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For the 2005 film, see Kibbutz (film).
Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk

A kibbutz (Hebrew: קִבּוּץ / קיבוץ, lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural kibbutzim) is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania.[1] Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises.[2] Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik (Hebrew: קִבּוּצְנִיק).



The first kibbutzim[edit]

Second Aliyah workers eating lunch in the fields of Migdal.

The kibbutzim were founded by members of the Bilu movement who emigrated to Palestine. Like the members of the First Aliyah who came before them, most members of the Second Aliya wanted to be farmers. Joseph Baratz, one of the pioneers of the kibbutz movement, wrote a book about his experiences.[5]



Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment. 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, typhus and cholera were rampant. Nomadic Bedouins would 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. On top of safety considerations, establishing a farm was a capital-intensive project; collectively the founders of the kibbutzim had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently they did not.

Finally, the land had been purchased by the greater Jewish community. From around the world, Jews dropped coins into JNF "Blue Boxes" for land purchases in Palestine. In 1909, Baratz, nine other men, and two women established themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near the Arab village of Umm Juni/Juniya. These teenagers had hitherto worked as day labourers converting wetlands for human development, 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 "Kvutzat Degania" (lit. "collective of wheat" or "community of cereal grains").

The founders of Degania endured backbreaking labour: "The body is crushed, the legs fail, the head hurts, the sun burns and weakens," wrote one of the pioneers. At times half of the kibbutz members could not report for work and many left. Despite the difficulties, by 1914, Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea of Galilee and the nearby Jezreel Valley.

During the British Mandate[edit]


Zionist Jewish youth movements flourished in the 1920s, from right-wing movements like Betar to left-wing socialist groups such as Dror, Brit Haolim, Kadima, Habonim (now Habonim Dror), and Hashomer Hatzair. In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliyah, these youth group members had some agricultural training before embarking. Members of the Second Aliyah and Third Aliyah 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.


Kibbutzim founded in the 1920s tended to be larger than the kibbutzim like Degania that 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.

Kibbutzim grew and flourished in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1922 there were 700 people living on kibbutzim in Palestine. By 1927 the number had risen to 2,000. When World War II erupted, 24,105 people were living on 79 kibbutzim, comprising 5% of the Jewish population of Mandate Palestine.[9] In 1950, the figures went up to 65,000, accounting for 7.5% of the population. In 1989, the kibbutz population peaked at 129,000. By 2010 the number decreased to about 100,000; the number of kibbutzim in Israel was 270.[10]

Development of kibbutz movements[edit]

In 1927, the United Kibbutz Movement (HaKibbutz Hameuhad) was established. Several HaShomer Hatzair kibbutzim banded together to form HaKibbutz HaArtzi. In 1936, HaKibbutz HaArtzi founded its own political party, the Socialist League of Palestine, commonly referred to as Hashomer Hatzair.

First building in Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim, a dairy barn

In 1928, Degania and other small kibbutzim formed "Hever Hakvutzot" ("association of kvutzot"). Kvutzot were deliberately small, not exceeding 200 members, in the belief that this was imperative for maintaining trust. Kvutzot did not have youth-group affiliations in Europe. Kibbutzim affiliated with Hakibbutz Hameuhad took in as many members as they could. Givat Brenner eventually came to have more than 1,500 members. Artzi kibbutzim were also more devoted to equality of the sexes than other kibbutzim. Women called their husbands ishi ("my man") rather than the customary Hebrew word for husband ba'ali (lit. "my owner"). The children slept in children's houses and visited their parents only a few hours a day.

There were also differences in religion. Kibbutz Artzi and Kibbutz HaMeuhad 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. Only late 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.

Kibbutznikim did not pray several times a day, but would marked holidays like Shavuot, Sukkot, and Passover with dances, meals, and celebrations. One Jewish holiday, Tu Bishvat, the "birthday of the trees" was substantially revived by kibbutzim. All in all, holidays with some kind of agricultural component, like Passover and Sukkot, were the most significant for kibbutzim.



Arab opposition increased as the Balfour Declaration and the wave of Jewish settlers to Palestine began to tilt the demographic balance of the area. There were bloody anti-Arab and anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem in 1921 and in Hebron in 1929. In the late 1930s Arab-Jewish violence became virtually constant, a period known as the Great Uprising in Palestinian historiography.

A member of Kibbutz Ma'abarot on guard duty, 1936



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 established in outlying areas to ensure that the land would be incorporated into the Jewish state. In 1946, on the day after Yom Kippur, eleven 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. The Marxist faction of the kibbutz movement, Kibbutz Artzi, favoured a binational state over partition, but advocated free Jewish immigration, which the Arabs opposed.

Kibbutzniks fought 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. 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).

After the establishment of the state[edit]

Kibbutz children with the Givati brigade


Ideological disputes were also widespread. 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 kibbutzim even had Marxist members leave. The disillusionment particularly set in after the Prague Trials in which an envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried.



Collecting bales of hay on Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, 1950s


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.

Decline and restructuring[edit]

See also: Kibbutz crisis

With time, the kibbutz members' sense of identification with the kibbutz and its goals decreased. This process originated both from personal frustrations among the kibbutz members as a result of internal processes and from the growing stratification and inequality due to the growth of capitalistic practices.[13] Over the years, some kibbutz members established professional careers outside the kibbutz, accumulating power, privileges and prestige.[14] The balance between individual values and values of the kibbutz began to tip, and work motivation was affected. An emphasis was placed on social compensation to encourage productivity. These processes occurred in parallel with a severe economic crisis.

  • The globalization processes and the kibbutz failure to block them exposed the kibbutz society to a different type of culture. For example, after kibbutz members were allowed to have Television sets in their own homes, the kibbutz members were exposed to "the good life" in which people were compensated for their work and could buy themselves different luxurious items. The kibbutzim were not capable of dealing with these processes.[16]
  • The collapse of the Communist block resulted in the weakening of Socialist beliefs around the world, including in the kibbutz society.


The changes that occurred could be divided into three main types:


Since the mid-1990s, the number of kibbutzim making significant changes in their lifestyle continued to grow, while the resistance to these changes gradually decreased, with only a few dozen kibbutzim still functioning under more traditional models. It is important to note, however, that each kibbutz has undergone different processes of change. There are many people, outside and inside the kibbutzim, who claim these changes bring the end of the kibbutz concept. Among the communities that had recently officially ceased being kibbutzim are Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley, HaGoshrim in the Upper Galilee, Beit Nir in the Negev, etc.[citation needed]

These processes have created the "renewing kibbutz" (הקיבוץ המתחדש )—a kibbutz settlement pattern not fully based on the original values of the kibbutz. Kibbutzim continuing under the original kibbutz values are associated with the "collaborative model" (הזרם השיתופי).

New compensation models

There are now three kibbutz compensation models. 1) The traditional collective kibbutz/kibbutz shitufi, in which members are compensated equally, regardless of what work each member does; 2) the mixed model kibbutz/kibbutz meshulav, in which each member is given a small percentage of his salary along with a basic component given equally to all kibbutz members; and 3) the renewing kibbutz/kibbutz mithadesh, in which a member's income consists solely of his individual income from his work and sometimes includes income from other kibbutz sources.[17]


Ideology of the kibbutz movement[edit]

Cotton fields of kibbutz Shamir, ca. 1958


In the contemporary Yiddish anti-Zionist literature that was circulating around Eastern Europe, Palestine was mocked as dos gepeigerte land, "the country that had died". Kibbutz members found immense gratification in bringing the land back to life by planting trees, draining swamps, and countless other hard-graft activities to make the land (invariably wetlands) productive. In soliciting donations, kibbutzim and other Zionist settlement activities presented themselves as "making the desert bloom".

The first kibbutzim were founded in the upper Jordan Valley, the Jezreel Valley and the Sharon coastal plain. The land was available for purchase because it was marshy and malaria-infested. The Zionists believed that the Arab population would be grateful for the economic benefits that developing the land would bring. Their approach was that the enemies of the Arab peasants were the Arab landowners (called effendis), not fellow Jewish farmers. The first kibbutzniks hoped to be more than farmers. They sought to create a new type of society where all would be equal and free from exploitation.

Kibbutz members were not classic Marxists though their system partially resembled Communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both shared a disdain for conventional formulations of the nation-state and Leninists were hostile to Zionism. Nevertheless, in the late 1930s, two kibbutz leaders, Tabenkin and Yaari, initially attracted to anarchist ideas,[19] pushed their movements leftward to reverence of Stalin's dictatorship. Soon Stalin became hostile to Israel as it served Soviet diplomatic and military interests in the Arab world. This caused major crises and mass exit in both Kibbutz Meuchad and Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim, especially after the 1953 Doctors' Plot in Moscow and the Prague showcase Trials. Kibbutzim were run as collective enterprises within a free market system. Kibbutzim also practised active democracy, with elections held for kibbutz functions and full participation in national elections.

Kibbutzim were not the only contemporary communal enterprises: pre-war Palestine also saw the development of communal villages called moshavim (singular moshav). In a moshav, marketing and major farm purchases were collective, but other aspects of life were private.

In 2009, most votes from kibbutzim went to Kadima, Labor, and Meretz.[20]

Communal life[edit]

PikiWiki Israel 7369 Gan - Samuel - 1953 - Temporary dining room



Children of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, 1998



To solve these issues the founders created the communal children's houses, where the children would spend most of their time; learning, playing and sleeping. Parents spent 3 to 4 hours a day in the afternoon with their children after work and before dinner. This is actually a lot more quality time for parents to spend with their kids than in other societies.[21]


In the children's houses, trained nurses and teachers were the care givers. Relationships of the children and their parents would be better because parents would not have to be the sole disciplinarians. Children grew up in the community environment and grew up with children who were born in the same year as them. The financial responsibility of the children was shared by the community.






Child rearing[edit]

From the 1920s until the 1970s, most kibbutzim had a system whereby the children would sleep in communal children's homes, called 'BeitYeladim' (ביתילדים), instead of in their parents' apartments.

PikiWiki Israel 161 Kibbutz Babies החינוך המשותף







In another study by Scharf,[28] the group brought up in a communal environment within a kibbutz showed less ability in coping with imagined situations of separation than those who were brought up with their families. This has far reaching implications for child attachment adaptability and therefore institutions like kibbutzim. These interesting kibbutz techniques are controversial with or without these studies.

A mixture of criticism and nostalgia by some 20 adults born in Kibbutzim in the 1930s was documented in the 2007 film by Ran Tal "Children of the Sun" ("Yaldei Hashemesh").[29] The film raised much controversy and brought about a flood of reactions in favor and against the practices of child raising in Kibbutzim in those early years of the Kibbutz. Interviews were interlaced with original footage.

Higher Education[edit]

In the beginning, higher education was not valued as very important to the Kibbutz as most of the work was in agriculture. As the kibbutz changed and moved towards manufacturing and industry, simultaneously more young people went into the cities to earn degrees. Originally the Kibbutz paid college tuition in full, but in the 1980s with the kibbutz crisis, they began to only partially pay for tuition. By the time kibbutz children are done with grade 12, enter the army and spend a year volunteering, they weigh the options of going to college and sometimes opt out in order to return to the kibbutz and settle down. In Israel, Grade 1 to Grade 12 is more equivalent to 14 years of school in the United States. Children attend school six days a week and have longer school days. Students graduate at age 18 from school and then immediately are enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces. After serving for three years in the military, kibbutzniks are required to do a service year called "national kibbutz service", where they either work for youth groups or political campaigns in the cities. Once they are finished they are 21 or 22 years old.[24] see Education in Israel


Gender Equality[edit]


A woman working in the orange grove of kibbutz Na'an

In the early days of the movement, kibbutzim tended to be male-dominated with significantly more male members. Nevertheless, women performed many of the same tasks as men. Both men and women worked in the fields, performed guard duty, and heavy labor.[24] However mostly women filled the traditional female roles, such as cooking, sewing, and cleaning.





Another example of the change in the original egalitarian nature of the kibbutz is that the founders of the kibbutz did not use the traditional Hebrew word for husband, ba'al (בעל, BAH-al), because the word is otherwise used to mean "master" or "owner" and implies that the wife is submissive to her dominant spouse. The granddaughters of the founders use ba'al for husband to their grandmother's disgust. The granddaughters insist the grandparents are too caught up with terminology. The original egalitarian principles of gender equality have been compromised.[22]




Social life[edit]

The dining hall in Kibbutz Merom Golan, ca. 1968–1972
Kibbutz Gan Shmuel on Shavuot, 1959






Kibbutzim attempted to rotate people into different jobs. One week a person might work in planting, the next with livestock, the week after in the kibbutz factory and the following week in the laundry. Even managers would have to work in menial jobs.[32] Through rotation, people took part in every kind of work, but it interfered with any process of specialization.




There are very few issues of crime on the kibbutz. Since everyone has their basic needs taken care of and shares everything communally there is no reason for theft. The kibbutz crime rate is well below the national average.[34]

Psychological aspects[edit]

Emotional involvement[edit]



Private property[edit]



Group pressure to conform[edit]


In the 1990s, a journalist tracked down the children Bettelheim had interviewed back in the 1960s at "Kibbutz Atid" (actually Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan). The journalist found that the children were highly accomplished in academia, business, music, and the military. "Bettelheim got it totally wrong."[37]





In the 1970s kibbutzim frequently hired Arab labourers. Since the 1990s teams of foreign workers were brought in, many from Thailand and China.



Types of kibbutzim[edit]

There are three kibbutz movements:

  2. Religious Kibbutz Movement Hapoel HaMizrachi,
  3. Agudat Israel Workers



  1. Kibbutz Shitufi (קיבוץ שיתופי): a kibbutz still preserving a cooperative system.
  3. Urban kibbutz (קיבוץ עירוני): a community existing within an existing settlement (city). Since the 1970s around 100 urban kibbutzim have been founded within existing Israeli cities. They have no enterprises of their own and all of their members work in the non-kibbutz sector.[39] Examples include Tamuz in Beit Shemesh (near Jerusalem); Horesh in Kiryat Yovel, Jerusalem; Beit Yisrael in Gilo, Jerusalem[40] and Migvan in Sderot.

Legal issues[edit]

Some kibbutzim have been involved in legal actions related to their status as kibbutzim. Kibbutz Glil Yam, near Herzliya, petitioned the court regarding privatization. In 1999, eight members of kibbutz Beit Oren, applied to the High Court of Justice, to order the registrar of cooperative societies, to declassify Beit Oren as a kibbutz and reclassify it as a different kind of cooperative society. The petitioners argued that the Kibbutz had dramatically changed its life style, having implemented differential salaries, closing the communal dining room, and privatizing the educational system and other services. These changes did not fit the legal definition of a kibbutz, and in particular, the principle of equality in consumption. Consequently, the registrar of cooperative societies, who has the authority to register and classify cooperative societies, should change the classification of kibbutz Beit Oren. The kibbutz responded that it still maintained the basic principles of a kibbutz, but the changes made were vital to prevent a financial collapse and to improve the economic situation.

This case resulted in the Government establishing a committee to recommend a new legal definitions that will suit the development of the kibbutz, and to submit an opinion on the allocation of apartments to kibbutz members. The committee submitted a detailed report with two new legal classifications to the settlements known today as kibbutzim. The first classification was named 'communal kibbutz', identical to the traditional definition of a kibbutz. The second classification was called the 'renewing kibbutz' and included developments and changes in lifestyle, provided that the basic principles of mutual guarantee and equality are preserved. In light of the above, the committee recommended that instead of the current legal definition of kibbutz, two different determinations will be created, as follows, a) communal kibbutz: a society for settlement, being a separate settlement, organized on the basis of collective ownership of possession, of self-employment, and of equality and cooperation in production, consumption and education, b) renewing kibbutz: a society for settlement, being a separate settlement, organized on the basis of collective partnership in possession, of self-employment, and of equality and cooperation in production, consumption and education, that maintains mutual guarantee among its members, and its articles of association includes, some or all of the following:








The establishment of the Palmach underground army in 1942, which won the yishuv crucial military struggle against Palestinian Arabs from 30 November 1947 up to 15 May 1948 that made possible the establishment of the Israeli state, was due to efforts by Tabenkin and other Kibbutz Meuchad leaders. One of them, Yigal Allon and Kibbutz Artzi member Shimon Avidan were the two most important commanders who won the War of Independence, and numerous kibbutz members were Cabinet Ministers who largely shaped Israeli politics from 1955 to 1977.[42] Kibbutz-born Ehud Barak was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001, and David Ben-Gurion lived most of his life in Tel Aviv, but joined Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev after resigning as Prime Minister in 1953. He remained a member after his return to office in 1955.


See also[edit]

Panorama of Kibbutz Barkai in the Wadi Ara region


  2. ^ Peres, Judy. In 50 years, kibbutz movement has undergone many changes. Chicago Tribune, 9 May 1998.
  3. ^ Kibbutz reinvents itself after 100 years of history
  5. ^ The Kibbutz: Awakening from the Utopia, Daniel Gavron
  9. ^ "The Kibbutz in Historical Perspective", Mark A. Raider
  10. ^ Esty Aharonovitz (17 June 2010). "מה קורה לוותיקי החברים אחרי שהקיבוץ הופרט? לא משהו טוב" [What happens after kibbutz members veterans privatized? Not something good]. Haaretz (in Hebrew). Retrieved 14 January 2014. 
  11. ^ quoted in Rayman, pp. 27–28.
  13. ^ Reuven Shapira - "Academic Capital or Scientific Progress? A critique of studies of kibbutz stratification." Journal of Anthropological Research, 61(2005): 357–380.
  14. ^ Reuven Shapira - "Communal decline: The vanishing of high-moral leaders and the decay of democratic, high-trust kibbutz cultures". Sociological Inquiry, 71(2001): 13–38.
  17. ^ a b Kibbutz changes, 27.1.2010
  23. ^ a b Spiro, Melford E. Kibbutz Venture in Utopia. 4th ed. New York: Schocken, 1970. Print.
  24. ^ a b c d Criden, Yosef, and Saadia Gelb. The Kibbutz Experience. New York: Schocken, 1974. Print.
  25. ^ S. Golan, "Upbringing in the Family, in Institutions and the Kibbutz", in Sugiot (Tel Aviv: SifriatPoalim, 1956), p. 308. H.
  27. ^ , Daniel. The Kibbutz: Awakening from Utopia, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2000, p. 168.
  28. ^ Scharf M. "A Natural Experiment in Childrearing Ecologies and Adolescents Attachment and Separation Representations", Child Development, January 2001, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 236–251(16).
  29. ^ Kibbutz at the Internet Movie Database
  32. ^ See balanced job complex for related job rotations.
  34. ^ Gavron, Daniel. The Kibbutz Awakening from Utopia. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Print.
  36. ^ Noam Chomsky (2003) Understanding Power ch. 6 p. 197
  38. ^ [1][dead link]
  39. ^ The Jewish Advocate, 7 March 2008
  40. ^ Official Website Beit Yisrael

External links[edit]