page_title: Kibbutz
section_title: After the establishment of the state
hierarchical_section_title: Kibbutz / After the establishment of the state
caption_attribution_description: עברית: ילדי הקיבוץ משחקים בנשק של חיילי גבעתי, שהצטרפו להגנת הישוב ב 1948
context_page_description: A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik.
  In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel's industrial output, worth US$8 billion, and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion. Some kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.
  Currently the kibbutzim are organised in the secular Kibbutz Movement with some 230 kibbutzim, the Religious Kibbutz Movement with 16 kibbutzim and the much smaller religious Poalei Agudat Yisrael with two kibbutzim, all part of the wider communal settlement movement.
context_section_description: The establishment of Israel and the flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim. The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new members and inexpensive labour, but it also meant that Ashkenazi kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different from their own. Until the 1950s, nearly all kibbutzniks were from Eastern Europe, culturally different from the Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Iraq. Many kibbutzim hired Mizrahi Jews as labourers but were less inclined to grant them membership.
  Ideological disputes were also widespread, leading to painful splits, sometimes even of individual kibbutzim, and to polarisation and animosity among members. Israel had been initially recognized by both the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first three years of its existence, Israel was in the Non-Aligned Movement, but David Ben-Gurion gradually began to take sides with the West. The question of which side of the Cold War Israel should choose created fissures in the kibbutz movement. Dining halls segregated according to politics and a few kibbutzim even had Marxist members leave. The disillusionment particularly set in after the Slánský trial in which an envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried.
  Another controversy involved the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany. Should kibbutz members turn over income that was the product of a very personal loss? If Holocaust survivors were allowed to keep their reparation money, what would that mean for the principle of equality? Eventually, many kibbutzim made this one concession to inequality by letting Holocaust survivors keep all or a percentage of their reparations. Reparations that were turned over to the collective were used for building expansion and even recreational activities.
  The split between different factions within the kibbutz movement evolved between 1948 and 1954, when finally three kibbutz federations emerged, each aligned to a different Labour party: Ihud with Mapai, Meuhad with Ahdut HaAvoda, and Artzi with Mapam.
  Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s, the kibbutzim standard of living improved faster than Israel's general population. Most kibbutz swimming pools date from the 1960s.
  Kibbutzim also continued to play an outsize role in Israel's defence apparatus. In the 1950s and 1960s many kibbutzim were in fact founded by an Israel Defense Forces group called Nahal. Many of these 1950s and 1960s Nahal kibbutzim were founded on the precarious and porous borders of the state. In the Six-Day War, when Israel lost 800 soldiers, 200 of them were from kibbutzim. The prestige that kibbutzniks enjoyed in Israel in the 1960s was reflected in the Knesset. Though only 4% of Israelis were kibbutzniks, kibbutzniks made up 15% of Israel's parliament.
  As late as the 1970s, kibbutzim seemed to be thriving in every way. Kibbutzniks performed working-class, or even peasant-class, occupations, yet enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle.
caption: Kibbutz children with the Givati brigade
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