Capitalism on the Kibbutz

The kindergartens are shuttered now, the young families mostly a memory. Along the rolling paths of this once-lively farming community, the prevailing hush gives way now and then to the hum of motorized carts favored by some of the oldest residents, who carved a collective home here nearly 60 years ago.

The factory where the kibbutz used to build electric fans is silent except for the flapping of rafter birds. The community can no longer sustain itself on dairy cows, chickens and crops.

“We can’t support ourselves,” said Ariel Hurwitz, 71, the part-time secretary of Kibbutz Galon. “We can’t continue this way.”

Similar anxieties are rippling through many of the country’s 270 kibbutzim, the iconic Israeli communities that took root in the stony soil before statehood and came to represent the socialist ideals and sturdy self-sufficiency of the Jews who built and nurtured them over the years.

Now facing economic woes, a graying -- and, in many cases, dwindling -- membership and the fading of the communal way of life’s appeal among young Israelis, Kibbutz Galon and scores of others are putting themselves through a remarkable makeover.

After much debate, plenty of soul-searching and some grumbling, they are adopting tenets of private enterprise and individual initiative, creating what some have dubbed the “new kibbutz” to rescue what they can of the collectivist dream.

Last month, the residents of Kibbutz Galon, which sits on a cactus-studded plain in the Negev desert an hour outside Jerusalem, approved a so-called rejuvenation program that would alter many of the basics of life, from requiring members to pay to have their clothes washed in the communal laundry to urging them to find jobs in the outside world.

Following the lead of other reform-minded kibbutzim, Galon hopes to steady its finances and perhaps draw young families back by allowing some members to earn more than others and keep more of their outside income -- even if that grants some a higher standard of living than others.

“We’re starting to become capitalists,” Hurwitz said, only half-joking.

In adopting the reforms for a one-year test, Galon joins about 170 kibbutzim that have made changes in the last few years, according to Gavri Bargil, executive director of the Kibbutz Movement, a national association.

At the heart of the transformation is the recognition that the kibbutz stands at a crucial juncture. Nationwide, the average age among the 130,000 kibbutzniks has risen to nearly 55. About 2,000 members left the communes in 2002, while only 619 joined.

“It’s not the same anymore in the 21st century,” Bargil said. “What was good for the pioneers of the kibbutz is not OK for the younger generation who want to be part of the global village. There is more and more individualism and more and more privatization.

“We have to make very tough but very necessary decisions in order to survive.”

Tal Hover, who is 22 and grew up on Kibbutz Galon, is preparing to move away, perhaps to Tel Aviv. Although Hover, who is studying to be a fitness instructor, said he admires the kibbutz ideal, prospects look better elsewhere.

“Today the kibbutz cannot offer me any future,” Hover said. “The foundation of the kibbutz, the idea that one worked according to one’s ability and got according to his needs, is a beautiful idea. But in order for it to work, as it worked when we were kids, it requires a lot of belief and energy. It cannot work in the cynical world of today. Maybe human nature is not built for that.”

The kibbutzim hold a special place in the hearts of many Israelis as well as thousands of foreigners who trooped to Israel over the years to volunteer in planting and harvests.

The communities were key building blocks of Israel, cultivating a Jewish presence along the outlines of the future nation and turning some of its most desolate acreage into productive farmland and factory enclaves.

Commune members followed a simple dictum: Work and give as you are able and take what you need. Men and women shared the chores of the kibbutz and steered policy through animated community meetings. Children took their first steps in communal nurseries and learned to read in kibbutz schools. Like one extended brood, the families came together nightly for meals in the kibbutz dining room.

Privately owned cars were unknown. Even today, members sign up to use cars owned by the kibbutz.

Many of Israel’s leaders and heroes traced their roots to the kibbutz, whose alumni earned places in the highest echelons of Israel’s military and political worlds. But a series of conservative-run governments since 1977 has made it more difficult for the movement’s longtime allies in the Labor Party and the Israeli left to bail them out, scholars say.

Although most kibbutzim were built on public land, what limited government help is now available comes mainly in the forms of agricultural subsidies and water and tax support for new industries.

Some older kibbutzniks see the free-market approach as an abandonment of the egalitarian spirit that helped make the kibbutz movement a founding pillar of the Israeli state.

Even those who acknowledge that some change is needed find the new realities difficult to swallow.

“What comes out of these changes is that the responsibility for helping each other is gone, the togetherness is gone,” 84-year-old Hanina Tadir said.

He was among the group that erected Kibbutz Galon’s first cluster of buildings during a single night in October 1946 -- part of a lightning underground operation on Yom Kippur that raised 11 kibbutzim in the darkness to escape the gaze of the British authorities then in control.

Tadir, who served in the Palmach, a pre-statehood fighting force, still considers himself a patriot, a Zionist and a socialist. The walls of his house in the kibbutz are decked with photographs of his heroes -- former prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres of the leftist Labor Party -- as well as a copy of the nation’s declaration of independence.

“Everything is going in the direction of economy and materialism,” Tadir said with dismay. “And money, money, money.”

Collectivism remains central to the kibbutz. Prospective members must be approved by a vote of the group. Once accepted, the kibbutznik is assigned housing and a job, if the new member isn’t already employed outside. The kibbutz life is mostly a secular one -- only 15 kibbutzim are religion-based.

Those who advocate reform say there is still plenty of room for core kibbutz values, such as mutual reliance.

Some kibbutz members might earn twice the wages of others, a striking departure from the tradition of generally uniform allotments. But a new system of taxes is being established on kibbutzim to help ensure rough equality, or at least a basic of standard of living.

“You can’t live in the global village we live in today and have complete equality. But I believe if you have solidarity, you have a basic equality and equal opportunity,” said Bargil of the kibbutz association. “This is what the ‘new kibbutz’ is all about.”

Experts say that for many kibbutzim, there is little choice but to change or face potential collapse.

“Most of the kibbutzim are in a difficult situation,” said Eliezer Ben-Rafael, a Tel Aviv University sociologist who last year chaired a commission assessing the state of the movement.

An orgy of borrowing funds, aggravated by high interest rates in the mid-1980s, left kibbutzim laboring under debts they still carry. The obligations total more than $2 billion nationwide -- a burden that officials say has pushed young people to flee the communities for fear of being saddled with payments in the future.

In recent months, two kibbutzim have filed for bankruptcy protection. Ben-Rafael’s panel identified at least a dozen others at risk of going under.

Although some kibbutz enterprises -- including real-estate ventures, factories and even shopping malls -- have succeeded grandly, many others have foundered in the face of foreign competition, economic cycles or sloppy management.

Kibbutz Galon avoided the crushing debt of other kibbutzim but saw its fortunes sag in other ways. Home to about 260 people 15 years ago, the community watched young families begin to move away. Membership has dwindled to 160, and there are just a handful of families with young children, who are bused to a neighboring kibbutz for grade-school classes. But some parents who voice dissatisfaction with life on the kibbutz say they remain because their housing is free.

At Kibbutz Galon, the average age is 57; more than a third are retirement age.

“We don’t want the place to disappear. We don’t want to be an old-age home. We built the place. We want people to live here,” said Hurwitz, who was raised in the Bronx and moved to Galon as a young Zionist in 1953.

The kibbutz’s electric-fan factory fell prey to competition from China. About a year and a half ago, an outside business that manufactured motors for air conditioners moved out of the country too, leaving 30 or so kibbutz members unemployed.

The community depends on 2,000 acres of crops -- cotton, watermelons, jojoba, citrus trees and avocados -- plus poultry and dairy cows. But farming has proved unreliable, troubled by thin margins and worries about the catastrophic effects of a drought. Meanwhile, a small guesthouse at the center of the kibbutz draws tourists in summer and on some weekends but does little business the rest of the time.

Facing these difficulties, Hurwitz and other leaders began discussing reforms more than a year ago and proposed them to the community. Members overwhelmingly approved a test run.

Among the more mundane changes will be higher meal fees and charges for other services once provided free, such as laundry.

The idea is to eliminate waste, Hurwitz said. The communal dining room, which no longer serves dinner, may end up closing -- one sign of how rituals have changed on the kibbutz.

More significantly, members are to be assigned salaries for their tasks. For the first time, not everyone will be paid the same, an idea that once would have brought derision from the movement’s leadership. A manager might take home twice the wages of a laundry worker, for example. All members also will be allowed to retain more of any outside earnings, which will go first to the kibbutz for taxes. In previous times, working outside the community was frowned upon.

“The agriculture’s not enough to support everybody here,” Hurwitz said. “We want people to go out and find work, get jobs and work hard.” He said the basic elements of the kibbutz safety net -- medical care, schooling, emergency aid and other services -- won’t be curtailed.

But not everyone is happy with the reforms. Some kibbutz members complained before the vote that the changes were being pushed by those who were likely to receive the highest salaries. Until now, a single person at Kibbutz Galon was given a monthly allotment equal to about $400, while families got $700, with most of their needs taken care of by the community. Under the new system, a single, working-age person will be allotted at least $700, whether employed or not, and a family will get twice that. But they will have to pay for services.

Some members fear that after years working in the insular world of the kibbutz, they would be forced to seek work outside it without the skills to compete in the modern job market.

Ben-Rafael, the kibbutz scholar, said the move toward privatization generally has made members elsewhere happier -- despite lingering economic troubles.

Still to be sorted out are a host of other changes, including whether kibbutz members will gain ownership of the communally held houses in which they live, and possibly the right to bequeath the homes to heirs. Kibbutzim also are beginning to open their doors to outsiders, allowing families to build and live on kibbutz land alongside members without being subject to membership rules.

Supporters say the resulting hybrid village will help kibbutzim stay afloat while offering newcomers a dose of tranquil country living -- always one of the draws of the kibbutz.

Michal Palgi, a sociologist at the University of Haifa who studies kibbutzim and lives on one, said the wave of reform is likely to produce a much more diverse movement.

“What will come out of it will be different things. It will not be the same kibbutz everywhere,” she said, adding that the intimacy and bucolic calm of the kibbutz life will probably ensure its continuing appeal to certain Israelis.

Kibbutz activists say the reforms appear to be helping. Total membership had declined each year between 1985 and 2002, but the trend was reversed in 2003. At Kibbutz Galon, founding member Eliezer Staretz dared to imagine that the changes underway might reunite his family. Staretz, 87, has lived alone since his wife died five years ago. It was a great disappointment for him when all three of their children left the kibbutz once they grew up.

Perhaps, he mused, they would be drawn back to this transformed community. Maybe they’d live next door. Staretz considered this for a moment, hen nodded, saying, “I would be very happy.”

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Special correspondent Tami Zer contributed to this report from Tel Aviv.