Kibbutz

From Wikinfo

A kibbutz קיבוץ (Hebrew, pl. kibbutzim) is a communal living arrangement that is a self-organized popular democracy operated through town meetings and technocratic centralized control or bureaucratic management similar to that of contemporary large corporations. The Kibbutz is a unique Israeli Zionist phenomenon and combines Zionism with a socialist society.

The main feature of Kibbutz is that it was created by people without experience in agriculture and who never owned the land nor possesed the farm. Kibbutz is located on the area rented from the state. The funding of Kibbutz usually came from the donations of American Jewish disapora. The members of Kibbutz doesn't get a salaries, but Kibbutz provides them with everything they need. The collective child care is common, as well as collective feeding, sometimes of questionable quality. Some Kibbutz have also military objectives (members are soldiers). There is one year probation period before the one will become a member of Kibbutz.

Terminology

The name Kibbutz is orginated from the word Kvutza which means "group" in Hebrew.

History

The Kibbutz is a unique Israeli Zionist phenomena and is probably the most successful attempt of founding a Socialist communal society.

The Kibbutzim settlements were founded by young idealistic Jews who manifested their central ideologies, Zionism and Socialism, by founding communal agricultural settlements in the land of Israel.

The first communal groups were founded in 1909 around the western shore of the Sea of Galilee (Yam Kinneret). The first communal group, Kinneret, taught the Jewish settlers agriculture and trained them to build new settlements. Among the famous people who were trained in Kinneret was the Israeli poet Rachel (רחל).

In 1909 the first real kibbutz was erected. It was named Degania Aleph and placed in the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, near the Jordan River. Despite hard conditions, diseases, and hostile attacks from the neighbouring Arab tribes, kibbutz Dgania managed to survive and even flourish. This is largely due to the idealogic passion of its members.

In the following years, more and more kibbutzim were erected, mainly in the Galilee and Gush Dan (The Coastal plain).

In the 1940s, Israeli kibbutzim were erected in the northern Negev and, after the state of Israel was founded, kibbutzim were also erected in the Arava, the south-eastern part of the Negev, on the area of land taken over from Arabs after the creation of the state Israel.