Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment

The History And Evolution Of The Kibbutz Experiment: A Utopian Ideal Faces The Challenge of The Modern World
While I may not be the intended audience of Toby Perl Freilich's new documentary "Inventing Our Life," I've always been fascinated by the ideals behind the kibbutz movement. This communal living arrangement has been around for approximately 100 years, and this experiment in socialism has had its shares of ups and downs through the decades. As modernization and capitalism have expanded within Israel, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the original principles established in the movement's infancy. And this film does an excellent job showcasing the challenges (and inherent differences) between kibbutzim today compared to its place in history.

The movie relies heavily on interviews with a variety of participants from a number of different kibbutz homesteads. From first generation settlers to those no longer involved, there is a healthy cross section of viewpoints to display different aspects of the kibbutz experience. I really found the historical footage...

Socialism That Worked
Founded by young idealists in their early 20s, the kibbutz movement began just over 100 years ago as a back to the land communal movement who's goal was to emancipate Jews from centuries of a mindset that was accustomed to oppression. Today there are 270 kibbutzim in Israel (and an additional 115 moshavim, similar in nature, which are not included in the film's coverage). This sympathetic documentary uses historic footage and contemporary interviews with members of 6 different representative kibbutzim providing an insightful look at how people in these collectives lived, and successes and failures as they met the challenges of the nation that grew up around them.

Though the movement generated much of the early leadership of the country, both in government and in the army, it still had the succession problem of passing on the tradition from one generation to the next, and as largely agricultural endeavors they also faced the problem of surplus labour and the...



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