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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Israel
Index
The first kibbutz, Deganya, near the Sea of Galilee, was
founded in 1910. In addition to the two largest kibbutz
federations, HaKibbutz HaMeuhad (the United Kibbutz Movement) and
HaKibbutz HaArtzi (the Kibbutz of the Land), there were in 1988 a
number of small movements including the agricultural collective
settlements of the religious HaKibbutz HaDati, affiliated with the
labor wing of the National Religious Party. In 1986 there were
125,700 residents of about 265 kibbutzim, divided among five
kibbutz federations. The kibbutz is a collective settlement,
originally devoted solely to agriculture, but since the late 1960s,
it has included industrial concerns, too. Founded by social
democrats, kibbutzim are characterized by the collectivization of
labor and capital: the means of production, consumption, and
distribution are communally owned and controlled, with considerable
emphasis on participatory democracy in the operation of kibbutzim.
Education and, in some federations, the rearing of children in
age-graded dormitories, are communal as well.
Until the 1980s, the kibbutz and its residents played a largerthan -life role in Israeli society. Kibbutzim embodied the
courageous and selfless pioneer who settled the most difficult and
dangerous areas to claim them for the Jewish state. They sent the
highest proportion of young men to elite units of the army and its
officers' corps, and later to positions of responsibility in the
Histadrut and the government. If there were a sociopolitical elite
in Israel (not an economic one, because members of the kibbutz
lived with simplicity), it came from the kibbutzim.
This highly positive image no longer held in 1988 for a number
of reasons. First, the kibbutz was to a large extent a victim of
its own successes. Its economic success raised the standard of
living of the average member into the solid middle or upper middle
class. It is difficult to conceive of a rural village with
air-conditioned housing, a well-equipped clinic, a large
auditorium, and an olympic-sized swimming-pool as a pioneer
outpost. Second, the economic success and the expansion of the
kibbutz economy has forced it to go outside the community to hire
labor--a direct contradiction of its earliest canons. Third, the
membership of kibbutzim has been overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. Often
the labor hired, if not Arab, consisted of Oriental Jews who
resided in development towns near the kibbutz. Oriental Jews
complained that the only time they saw members of kibbutzim as near
equals was when the members came to town just before national
elections to lobby the Orientals for votes for the left-of-center
parties aligned with the kibbutzim. The turn of the mass of the
Israeli electorate to the right wing was both a reflection and a
cause of the loss of social prestige for the kibbutz, which has
suffered a relative loss of influence in the centers of power in
Israel. Nevertheless, the kibbutzim still contributed to Israel's
economy and sociopolitical elite out of proportion to their number.
The first moshav was established in the Jezreel, or Yizreel,
Valley (Emeq, Yizreel is also seen as the Valley of Esdraelon in
English) in 1921. In 1986 about 156,700 Israelis lived and worked
on 448 moshavim, the great majority divided among eight
federations. There are two types of moshavim, the more numerous
(405) moshavim ovdim, and the moshavim shitufim. The
former relies on cooperative purchasing of supplies and marketing
of produce; the family or household is, however, the basic unit of
production and consumption. The moshav shitufi form is
closer to the collectivity of the kibbutz: although consumption is
family-or household-based, production and marketing are collective.
Unlike the moshavim ovdim, land is not allotted to
households or individuals, but is collectively worked.
Because the moshav form retained the family as the center of
social life and eschewed bold experiments with communal
child-rearing or equality of the sexes, it was much more attractive
to traditional Oriental immigrants in the 1950s and early 1960s
than was the more communally radical kibbutz. For this reason, the
kibbutz has remained basically an Ashkenazi institution, whereas
the moshav has not. On the contrary, the so-called immigrants'
moshav (moshav olim) was one of the most-used and successful
forms of absorption and integration of Oriental immigrants, and it
allowed them a much steadier ascent into the middle class than did
life in some development towns.
Like the kibbutzim, moshavim since 1967 have relied
increasingly on outside--particularly Arab--labor. Financial
instabilities in the early 1980s have hit many moshavim hard, as
has the problem of absorbing all the children who might wish to
remain in the community. By the late 1980s, more and more moshav
members were employed in nonagricultural sectors outside the
community, so that some moshavim were coming to resemble suburban
or exurban villages whose residents commute to work. In general
moshavim never enjoyed the elite status accorded to kibbutzim;
correspondingly they have not suffered a decline in prestige in the
1970s and 1980s.
Data as of December 1988
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