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The “Affluent” Kibbutzim:
Ideology and Complacency
- Abstract
REVISITING the Jordan Valley, we thought how prosperous, and how ugly, it had become. Not only the immigrant suburbia clinging to the yellow hills over Tiberias, buit the kibbutzim also, their collective rectangularity grown as commonplace and neutral as the porridge doled out in their dining halls each day. “Until our heroic settlers came in 1908, the whole area was swamp,” boomed a tourist guide annotating our way along Lake Kinneret; a saucer of blue jelly, quivering with heat, its brim reflected date palms as a row of exclamation marks. “The finest dates in the Middle East,” we heard, “are grown by Kvutzat Kinneret.” Unable to challenge this, everyone gazed through the violet bus roof, speechless with warmth. An odor of stale milk stifled the pungency of eucalyptus. “Degania, Mother of Communes”-we almost ran over a cow bolting from its historic haven-”owns the finest dairy in Ithe Middle East.” Avoiding the lawn where a tangle of Degania children were fighting, we filed along the path into Bet Gordon, “dedicated to the man who taught the Religion of Self-Labor.” The face of A. D. Gordon, a mournful sepia, regarded the museum put up in his honor with faint surprise. He brought to mind a rabbi beloved of Rembrandt, not an apostle of toil. On the way out, we saw a matron nearing seventy, in laced boots and patched overalls. Her chin was a chunk of fumed oak. “Miriam Baratz,” whispered the guide, “has got up at midnight Ito milk the herd for forty-four years. A real heroine.”
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