Anton Marks presents this online briefing to discuss the latest on the current war in Israel.
Anton Marks is a British-born Israeli and a founder member of the largest urban kibbutz in Israel. He has been an educator for 30 years and his passion for Tikkun Olam, Jewish history, Kibbutz, Israeli politics, identity and culture are a recipe for engaging and challenging sessions.
Recordings of previous weeks can be found here: https://www.jw3.org.uk/jw3-tv
Field Notes of a Journey through Israel’s Urban Communes
By Jonathan Dawson
Winter 2023 • Number 201 Communities Magazine
A quip that was doing the rounds when I lived in the venerable old Scottish ecovillage, Findhorn, was that it defied the laws of physics, in that the closer you got to it, the smaller it seemed to become. That is, while for admirers in far-flung places such as Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro Findhorn has iconic, mythic status, for many of the locals in the surrounding countryside it can often appear as little more than a glorified caravan park with some funky eco-features.
I had a similar experience when exploring Israel’s urban kibbutzim, which took me on an independent research trip to Israel in early 2023.1 Many of those I met while there had never heard of the phenomenon and among those who had, most were surprised that something they considered so peripheral should have drawn my attention to the degree that I was prepared to make an extended visit to study it.
Yet, the communal scene that I experienced in the peripheral corners of Israel’s urban landscape is vibrant, dynamic, and fired with a visionary zeal that carries strong echoes of the initial flowering of the kibbutz movement in the early decades of the 20th century. In these urban communes, clearly drawn from the same ideological rootstock, though manifesting in totally different form, it may not be too fanciful to see the rebirth and second flowering of the kibbutz movement.
A little historical context is in order. The conventional kibbutz model is widely recognised. In brief summary, from the first couple of decades of the 20th century onwards, Jews began to make the journey from their homes in Russia and Eastern Europe (later also from Western Europe, the Americas, and Middle Eastern Muslim countries) to Palestine where they established radically communal kibbutzim. These were characterized by direct democracy, the equal sharing of income and resources, integration of clerical and manual labour, rotation of work tasks, and the collective raising of children. These communities flourished and played a critical role in the creation and defence of the Israeli state, with kibbutzniks disproportionately represented among the emerging nation’s elite combat troops and parliamentarians.
In the words of Ran Abramitzky: “Unlike members of many other communally-based living arrangements, kibbutzniks were never at the margin of society. They have always interacted with the rest of the population and played an important role in Israeli society.”2 Noam Chomsky felt moved to suggest that the early kibbutz movement “came closer to the anarchist ideals than any other attempt that lasted for more than a very brief moment.”3
From the early 1970s, however, the kibbutz star began to wane. The radical idealism of the early pioneers diluted as the boundaries of the state were secured, and a more individualistic zeitgeist emerged, reflected in the widespread abandonment of the collective upbringing of children. Additionally, while the kibbutz saw itself as a synthesis of Zionism and anarchosocialism, as the friction between Jews and Arabs escalated, the Zionist task of the kibbutz tended to overshadow its role as a social experiment. (In fact, the economic model of one kibbutz, Sassa, remains heavily dependent on the manufacture of military combat and logistics equipment.) Moreover, the accession to power of the first right-wing government in Israel’s history in 1977 and the ensuing shift to neoliberal economic policies proved disastrous to the cooperative agricultural sector, including the kibbutzim.
By the early 1980s, the collective debt of the kibbutz movement was estimated to be between $5 and $6 billion, and growing, and the bailout agreed with the banks and government led a majority of kibbutzim to abandon most of their radically egalitarian and communal features. Kibbutzniks who had assumed that their needs would be met in perpetuity suddenly faced a future in which they had neither old-age pension nor social security, neither house nor property of any kind, neither rights of bequest nor in most cases very much to bequeath.4 The social contract between the kibbutz and its inhabitants was shattered.
Today’s rural kibbutzim, for the most part, have the feel of comfortable, suburban, gated communities—still of distinctive interest for their residual communal features, but no longer providing a model of radical social transformation. This is captured in microcosm by a conversation I had with the veteran curator of the exhibition that tells the story of one of the richest and most successful kibbutzim, Hazerim, in the northern Negev desert. I noted that he repeatedly made mention of the importance of the Jewish youth “organisations” that have acted as a feeder channel over the decades for idealistic youth recruits to the kibbutz. Intrigued by his use of the word organisation in place of the more commonly used movements, I asked him was there any significance in his choice of terminology.
Rather wistfully, he replied that yes, his choice of wording was conscious. Movements, he explained, are processes in motion, towards the achievement of a greater goal. Organisations are what happens in the consolidation phase; they are more managerial than visionary in nature. Within the rural kibbutz phenomenon today, he concluded, we are in a managerial phase.
There is, nonetheless, currently an uptick in interest in conventional rural kibbutzim, with a waiting list of around 500 prospective members, but the attraction for newcomers is generally more associated with lifestyle choice than ideology.
It is at this point that the model of the urban kibbutz enters the scene. These could scarcely be more different from their rural counterparts. They are, for the most part, embedded within marginalised urban communities and own few physical assets other than, occasionally, the residential properties that some of them have bought—which can be anything from a single apartment to a block of flats. Their work and associated income derives not from agriculture but from various activities linked to education, the arts, social empowerment, and other care-based services from which the neoliberal state has been retreating over the last 40 years.
The urban kibbutzim vary considerably in size but are generally significantly smaller than their rural equivalents. The movement comprises several thousand urban communards, organised into small groups of around 10 to 15 people (called kvutsot). Most kvutsot are, in turn, networked into larger structures, called urban kibbutzim. In addition, a small number of stand-alone communities also self-identify as urban kibbutzim.
These communities are remarkably heterogeneous, reflecting the urban communards’ desire to break what they experienced as conformity and a stifling of innovation—or as several interviewees described it, “majoritarian tyranny”—within the conventional, rural kibbutz. The urban kibbutz movement prioritizes autonomy over equality; the individual and the small group over the collective.
Consequently, in place of the mass democratic structures that prevail in the rural kibbutz, where decisions are made partly by professional managers and partly by majority voting of members in large general assemblies, the urban kibbutzim have developed a much more intimate and participatory governance model in which decisions emerge from discussions within and between the two scales of kibbutz and kvutsot. In principle, this is a strongly bottom-up model in which the position adopted by the kibbutz cannot be imposed on the kvutsot. The model is often referred to by urban kibbutzniks as “dialogic communalism,” borrowing from the thinking of philosopher Martin Buber.
All of this results in a high degree of heterogeneity both within and between urban kibbutzim.
Perhaps the most obvious contrast here is between individual stand-alone kibbutzim such as Migvan and Tamuz and those belonging to wider networks. While the latter see themselves as movements with clear aspirations to grow—in terms of membership and geographical spread—and to create structures to enable viability beyond the current generation of kibbutzniks, the former are more inclined to self-define as “one-generation communities,” consciously avoiding the danger of ossification (which they tend to see as being the fate of the conventional kibbutz).
There are also fluid differences in internal organisation and structures. In the Migvan community located in Sdoret, for example, three levels of participation have emerged among the 70 adult kibbutz members: all pay tithes to enable the maintenance of the community centre and take part in rituals to mark the Jewish calendar; 12 buy food collectively; and nine at the core of the initiative pool and share equally their incomes. At the other end of the spectrum, in many urban kibbutzim all members adhere to common-purse sharing of income, distributed on the basis of need or equal allocation for all members.
The residents of Mishol urban kibbutz in Nof HaGalil initially had a policy that all children would go to the same school (so as to avoid the emergence of cliques among the children), but then changed policy when it was recognised that different children had different educational needs. Some urban kibbutzim meet all their transport needs by way of carpools and discourage private ownership of vehicles, while others tolerate both private and communal ownership.
The urban kibbutzim feature a rich mosaic of structures, systems, and behaviours that defy neat categorisation. No policy is etched in stone and all are potentially subject to review and reform through conversation within multiple levels of community organisation.
Despite such sharp contrasts—in terms of history, scale, mission, income-generating strategies, and governance—the traditional rural and the emergent urban models of the kibbutz share a common lineage.
For both, the Jewish youth movements (located both in Israel and the diaspora) have been a hugely important source of members. Many of those involved in the urban kibbutz movement consciously seek to address what they perceive as the weaknesses and failures of the conventional model and indeed, a good number of them were brought up in rural kibbutzim. Both models locate their mission with reference to the Jewish concept, Tikkun Ollam, meaning “Repair the World.” In the words of a manifesto created by one urban kibbutz, “Old model, new mission, with a modern pioneering zeal and a passion for social justice, young Israelis are re-imagining the kibbutz, planting scores of collectives in disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the country.”5
In short, the urban kibbutz can be seen as a conscious evolutionary adaptation of the original model.
The urban kibbutzim are already affecting the evolution of the wider Israeli society. Some cases in point:
Dror Israel emerged from one of the largest youth movements in the country, Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed (Working and Studying Youth). It includes 1,300 trained educators in 15 communities on the social and economic periphery. According to its website, Dror Israel activists “live in the neighborhoods we serve, bridging gaps, solving local problems. Through our youth movement, schools, and local and national programming, we better the lives of 150,000 people every year.”6
When COVID-19 hit, Dror Israel responded by opening day-care centres for the children of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers; keeping open its high schools for youth at risk; delivering groceries and medicines to homebound seniors and those in need; and providing online educational programmes for thousands of teens.
The pedagogical dimension of Dror Israel’s educational work is pleasingly innovative, drawing on various traditions including Montessori and Waldorf. This approach has been encapsulated in a course co-developed with and taught in the Beit Berl teacher training institute. The focus is on project-based learning with, in several of the urban kibbutzim visited (Mishol and Reshit), greenhouses at the heart of the learning space. Dror Israel has eight schools under its own name and additionally, Dror Israel teachers work in many state-owned schools, where they are generally welcomed due to their high levels of expertise and commitment.
By no means all of these educators and other social activists live together in communes. However, the 15 residential Dror Israel kibbutzim provide important hubs and focal points for the network’s outreach work. All of the kibbutzniks I interviewed believed that the urban kibbutzim act as important catalysts for community activities including bridge-building between different ethnicities, organic and urban agriculture, beekeeping, and the inclusion in community activities of people with special needs. A number pointed to important informal alliances developing between urban kibbutzim and local municipalities. In one case, that of Haifa, the city council asked members of the Dror Israel youth group to form a kibbutz in a deprived neighbourhood in order to work with at-risk children.
Several of the urban kibbutzim I visited have spawned NGOs that have outgrown the kibbutz and now stand alone as independent organisations. The Gvanim Association for Education and Community Involvement, for example, emerged from the Migvan urban kibbutz as a vehicle for empowering and integrating into society people with physical, cognitive, and mental challenges. Today, over 35 ongoing Gvanim projects nationwide help over 2,000 participants become more fully active members of their communities. The model also includes sheltered housing where people with disabilities live alongside Gvanim staff members, rather along the lines of Camphill communities.7 While the CEO is a member of the Migvan kibbutz, Gvanim now operates as an independent organisation.
Similarly, the Bustan initiative was born out of a desire by members of the Mishol urban kibbutz to promote dialogue, collaboration, and solidarity between Jews and Arabs in the northern city, Nof HaGalil. Bustan hosts courses in Hebrew and Arabic, counters racism including providing support to those who have been victims of racially motivated attacks, and organises trips into natural environments outside of the city. It is collaborating with the municipality to develop productive and leisure-based green spaces in the city.8
The Tarbut (in English, “culture”) movement has grown from an original core group of six young graduates in the marginalised, multi-ethnic city of Afula to a network of around 300 artists: musicians, thespians, painters, and all manner of other artists scattered across various towns in the north of the country. Many of these artists choose to live communally, generally in groups (kvutsot) of five to 10 people, that tend to be federated into larger units (urban kibbutzim) of between 15 and 20 artists. There is a significant level of sharing both of incomes and resources; everything from art materials to costumes and studio spaces. A cofounder of the movement, Hadas Goldman, is in no doubt that the communal dimension of their lifestyle choice lends greater power and effectiveness to their work. At the most obvious level, income-sharing enables members to be supported in taking breaks between projects. The potential for creative collaboration between artists who might not otherwise interact is also enhanced.
Tarbut is active on multiple fronts including the creation of a theatre in Afula, co-creating a national coalition of cultural institutions, lobbying the government on cultural issues, and creating a poetry incubator to promote collaboration between writers in all the languages represented in Israel. Its most iconic project to date is the renovation as a community resource of the old market in Afula which had been a hotbed of drug abuse and crime.
Many of the urban kibbutzniks interviewed were insistent that their activities are not to be understood as some form of Jewish philanthropy. Hadas Goldman at Tarbut sees their mission as being to move beyond “service delivery” to enter into partnership with local people in defining and responding to their needs. This echoes the strong orientation towards democratisation of social service design and provision evident in many progressive cities internationally under the banner of “co-production.”9 Goldman declared that “Artists have a social responsibility to shape the society they live in and to not disconnect from social problems.” She sees the importance of creating the theatre in Afula in terms of shifting the current paradigm in which “culture is created in Tel Aviv and consumed in the rest of the country.”10
A high degree of political awareness is evident and most urban kibbutzniks interpret their role as that of catalysts for the emergence of a more just and sustainable society. One kibbutznik in Tamuz declared: “If you want to change the world, make it your day job!”11 Another said: “Tamuz is a new type of community. The freedom of man [sic] must be expressed in every moment of communal life.”12
This solidarity and coherence of purpose is grounded in a deep study of ideological sources. In all of the urban kibbutzim visited, members allocate generous time to exploring group dynamics, governance, and the historical and philosophical roots of the movement. Strikingly, many of the same thinkers who inspired the original kibbutz pioneers a century ago—especially philosopher Martin Buber and anarchist theorist Gustav Landauar— are commonly referenced, as is the concept of Tikkun Ollam. In short, there is a distinctively Jewish flavour to the urban kibbutz model, even if for many secular Jewish kibbutzniks, the scriptural sources are not of central importance. One referred to “my own personal tikkun” (as opposed to that described in the Jewish scriptures) as a source of inspiration. The website of Tamuz urban kibbutz captures the role of the Jewish tradition well: “Judaism has always changed with the times, and as a secular Jewish community with a secular Jewish identity, we encourage the study and continued cultivation of Jewish ‘tradition’ to suit a changing and developing world.”13
Accelerating climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and the brittleness and vulnerability of current systems—for the provision of food, energy, transport, housing, and so on—make the experience of radical experiments in decentralised, community-based governance and provisioning, such as the urban kibbutz, more relevant than ever. As globalized systems come under growing strain, the ability of communities, and of the bio-regions within which they are embedded, to provide for their own needs and develop systems of self-governance is likely to become increasingly and urgently important. The urban kibbutz—characterised by groups of people simultaneously co-creating their own vibrant communities while acting as focal points for the empowerment of the disadvantaged communities within which they are embedded—embody what is needed in crucial ways.
Could this approach succeed elsewhere as well? Factors specific to the Israeli context have certainly helped the urban kibbutz model to flourish. Despite 40 years of neoliberal policies, Israel has a long and proud history of socialist thinking and organizational structures, with a very strong trade union movement and history of workerowned industry. The kibbutz movement was central in the birth and defence of the nation, conferring a level of recognition and respect to kibbutzim in general, and normalising the commune as a culturally legitimate form of social organisation. Perhaps most important, young Israeli citizens often bond deeply through their experience in the youth groups and in military service, generating a depth of solidarity with cohorts that has led to the formation of many of the kvutsot.14
That said, echoes of the Israeli experience may be found in the broader intentional communities movement internationally. The nearest international equivalent to the kibbutz is the ecovillage and, while there are significant differences between the two models, both involve the creation of self-governing communities that seek to play an important role in innovating and educating about more community-oriented forms of social organisation. Several kibbutzim, notably Lotan in the Negev desert, are members of the Global Ecovillage Network, and the ecovillage and kibbutz families get together regularly for joint conferences and other activities.
As in the traditional kibbutz, there has been a progressive liberalisation of ecovillage norms in recent decades, with a dilution of many of the more egalitarian features such as income sharing and communal land ownership. In recent years many ecovillages have developed a greater outward and more socially engaged focus in their activities than they had at the outset. Recent decades have brought a deeper integration of ecovillages into their immediate hinterlands—a transition I described in a previous article as being from “islands” to “networks.”15 Where (with notable exceptions) ecovillages had previously tended to be primarily inwardly focused, they have increasingly become hubs for various activities relating to social and ecological justice. Today the areas surrounding ecovillages are often unusually rich in terms of sustainability-related initiatives and networks.
Intentional communities can function as transformative cells within wider community networks; with official support, they may play this role even more powerfully. Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P (peer-to-peer) Foundation, proposes one such vehicle in the form of what he calls public-commons partnerships (these stand in contrast to the public-private partnerships that have proliferated in the neoliberal decades as a mechanism for private sector investment in public infrastructure projects). “Commonification,” argues Bauwens, “consists of democratization, bringing back elements of direct self-government and self-managing by the residents themselves of goods and services of general interest.”16
Municipal authorities can enter into ongoing relationship with citizens’ groups and social movements in the design and delivery of community-facing facilities and services. Building on a model initiated in Bologna, Italy (the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons), this approach “starts by regarding the city as a collaborative social ecosystem. ... [T]he Bologna Regulation sees the city’s residents as resourceful, imaginative agents in their own right. Citizen initiative and collaboration are regarded as under-leveraged energies that—with suitable government assistance—can be recognized and given space to work. Government is re-imagined as a hosting infrastructure for countless self-organized commons.”17
In a context of progressively more serious disruption to urban systems, municipalities can benefit greatly by calling upon the accumulated experience and intelligence of communities and creating alliance with the organisations embedded within them.
I find it enormously cheering in an age characterised by high levels of cynicism, hedonism, and despair to come across, in the urban kibbutzim and beyond, such committed and cheerful engagement for the common good. However, beyond this we may also be seeing the emergence of cells of community-level self- organisation capable of generating networks of mutual aid of precisely the sort we are going to need.
Jonathan Dawson (
Standing and holding hands in the garden at Kibbutz Mish’ol, in Israel, we welcome “a peaceful and blessed Shabbat”, recite “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity” and remind ourselves, “everything that passed during last week belongs now in the past. During Shabbat—the spirit is renewed”. Before dining, we “bless the farmer who tills the field, the miller who prepares the flour, the baker from our house who kneads the dough and everyone who labours to make the fruits of the Earth into life-giving food before us”. After dinner, we adjourn to share some beer while watching a semi-final game of the World Cup.
Degania, the first Kibbutz, was established in Palestine in 1910, and still operates today. Kibbutzim became the biggest intentional community movement in the world with several of the 270 rural kibbutzim having more than a thousand members. Over recent years, however, many of these kibbutzim have been privatising and their future is not bright.
Contrary to this trend in Israel is the development of about 100 active and passionate urban kibbutzim whose members try to adapt the old kibbutz model to a new social, political and economic environment. Kibbutz Reshit, in Jerusalem, is the oldest of these, having been established in about 1980. The biggest urban kibbutz is Mish’ol, located in the small city of Migdal Ha’emek, near Nazareth, Israel, and here I am staying for several days in July 2010.
Kibbutz Mish’ol was established by 25 people in 2000, and now has 82 adult members and 32 children, the oldest of whom is just starting second grade. Most adults are aged in their twenties or thirties, markedly different from the aging membership of conventional rural kibbutzim. Mish’ol members live within smaller, more intimate living groups known as Kvutza (plural Kvutzot), each with 6-10 adults plus children. Most meals are eaten within these smaller groupings. Members of each Kvutza can best be thought of as comprising a household or pseudo-family, and one might think of Kibbutz Mish’ol as a federation of these eight Kvutzot (households).
Mish’ol members tell me they have a vision to be “an alternative to wider Israeli society through sharing all life together” and equally important to be an “alternative to the way of life within traditional kibbutzim”. Several members tell me they are “reclaiming socialism” but I am unsure how widely that view is shared. Members are not rejecting the conventional rural kibbutz model but feel that while it may have been suitable for 20th century Palestine, then Israel, it is unsuitable for 21st century conditions. One members tells me: “two things are broken and need repairs: Israel and kibbutzim”. An active and passionate commitment to peace, justice and equality is a theme running through my conversations with members.
Kibbutz Mish’ol has a large rented house in which no-one lives but from where several of their businesses operate, where members come to meet, and from where communal affairs are managed. Mish’ol’s management group or steering committee (known as Mazkirut) consists of two members from each Kvutza. Each April, the Mazkirut, through consensus, decides on major projects and directions for the next year. There are various other Kibbutz committees responsible for specific matters such as finance, finding a permanent home, and social and cultural functions. At weekly meetings, members can make kibbutz-wide decisions based on consensus. Most decisions, however, are made within the smaller Kvutzot or within work groups. Members live, usually sharing with other Kvutza members, in nearby rental housing.
The kibbutz operates several small businesses including catering, web-design, child-care and coaching for new mothers, which employ some members. A few members work outside in occupations ranging from computer programmer to child-care expert, but most work in educational projects in schools, youth movements, after-school clubs for ‘at-risk’ youth, etc. Almost all work has some connection with education, peace, justice and social welfare. All member income goes directly into the Kibbutz coffers. There are no private cars but the Mish’ol owns vehicles that members book as needed.
Money in Mish’ol’s coffers is allocated by their finance/treasury committee to each Kvutza, according to membership, and to cover Kibbutz-wide expenses and to promote and develop new projects.
Reut was one of the founders of Mish’ol in 2000. She sought to retain the “good aspects of Kibbutz philosophy and practice” – but adapt them to a “smaller, more human-scale” intentional community. She grew up in Ramat Yohanan, a large, prosperous Kibbutz where she enjoyed a “peaceful and happy” childhood – and yet felt “lonely in the crowd” because of the large size of the commune. She tells me “the large kibbutz made small people”, because each member was relatively powerless. She is “very proud” of what Mish’ol achieves in promoting social equality and being a model intentional community, demonstrating how Israelis can live better, fairer, more ethical lives, “not alone or in competition with others”. She adds, “My character is very suitable to a communal life but unsuitable to a competitive lifestyle”. Re-ut admits to wanting a partner and children but nevertheless is “very happy here” and doubts she would be as happy living any other way.
Anton “grew-up within Habonim Dror, a Socialist-Zionist youth movement” and after spending a year in a conventional kibbutz “one of the things I learned was that I didn’t want to live on such a kibbutz — and I never want to be a farmer”. He helped start a small commune in Jerusalem but recognised that they needed to join with others to be effective in creating “social change based on Socialist Zionist principles”. In 2002, Anton’s group joined Mish’ol. He believes that only through the flexibility of their small living groups (kvutza) will they will be able to adapt to whatever the future brings. Recently, as a reserve member of the Israeli Defence Forces, Anton refused to serve in occupied territory (West Bank) and he suffered two weeks imprisonment for his “humanistic principles and conscience”. Today he is “very happy and fulfilled in what I am doing”. Anton will be known to many Communities readers as the Editor of C.A.L.L., the Communes at Large Letter (http://communa.org.il) which brings together information about intentional communities around the globe.
Reut and Anton promote Palestinian-Israeli dialogue through facilitating annual seminar camps in Cyprus where they foster “mutual understanding and respect”. They feel that they are having a beneficial impact on the wider society — although admit to falling far short of what is needed. Anton says, “there is a lot of healing to be done in this part of the world. We can do it—we must do it—and Kibbutz Mish’ol is part of the process”.
Uri, another founding member, is leaving Kibbutz Mish’ol because his partner is unhappy here, feeling that she is too cramped for physical, social and emotional space. They are moving, with their children, to a nearby rural kibbutz, Kibbutz Yizrael. I sense his sadness and ambivalence as he talks about leaving the commune he helped establish.
James tells me that as a teenager from UK his first exposure to the kibbutz movement was motivated by naïve social goals, and that he understood little of Zionism, Socialism or even Judaism as a religion; he admits “Israel was a bit of an embarrassment”. After spending a year working in the chicken-house on Beit Haemek, a large rural kibbutz, James became clear that he was committed to the core kibbutz values of socialism and equality - but equally clear that he did not want to be a farmer or live rurally within such a large social structure. “The kibbutz needs updating” he tells me. James migrated to Israel in 1999 with two friends, settled in Jerusalem and started looking for others to join in creating an urban kibbutz devoted to socialism, environmentalism, peace and social justice. In 2003, they all joined Mish’ol. James believes that their efforts towards peace and reconciliation are of utmost importance, yet doubts they are doing enough. He tells me they are “reclaiming the kibbutz values and adapting them to current realities”. For James, Mish’ol is about the right size to serve as a model secular intentional community for both Jews and Arabs.
Mish’ol members are negotiating to take over from the Jewish Agency, a large, dis-used ‘Migrant Absorption Centre’ in nearby Upper Nazareth. This will have two advantages: all members will be able to live under the same roof and they will near the largest Arab Israeli city, offering them far more opportunities to promote mutual respect and understanding, and (hopefully) making them more effective as agents for peace and social justice. They will also be far more visible as the model intentional community to which they aspire.
I expect that moving together under one roof will throw up a number of challenges to their way of life. Will it allow them to become more socially, culturally and politically active, to better exemplify an ideal intentional community — or will they find the larger social grouping saps their time and energy? Mish’ol members are inspiring, warm, welcoming and passionate, so I hope that the move is beneficial. How they cope, and how they develop will be well worth watching.
The Kibbutz movement, said by some critics to be floundering and dieing is, in fact, flourishing in the guise this new generation of urban intentional communities. They might just contain the seeds of a solution to the long-term problems of peace, equity and justice that beset Israeli Jews and Arabs, as well as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
Or am I too hopeful?
From Communities Magazine
Here in Kibbutz Mishol, the number of kids overtook the number of adults already a couple of years ago. We are a 20-year-old full income-sharing urban kibbutz, and all 150 of us live under one roof in the Northern Israeli city of Nof HaGalil.
It wasn’t always this way though. When we started out, most of us single and with no kids, it was clear to us that our main mission, affecting positive social change to the surrounding society, would be severely limited if we were to be “waylaid” with having kids and looking after them. It was one or the other—and we chose to build project after project through our NGO to work with disadvantaged populations in the city and its environs, rather than spending our time changing diapers and working shorter days.
We waited until we were in our 30s before starting to have kids, each couple coming to the conclusion that the time was right for them. As a kibbutz made up of living groups, each living group started the conversation about the meaning of having a kid in their midst. The older groups helped the younger groups through the process of change—understanding how it would impact our lives as a group, our lives as activists working for social change, our shared finances, our ability to be spontaneous, both partners’ ability to work 16-hour days, expected gender roles as parents, etc., etc.
At first it was a trickle, but once the floodgates were opened, we embraced the change that we were experiencing. It wasn’t long until we opened our first childcare framework for us to share in the upbringing of our kids. At first the kindergarten was only for our kids, but gradually we opened it up for the kids of the neighbourhood. It has since become recognized by the State, and families receive subsidized childcare according to their income. Actually, this week we are having a conversation as a kibbutz about our kindergarten. We are past the peak of having kids, and now that there are fewer and fewer of our kids in our kindergarten, we are asking ourselves about the future. Was our kindergarten just providing childcare and education for our kids, or is it one of our projects for social change in our neighbourhood?
Slowly our work days started to change. Because we are our own bosses, and thus have sovereignty over how and when we work, we had the ability to be flexible. It is important to us for at least one parent, and preferably two, to be as present as possible in the childrens’ lives every afternoon. The educational frameworks that we run, both formal and informal, never go past 4 pm. We certainly have the ability to keep them going later—till 5 pm, till 6 pm—but we have repeatedly decided that the window between 4 pm and 8 pm is an important time to be with our kids—as families, as living groups, as a kibbutz. So our activist work stops at 4 pm to allow us to be with our kids. But at 8:30 pm/9 pm, our workday resumes. Because we live together in the same building, we are able to hold meetings in the evening while our kids are sleeping.
Today we also run the local neighbourhood elementary school, which for years had been threatened with closure. We live in one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the country, with all the challenges that entails. The school principal is from the kibbutz and around half of the staff of the school are also. The kids from the kibbutz are just one of the populations of the school, which includes all religions and ethnicities that make up the neighbourhood. We even built a cutting-edge educational greenhouse in the yard of the school, so the kids can benefit from experiential learning (as opposed to sitting in rows in a classroom).
Within the kibbutz, our physical spaces have transformed over time to reflect the growing number of kids. Our living spaces have more bedrooms, which have become smaller as we build dry walls to create more rooms for our kids. When that doesn’t suffice, families move to larger spaces to accommodate family growth, sometimes at the expense of communal spaces. We have kibbutz spaces for after-school activities and activities during the school holidays for our kids according to age group. Each age group has educators, both from the kibbutz and from outside, who work with the kids, helping them to both have fun, and process how they experience the world around them.
We also take health and safety much more seriously now than we did even a decade ago. We brought an inspector to go over the treehouses that we built outside, to make sure that they were safe for our kids to play on. Another agreement we have between us is that only kids over the age of six can wander inside and outside the kibbutz grounds without being accompanied by an adult—one of many agreements that have significant social implications.
You’d think that growing kids in community would get easier and easier as the years go by, but the questions keep on coming. Now the eldest kid is 18; he’s being recruited into the army. When does he become a member of the kibbutz? Does he want to? Do we want him to? How? Is our kibbutz now multigenerational in the long term, or do we expect our kids to leave?
The eldest kids are learning to drive; are they are now automatically a part of our collective car pool? How do we pay for their driving lessons? Do we expect them to work to raise money specifically for this, or does the kibbutz provide everything for them, and therefore they need to work generally because work has an intrinsic value (and we could do with the money!)? Do the kids continue to go to the same schools together, or does each set of parents, or maybe parents of each age group, decide independently? How many after-school activities can each child attend? From what age? Does it matter what they cost? When do we give phones to our kids? When do they get smartphones? According to age?
Overall, we believe that a happy and healthy society includes children, and we have certainly made space for the children to be an integral part of who we are and what we do. Some may say that we have made too many concessions for the sake of our kids, and we are not focused enough on changing the world. Others would say that bringing up our kids as tolerant, caring, determined, and passionate young people is an act of changing the world in itself.
Fourth Intentional Communities Symposium: 25th June 2021
The Intentional Communities Research group will be hosting their Fourth symposium entitled ‘Intentional Communities as experimental spaces’.
The morning will consist of presentations from academics and other commentators in the field who are currently researching Intentional Communities. The afternoon will include a series of learning circles on a continuation of the theme.
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