Kvutsat Yovel

Situated in the northern Israeli town of Migdal Ha’Emeq, a few miles west of Nazareth, Kvutsat Yovel is one of four urban communal groups across the country established by graduates of Diaspora youth movement Habonim Dror. Since my interview with Yovel’s Anton Marks appeared in Zeek last year, both the kvutza itself and the wider communal movement of which it’s a part have changed almost beyond recognition. Yovel itself has seen the birth of its first baby and the addition of several new members to the original group, including one other family, and has externally been engaged the larger process of radical change transforming the local communal scene. The following is a short (and largely random) extract from one of the numerous interviews Anton’s given me over the last couple of months about recent developments at Yovel:

JH: How has the coalescence of the local graduate groups into a ‘kibbutz of kvutzot’ affected these groups’ dynamic? Are you, for example, seeing a more centralised structure emerging within the kibbutz?

AM: Right now there’s a total of nine kvutzot spread across Migdal Ha’Emeq and Nazareth Illit that are part of the kibbutz, and one or two that aren’t. Over the years it’s been becoming increasingly clear that the kvutzot in both centres essentially exist as one community together, irrespective of the geographical divide. Between them they operate a communal car-pool, communal cultural celebrations, communal meetings, communal seminars and so on. The process of building these kvutzot into a kibbutz has led to a kind of centralised thing emerging, but it also means that we’re constantly walking a kind of tightrope: to what extent can we build a kibbutz that brings us together before it destroys the kvutzot, and to what extent we can maintain the kvutzot without destroying this process of building the kibbutz? We’re still trying to work out how to do it. When you strengthen the kibbutz you weaken the kvutzot, and when you strengthen the kvutzot you weaken the kibbutz. It’s not easy doing both at the same time, because they’re both just as important.

JH: How have the groups been dealing with this?

AM: At the moment it’s a lot clearer how to strengthen the kibbutz, for the simple reason that most of the people involved come from a traditional kibbutz background. Also, there’s an organisational structure that’s really strong right now – the meshek. This is a communal work structure between the people in all different kvutzot within the kibbutz. So working in teams with people across the kibbutz is one part of this framework. Another part would be financial cooperation. Because people want to work in this kind of environment the meshek is something that’s constantly being strengthened. This is the basis for the kibbutz, something that can be built on as we build outwards and include more people in it.

JH: It seems to me that the kvutzot’s ‘means of production’ is something quite abstract. What are your main sources of income?

AM: There are three or four non-profits for the kibbutz, the income from all of which is pooled. The main non-profit here on the kibbutz – Amulta Tikkun – is involved in fundraising for the particular educational projects that we do, the after-school club here, the after-school club in Nazareth and so on. All that fundraising is pooled as a whole kibbutz. We’re not recognised as a legal entity in the laws registering the different kinds of communal entities in Israel, so we get financial help from the municipality and from the Ministry of Education. That money comes in on a project by project basis. There’ll be a grant proposal and there’ll be a meeting with the municipality in which we outline what we want to do. Generally the municipality and from the Ministry of Education are both very supportive towards our work. But they have their agendas as well of course – they’re only too happy for people to be involved if it takes some responsibility away from them.

There are also a handful of people from various kvutzot who work in external jobs, and they also pool their money. Until now each group’s been independent, which means that each group gets money from the central pool plus the income from anyone within that group working an outside job, so each group has different levels of income.

JH: How is the income from the central pool distributed across the groups?

At the moment, each individual gets his or her living allowance from the kibbutz. All the income goes into the kibbutz and the individual kvutza gets a certain amount of money, worked out according to how many people are in the kvutza. Each kvutza has someone who’s responsible for the money in that group, and they sit once a week as well as the treasurers of each kvutza to talk about issues of not just within the group, but also the financial situation of the kibbutz as a whole. Yovel as a kvutza pools all the income we get into one account – we each have an ATM card and we can withdraw money at our own discretion.

Right now, the system’s changing. As of this year, there’s no longer going to be a way of being part of the kibbutz without being part of its economic cooperation structure, so no longer can somebody be a member of a kvutza but not part of the kibbutz. Until now Yovel has been a separate financial entity because our financial cooperation is with the other Habonim groups in Hadera, Netanya and Tel Aviv, but we’re now part of the process of joining the kibbutz financially.

JH: As it stands, you’re living in rented accommodation, right? Which means you’re pouring money into the pockets of private landlords?

AM: Yes. The fact that we’re renting obviously means we’re chucking away half a million shekels a year or whatever it is, and we spent a couple of years at least going through serious discussions about what that means. We want somewhere as a permanent location for ourselves. We had lengthy conversations about what we were looking for, about the implications of owning property, the implications for what we wanted to do in society and so on. At the end of that process, it came down to one option, which was to live inside an existing kibbutz which had basically fallen apart.

The idea was that we’d have somewhere permanent to live, and it was near enough to Migdal Ha’Emeq that we could still be involved in the things that we’re involved in here. The question was just about quality of life, about whether a rural environment offered a better quality of life. Some people remained adamant that we needed to be in the city. Different kvutzot, different people and different movements have answered that question differently. NOAL for example, have a couple of kibbutzim that are rural and green. They don’t spend their time being farmers, they leave their location and go and do their projects in the surrounding area. So there was a debate within the kibbutz. Eventually we decided it was not a good option for us – but only just. We said that we wanted a two-thirds majority, and we didn’t get that. It was around about half and half, so we said no to that option. It’s on the back-burner now.

Questions about means of production arose as well. The place we were looking at had a factory, and some people were like “yeah, this is the thing that’s going to enable us to keep going, to give us a solid economic base”. At the moment, as I said, we’re reliant for our income on the Ministry of Education and the fundraising that we do, and for me the idea of being the owner of a factory was a big no-no. I really didn’t want to get into that. For some people it was exactly the opposite, which is understandable. The way we’re living here, we don’t have that economic base. So that was a big contentious issue for us. At the moment we’re looking at the option between staying here in Migdal Ha’Emeq or moving to Nazareth Illit – at the moment, half the kibbutz lives here and half the kibbutz lives there. It’s a question of speaking to the municipalities and seeing if they can help.

JH: Tell me about some of the projects Yovel members are involved in. When I first spoke to you back in 2006 you seemed to place a heavy emphasis on initiatives geared towards Judeo-Arab integration – is this still the case?

AM: There are three different things that might get confused here. One is Amulta Tikkun and this kibbutz. The other is us at Kvutsat Yovel, and the third is Yovel being part of Habonim Dror. Last year I ran a project with Habonim which was a coexistence project, but that was through the youth movement rather than the kibbutz. The project basically involved teaching English in the Arab villages in northern Israel and building relationships between Jews and Arabs. The Habonim kids we bring over still do similar kinds of volunteering in the Arab communities, but apart from that, Jewish-Arab relationship-building is less institutionalised and more on a kind of one-to-one basis. In Ha’noar Ha’oved, on the other hand, there’s more emphasis on the strengthening of binational cooperation, and it’s institutionalised in a bunch of different ways. They have an entire Arab branch of their youth movement for example.

The kind of education I’m personally involved in today is a lot less about “the other”, and more to do with who we are as a society, how we’re falling apart basically. Obviously the conflict is our biggest challenge in terms of how it’s affecting Israeli society, but there are a whole host of symptoms as to what exactly that means, for example how militaristic our society is, how violent it is and how it stamps on the values of democracy. Most of my work is with groups from Habonim Dror that come here from abroad for a year. For example, they have a seminar every year that coincides with the anniversary of Rabin’s assassination. The content of that seminar is about democracy and about the situation in Israel leading up to his assassination, the rift between the Left and the Right, and what it says about Israeli democracy. As another example, last week I did a session on the last sixteen years of the peace process, from Madrid to Annapolis, with Habonim people.

So me personally, I’m involved in Habonim, but most of the projects of this kibbutz are with the neighbourhood here in Migdal Ha’Emeq and in Nazareth Illit. For example, the project Emma’s working on in Nazareth Illit, the after-school club she’s running there for kids from difficult social and economic backgrounds. They come to the center, get a hot meal, get help with their homework and have a safe place to play. There’s also a heavy emphasis on mediation, so for example when kids come into conflict with each other our members help them overcome that conflict verbally and calmly. Right now there’s also a project currently being run with these kids’ parents.

JH: How do you see yourselves as a youth movement kvutza in relation to the Urban Kibbutz model?

AM: One of the things we’ve said for many years is that we see it as a spectrum. At the one end of the spectrum you have the urban kibbutz, a la Tamuz, and at the other end you have movements like us and like Ha’noar Ha’oved. Kibbutz Tamuz is an entity in and of itself. People decide that that’s they way they want to live, they want to create a socialist entity and they want to be involved in the local community, but that’s it. Eventually it’ll turn into an old people’s home, and that’s the framework. In movements like NOAL, on the other hand, the emphasis is on the external mission, on being involved in the society and being involved in social change.

At Yovel, we’ve always tried to be somewhere in between. Yes, our kvutza and our kibbutz are very important to us, but also we want to create a movement for change, and we’re working towards bringing more and more groups and more and establishing more communities to make this part of a wider framework. Tamuz is basically one generational. They’re not necessarily looking for a Tamuz II and a Tamuz III, so it’s different in that respect, but they’re still our partners. I’m quite happy to be in dialogue with all these places, because we need to work together. There isn’t just one answer or one way to go.

JH: The fact that so much of this new communal scene is based on the youth movements theoretically means that there are new people coming in and forming kvutzot all the time. In practice, is this happening?

AM: It’s slow. It’s difficult. There aren’t people coming from the UK right now, apart from maybe one or two here and there, but different countries are different. We’ve basically taken responsibility for Habonim all over the world, so for example this year a group of six people from North America have come here and are living together communally. There are people in Australia and various other places talking about coming next year. There are people coming from Brazil and Argentina. So yeah, it’s happening, but it’s not quick and it’s not easy. From the 1980s, when significant numbers of people stopped coming to build kibbutzim or join kibbutzim, there’s been a long gap. I don’t think Israel will ever see the levels of Aliya that it had before then, but that’s what we’re working towards.

That said, the movement in Israel itself [from the sabra youth movements] is constantly growing. At the end of each year people leave the army and carry on living communally in the different adult movements. Some movements have upwards of 300 people coming out of the army every year and continuing to live communally and being involved in Israeli society.

JH: How is the work Yovel are doing filtering into the thinking of Habonim Dror in the UK?

AM: It’s filtering back as a success story. The written ideological platforms of all the movements now around the world are now about coming to Israel and being part of the new pioneering, about setting up intimate kvutzot. There’s a difference between what’s written on paper and what people are doing with their lives of course, but it is having a big impact.

JH: How would you describe the decision-making structures within the kvutza, and within the wider kibbutz?

AM: Consensus is something that’s really important to us as Yovel. We’ve never been a voting kvutza. We’ve always talked things through and we’ve always been creative in our decision-making. In the history of this kvutza we’ve only once not been able to reach a consensus decision – we ended up tossing a coin. That was about whether to keep the dog.

Within the wider framework of the kibbutz there are different voices. I said before, the decision as to whether to move away from here into our own property was passed with a two thirds majority. Generally the people in this particular kvutza were a lot less happy with that form of decision-making, but there’s certainly no consensus that consensus is the right way of making decisions in this kibbutz. I’ve been on a particular kibbutz committee for the last couple of years and I’ve tried really hard to ensure that decisions weren’t made by voting. There hardly ever have been – maybe just a couple of examples here and there. But for Yovel as a kvutza it’s always been very important that we don’t have a majority vote and a disgruntled minority. You can do that with a group of six people. There are methods that show you how it can be done by 100 people but I’ve never tried it.

In the kibbutz as a whole, with decision-making what usually happens is a kind of ‘ping-pong’ system. A committee of representatives from each kvutza meets to discuss issues once a week. The coordinators of that committee will sit down and work out some kind of proposal, and bring it to those representatives who’ll then talk about it, amend it, talk about it and amend it and so on. Then it’ll come back to the groups. The groups will talk about it, then it comes back to the committee. And so on, backwards and forwards. This is how decisions get made, without a show of hands or a ballot or anything like that. It’s very fluid and very dynamic.

JH: Talking to members of Yovel, it seems that it is this dialogue that makes the kvutza what it is. You could posit that, irrespective of its material base, wherever the kvutza’s located and whatever its contradictions, that’s the essence of the community. Would you say this is a fair summation?

AM: Totally! That’s totally it. It’s about what the centre is, and the centre is this process of building relationships, of having these discussions, of reaching understandings, reaching agreements and reaching consensus. There are a lot of things that aren’t clear to us, and we don’t have the answers to most of the questions that we have to face, but the important thing is that we’re asking the questions, and that we’re exploring the answers together. One of the things that are really important is that we’re not stuck in a dogmatic dynamic of not being open to develop or to change, or to challenge or be challenged, that we approach each other when we go into these conversations not in an entrenched place, but willing to listen and willing to be heard.

Some things come around again and again and there’s just disagreement. We can get stuck on them and we can pull ourselves apart over them, or we can reach a compromise. There are some things that are central to what we’re doing and where we’re at, and there are some things that are less central. But at the end of the day, it’s the process that matters. It’s not necessarily the answer you get to at the end of the day – well, obviously it is to some degree, but what’s really important is the process of getting nearer, of understanding the other. There are a million and one things we see differently. The important thing is that we share a lot more than we disagree on. That thing that we all share can be encapsulated in one word, and that’s “vision”. The essence of the kvutza is the dialogue into how to get closer to that vision.

First published on Allvoices, May 28th 2008