living relatives in the kibbutz.

At Ginnegar, houses for the elderly are being built near the dining hall. "We must learn how to divide housing,” says Avnieri. “Should it be separate or mixed? If we put old people apart, then no-one helps them carry things and they can’t see the little kids. This is a problem in all the world — retirement communities.

“We did an experiment at one kibbutz — Givat Haim Meuchad — and divided 70 apartments by lottery, half to the old and half to the young. The street is now living, with children crying and laughing and making trouble. The old people love it.”

The switch to industry, or rather the addition of industry to agriculture, now accounts for tip to 80 per cent of the income at places like Ginnegar, and it has rejuvenated the kibbutzim with new challenges and a greater variety of jobs. As long as there is an acceptance of the need to experiment and to change, and a desire to do what is necessary to entice young people to remain, it- seems that kibbutzim will keep growing and evolving. Copyright—London Observer Service.