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11. The Crisis in the Kibbutz Movement, 1949-1961
- State University of New York Press
- Chapter
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11 HENRY NEAR_____________________________________ The Crisis in the Kibbutz Movement, 1949-1961 The crisis in which the kibbutz movement found itself shortly after the War of Independence was compounded of four or five interlinked dilemmas. During the 1950ssome ofthese problems were wholly orpartially resolved, while others remain unsolved to this very day-some because the kibbutzim lacked the strength or the determination to deal with them, others because they are a reflection ofbasic predicaments immanent in the relationship between the kibbutz and the Israeli society. PROBLEMS Recruitment Throughout the history of the kibbutz one major factor has determined its capacity to meet the challenges of the time: the availability ofmanpower. This can be seen very clearly in the postwar crisis, which was in many respects simply a reflection of the lack of men and women to perform the tasks which the kibbutzim were, in principle, prepared to take on themselves. There were several reasons for this. After the war, the kibbutz movements resuscitated the European youth movements more or less in their prewar form. However, in the historical circumstances of the mass exodus from Europe, they became little more than a convenient framework for organizing the new immigrants and channelling them into the kibbutz movements, Youth Aliyah, the Haganah/IDF, and other existing sectors.1 Once the great wave of European refugees had arrived in Israel, this source of manpower dried up almost completely.2 Israeli youth movements were small compared with the prewar European movements, and most members were of an age and social background which enabled them to take advantage of the opportunities for social mobility afforded by the new state. The halutz movements in the Western countries were also numerically small, and the proportion of their graduates who reached the kibbutz was tiny. Moreover, the kibbutz movement was one of the few sectors ofthe Israeli public which aimed to absorb new immigrants "into its homes, its work force, its children's houses."3 In other parts of Israeli society-for example, the veteran moshavot, in many of which the local authorities refused to provide municipal services for the neighboring ma'abarot-absorption took place alongside the existing sectors rather than within them.4 As a result, the 243 244 Henry Near demands made both of kibbutz society and of the new immigrants led to tensions which proved in many cases to be intolerable. This applies both to the survivors of the Holocaust-including many of those who were recruited through the resuscitated youth movements-and to the Jews of the Middle Eastern countries who by 1953 formed half of the new immigration.5 Thus, a great many new immigrants passed through the kibbutzim, but only a small proportion stayed. Underlying all these factors was the change in possibilities and methods of recruitment to the kibbutz which resulted from the Holocaust. Before the second world war the existence ofthe European youth movements had ensured a constant replenishment of the kibbutzim by young people who had undergone a high degree of selection and training. In the first year of the existence ofthe state these elements were paralleled to some degree: in the camps ofthe Briha, Youth Aliya groups, and the relatively large number ofgraduates ofthe pioneering youth movements ofthe Jewish communities oftheWestern world, the Palestinian youth movements and the Palmach. As a result, the kibbutz movements were able to accomplish a burst ofsettlement unprecedented in the whole of their previous history: between May 1948 and June 1949, fifty-eight kibbutzim were established-more than three times the greatest previous rate of settlement, during the tower and stockade period.6 Within a year from the end of the War of Independence these conditions no longer obtained. Between the world wars the youth movements of Europe and the Yishuv had been minorities within their respective communities: their membership embraced no more than 6-8 percent of the potential recruits.7 Those who reached the kibbutz were minorities within their movements, thinned out further by a process of selection and training-an elite within an elite. With the beginning of mass immigration, those who began to reach the country were no longer elite groups, but whole communities-tragically thinned by the war and the Holocaust, but in circumstances which were very far indeed from the selective processes of the youth movements and the Palmach . It was inevitable that any attempt to recruit directly from among them would attract a very much smaller proportion. The relationship between the kibbutz and the outside world had...