Israel’s pastoral icon – the kibbutz – has influenced the lives of thousands of overseas volunteers.
In the sixties and seventies, for that young generation just out of school or university, and before “entering the real world”, the hot thing to do – and there was a lot of passion going around in those days – was to volunteer on a kibbutz in Israel.
Whether from Australia, Europe, the Americas, or Southern Africa – whether you were Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, or agnostic – the kibbutz was a magnet drawing young people to fulfill their dreams. “It was a rite of passage,” most would reflect nostalgically in later years.
Returning to “the real world” was still months away on their agendas, and the trick was to prolong the inevitability of “returning home and start making a living!”
I was one of these volunteers in the winter of 1978.
We were all future lawyers, doctors, engineers, nurses, writers, accountants, architects, industrialists, bankers, artists, actors and even film stars. Then – we were all equal – mostly fruit pickers, living the kibbutz dream and subscribing to its ideology “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.
Celebrating “Shavuot” in kibbutz Ein HaShofet (1956) which marks the all-important of harvest in the Land of Israel and commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai.
It was an age of the ‘collective experience’ and the kibbutz was more than a place – it was an idea!
A unique rural community, the kibbutz (Hebrew word for “communal settlement”) is a ‘society’ dedicated to mutual aid and social justice; a socioeconomic system based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education. No wonder for the ideologically-charged “children of the sixties and seventies” it was an invitation for a once in a lifetime experience.
Before pursuing the path of capitalism, all needed that wholesome infusion of socialism, and maybe all who experienced it, were touched forever.
Kibbutz Degania Alef
2017 marks 108 years since the establishment of the first kibbutz, Degania (from the Hebrew “dagan” meaning grain). Located south of the Sea of Galilee, it was established in 1909 by a group of young Jewish pioneers, mainly from Eastern Europe, who came not only to reclaim the soil of their ancient homeland, but also to forge a new way of life.
It was this “way of life” that the young volunteers of the hippy generation many decades later wanted to discover for themselves.
Fields of Fame and Fortune
Some of the most illuminating revelations about Israel’s kibbutzim are the number of internationally renowned celebrities who, during their youth, volunteered their labor for little more than a room, board, and a small amount of pocket money.
What attracted them to volunteer a chapter of their youth, and what lasting impression did this unique experience have in shaping their life’s journeys?
Bernie Sanders
These questions came under the international spotlight during the primaries for the 2016 USA election when it was revealed that Bernie Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist” candidate for the 2016 Presidency of the USA, spent several months in 1963 volunteering on Kibbutz Sha’ar HaAmakim. Did Bernie’s personal encounter with Israel’s ‘living socialism’ in any way help shape his political philosophy and his prescription for a more equitable America?
Bernie did not say, although 79-year-old Albert Ely had some ideas. Still a resident on Sha’ar HaAmakim, Ely was 22 in 1963 and was in charge of the overseas volunteers.
Shown in 2016, a “Class of 63” photograph of the kibbutz’s volunteers, Ely failed to recognize the Democratic contender who would have been then in his early 20s. Says Ely: “Many of those who came to the kibbutz, wanted to learn about socialism and how it works. Maybe that had an influence on him.”
Living daily within a social framework that preached and practiced “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, Bernie may have discovered in Israel’s orchids the ideological compass that guided him as a Senator through the combative corridors of Washington’s Capitol Hill – and his sights on the White House.
Jerry seinfeld
Following the Bernie revelation, the media unearthed many other celebrities who viewed volunteering on a kibbutz as a rite of passage. I recall my own stint on kibbutz Sdot Yam on the Mediterranean coast in 1978 picking oranges and bananas. I recall how a philosophy student from Buffalo in New York State commented, “If you missed out on Woodstock, the next best thing on your ‘CV’ was a kibbutz experience.” Up at 4.30 each morning to work in the fields, some would learn Hebrew in the afternoons, and everyone could be found in the pub at night – singing, drinking and dreaming about tomorrow.
Those tomorrows are long yesterdays and many of the once young unknown field hands became internationally famous in a multitude of ‘fields’.
Jokes Aside
When veteran comedian from the popular ‘Seinfeld” show, wowed a packed auditorium in Tel Aviv in December 2015 with his opening line, “Oh my god, I’m in Israel!” it was not his first visit. In 1971, the bespectacled 17-year-old Jerry Seinfeld volunteered on Kibbutz Sa’ar and joked: “I didn’t like the kibbutz. Nice Jewish boys from Long Island don’t like to get up early in the morning to pick bananas. All summer long I found ways to get out of work.”
Sacha Baron Cohen
On the other hand, the famed British comic was not shy to work. Cohen volunteered for a year’s program in the 1980s with fellow members of a Zionist youth group on Kibbutz Rosh Hanikra. One can only guess what outrageous costume Cohen – of Ali G and Borat fame – adorned during the kibbutz’s Purim Festival!
Hippy Hot Spot
Following Israel’s lightning victory in the Six Day War of 1967, the kibbutz movement swung open the gates of their closeted communities. Once sworn to rely solely on the labor of its own members, it overnight opened its gates to volunteers from abroad. The reason was one of necessity.
With all army-aged kibbutz members been called up during the tense prelude to the war; their positions in the fields and the factories needed to be filled, or the kibbutz economy – and much of Israel’s – would have grinded to a halt like a tractor without fuel. The first wave of patriotic Jews from the Diaspora was later followed by hordes of adventure-seeking young people of all religions, and ‘hippies’ who had heard rumors of “far out” and “groovy” communes in the hills and the deserts of Israel. There were also those young Germans who, burdened by their nation’s guilt for the Holocaust, were proud to show solidarity with the young State of Israel by volunteering on kibbutzim. And then there were the hoards of backpackers over the ensuing decades simply seeking adventure.
Sigourney Weaver
The records reveal that more than 400,000 volunteers from around the world worked on these agricultural communes for varying periods. Some found love – or other reasons – to stay for good. Most returned home, changed in ways small and large. Inevitably – given their numbers – a few of these gangly teenaged volunteers and globetrotting ‘twenty-somethings’ went on to greater renown.
Fields to Films
Amongst the actors and actresses that would later grace Hollywood’s ‘Red Carpet’, are those who would first trot along the ‘green trail’ to kibbutzim across Israel.
The list reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the movie industry.
Before making it big in hits such as ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ and the ‘Alien’ series, American actress, Sigourney Weaver, volunteered on a Kibbutz for several months at the age of 18 in 1967.
“I dreamt we’d all be working out in the fields like pioneers, singing away.” Instead, “I was stuck in the kitchen operating a potato peeling machine.” That assignment nearly ended her acting career before it began when one morning, the peeling machine started coughing and then erupted, showering her with potato shrapnel. “It was one explosion after another” that “should have put me off science fiction forever.” No wonder Sigourney was so formidable in the spectacularly popular Alien series!
Bob Hoskins
Among the ‘67 migration to kibbutzim, the late Bob Hoskins , then 25-year-old, who would later play leading roles in The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He later revealed how he fell in love with the physical work, the sound of the bird calls at sunrise, and the romance of rural life.
Sandra Bernhard
American comedian, actress, author, and singer Sandra Bernhard reveals that her stint as a volunteer on Kibbutz Kfar Menachem at the age 17, in 1972, “toughened me up for the shark pit of auditioning in L.A.” Nearly 30 years later, she performed a cabaret show of songs, comedy and conversation called “Songs I Sang on the Kibbutz”.
Hellen Mirren
When receiving a Career Achievement Award in 2015 at the 29th Israel Film Festival (IFF) in Los Angeles, Academy Award winner Helen Mirren recounted her memories of Israel after the Six Day War when she volunteered on Kibbutz Ha’on with her Jewish boyfriend.
“My visit to Israel in those early days is one of the building blocks that have made me into the actress that I am, doing the kind of work that I do, that I seek to do, and the way in which I seek to do it.” Referring as well to the “The building blocks that make Israel the great country that it is,” she praised “the courage and the commitment of those people working on the kibbutz that I was lucky enough to meet and work alongside.”
She concluded with “I love Israel. I think it’s a great, great country. I think that through all the difficulties and all the pain that Israel has suffered in the past, and will in the future, the great thing that Israel has is Israelis – and they will guide it through.”
Noam Chomsky
Even those who are today critical of Israel, spent time on a kibbutz – like American professor of linguistics and peace activist Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky stayed for six weeks in 1953 with his wife on Kibbutz Hazorea, where he found a “functioning and very successful libertarian community”. He had no plans then for an academic career, and his brief stay on Hazorea was supposedly a test run for possibly settling on a kibbutz. He appreciated the agrarian communal lifestyle, as well as the cerebral discourse with its idealistic members. Back in the United States with the idea to return to Israel, a research opportunity at MIT arose, and the kibbutz lost an intellectual fieldworker while the world gained one of the founders of the field of “cognitive science” and who would go down as “the father of modern linguistics.”
Dr. Oliver Sacks
Dr. Heinz Fischer – President of Austria
Then there was Oliver Sacks – the British neurologist and author of “Awakenings” later made into a movie starring Robin Williams. Sacks spent the summer of 1955 on Kibbutz Ein HaShofet. And Annie Leibowitz, the famed American portrait photographer, volunteered at Kibbutz Amir at the age of 20 back in 1969. Joining Bernie Sanders in the ‘politicians and statesmen’ category, are current American Congresswoman and 2012 US Presidential candidate Michelle Bachman who spent a summer volunteering at Kibbutz Be’eri at the age of 18 in 1974, and the current President of Austria, Heinz Fischer, who volunteered at Kibbutz Sarid at the age of 25 in 1963.
Annie Leibowitz
Singing its Praise
Duran Durans’ Lead Singer – Simon Le Bon
Fifteen years after volunteering as a teenager on Kibbutz Gvulot in the Negev in 1979, Simon Le Bon, lead singer of the famous pop band Duran Duran, returned to Israel on tour.
On entering the lobby of his hotel – the Hilton Tel Aviv – Le Bon was met with a recreation of a “mini kibbutz” with hay stacks and piles of mangoes. If this was not enough to transport him back in time to his life on the Kibbutz, there, also to welcome him was Ben-Ami Weisselberg, known fondly as the “mother of volunteers”.
Le Bon and Weisselberg hugged, laughed, and shared memories.
Duran Duran’s first album included Le Bon’s song called “Tel Aviv”, and his dorm bed on kibbutz Gvulot was later preserved as a shrine for fans of the new-wave icon.
Michelle Bachman
Songs, writings, poems, and old photographs are the enriching relics of an era that has mostly passed.
The Past in Prose
Some volunteers would record their kibbutz experience in novels.
One of the earlier such chroniclers was Arthur Koestler who would emerge as a giant in 20th century literature – best known for his anti-Stalinist parable Darkness at Noon. He described his kibbutz as a “rather dismal and slumlike oasis in the wilderness”. He did not take to the tasks of stone removal and fruit picking, and only managed to tough it out for 10 days.
Arthur Koestler
Twenty years later, a much-admired journalist and novelist, Koestler returned to the kibbutz and admitted to its members, at a party hosted in his honor, that he had been a total failure. Still, he experienced a pang of nostalgia as reflected in his writings:
“When I neared the kibbutz, I felt I had returned to the specific location in the homeland that I could refer to as home.”
On that same trip, he visited several kibbutzim to research for his novel Thieves in the Night. The novel’s hero, Joseph, would prove a hardier kibbutznik than the author and, through his character, Koestler would get to both relive and rewrite his stillborn experiences as an unaccomplished volunteer.
Koestler describes the settlement of a new kibbutz in 1937 with such poignant prose:
“The new settlers found themselves in the center of a landscape of gentle desolation, a barrenness mellowed by age. The rocks had settled down for eternity; the sparse shrubs and olive trees exhaled a silent and contented resignation. A few vultures sailed round the hill-top; the curves they described seemed to paraphrase the smooth curvature of the hills.”
The Times They Are A-changin‘
Nobel Prize Winner – Bob Dylen
If the music of Bob Dylan inspired the volunteers of the sixties and seventies, when it came to the late 1980s, Israel’s economy underwent a tectonic shift resulting in a rapid rethink on how best to optimize this country’s sparse land mass. In less than a decade, Israel reinvented itself, and its branding shifted from the Jaffa orange to the micro-chip. Soon, kibbutzim survived more on what was produced on their factory floors than in their fields.
While most kibbutzim in recent years have jettisoned their socialist ideology and opted for privatization, some have defied this trend. One such is Kibbutz Yizreel in the Jezreel Valley, today in the top 20 most successful kibbutzim in Israel. This kibbutz has over 35 South African families, all graduates of the South African Habonim youth movement.
The kibbutz’s public trading company, Maytronics, manufactures robotic pool cleaning equipment and has cracked markets beyond Europe to the USA, Australia and South Africa. The ‘genesis’ of this concept was the “Kreepy Krauly” pool cleaner from South Africa. Rather than ‘tread water’ manufacturing a similar product, the South African innovators on kibbutz Yizreel took the concept to a new level of robotics – and the rest is history.
Having A ‘Field’ Day. Arnie Freedman (left), in charge of volunteers on Kibbutz Yizreel for many years, watching a game of rugby with visitor, Rona Stander from Sydney. Yizreel is the home of rugby in Israel.
Entrenched today in the capitalist way of doing business, Yizreel still exudes old-world socialism offering three free meals a day, a practice most kibbutzim in Israel have abandoned. “We are known as purists in the Jezreel Valley,” laughs kibbutz member Arnie Friedman. “They call us Shmurat Tevah (Nature Reserve). Our kids joke that tourists will visit us one day as if our kibbutz was a museum – to see what traditional life on a kibbutz was like.”
Friedman relates of a wealthy American businessman who in 2012 offered to buy Maytronics “for mega millions that would have made each member of the kibbutz wealthy. We agonised over the offer and when the question was asked if in years ahead the factory could theoretically be moved to China, and the answer was in the affirmative, we voted down the deal. We all decided that we have a special way of life that cannot be bought.”
There are still lessons to be learned from Israel’s kibbutzim.
Proudly, former Captonian Friedman declares:
“The value of our kibbutz lies in our values.”
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If you are young and keen to volunteer, visit for more information:
http://www.ivolunteer.org.il/Eng/Index.asp?ArticleID=339&CategoryID=131
