Word: kibbutzers
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...studied the kibbutzim as the most interesting and durable collectives ever established anywhere, believe that it can. "The trouble with 19th century communes," explains Israeli Sociologist Menachem Rosner, "was that their founders set a fixed pattern from which they did not want to move." By contrast, he says, the kibbutz can survive because its members are willing to change and to give old values new forms of expression...
...subtle threat has recently appeared. Nearly two-thirds of the nation's 231 kibbutzim now operate factories, and their residents are undergoing psychological crises as a result of rapid industrialization. Many of the factories have been so successful that it has been necessary to hire outsiders to supplement kibbutz manpower. That practice is considered socially destructive by some kibbutzniks because it sets salaried workers apart from members, who are given the necessities of life without being paid in money. "Something happens when we become managers and employ workers," admits David Tal, economic administrator of Kibbutz Givat Brenner. "With only...
Industrialization has meant other disruptions. "It has created a social gap," says Yavin Rosen, a chemical engineer from Kibbutz Degania. "Managers are driving around in cars, and some have phones. We are out of the kibbutz more than previously and with our families less. Our whole way of life is changing. Some of us are resisting: I've refused a TV set and a telephone...
Trips to Europe. Rosen is in the minority; most kibbutz members are yielding to the temptations of materialism. On Kibbutz Givat Haim (Hill of Life), every adult couple has a 21-room apartment or cottage, two radios, a refrigerator and a hot-water supply, and gets a trip to Europe every five years. Other kibbutzim are beginning to permit TV sets, not just in the dining hall for group viewing but in members' private quarters. Says David Tal: "Attendance at our Saturday night meeting is way down now because Ironside comes on at 9 o'clock, when...
Nevertheless, according to the American Council for the Behavioral Sciences in the Kibbutz, which is making a five-year study of the collectives, industrialization need not destroy the movement. For one thing, factories provide the prestige of work for the aging, a group that did not exist in the youthful pioneer days. The emotional problems of the elderly can be serious: according to Social Anthropologist Melford Spiro, loss of ability to compete with younger men at heavy farm work is a major cause of psychological insecurity in older chaverim (members...