Title: INVENTING OUR LIFE: The Kibbutz Experiment

Opens: April 25, 2012

If Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, who recently pushed through the House the most reactionary, uncaring budget in memory, were to see Toby Perl Freilich’s documentary “Inventing Our Life,” would he say, “Aha: I was right all the time about my Social Darwinian economic philosophy!” or would he say, “Hmmm, maybe there’s something to be said for socialism after all!” His answer to that question would depend on your own viewpoint on the kibbutz experiment, since—as the movie clearly shows–that on the one hand the kibbutz has been a brilliant, innovative, voluntary experiment in communal living, but on the other hand, given the half of the collectives have closed down or been privatized, it has been as much a failure as America’s own Oneida Community. Our own New York State Oneida experiment of communal living eventually declined and failed because of pressures and friction both within and without. But the major difference between the Israeli kibbutz and the Oneidas is that the latter was based on religion, the belief that Jesus had already returned to earth, while the former has been typically non-religious to the point of agnosticism.

Based on some excellent file films that go back to 1910 when Kibbutz Degania was founded, we get the impression that the communal farms, peopled by Eastern European and Russian Jews who were fed up with anti-Semitic pogroms, were a utopia for people who loved hard, physical work in the outdoors shared with people like themselves. No jackets and ties for these brave folks. There was no money to hand out to the members and everyone shared equally, even the clothing. Private ownership of land was as alien an idea as it was to our own Native Americans. What became Israel was then called Palestine, and though occasional fights broke out with the Arabs who were on the land in many cases before the Jews, the people of the kibbutz lived in peace and harmony and enjoyed the benefits of true democracy. Little did these early settlers imagine that by the beginning of our own century, only two percent of Israelis would be kibbutzniks, many living in private quarters, earning money according to their skills and contacts.

“Inventing Our Life” has much to say in favor of these collective farms, the most impressive detail being that during the spectacular Six-Day War of 1967, as many as fifty percent of the officers were from kibbutzim, a testament to the hard physical work of these socialistic folks. We could have used more archival film of that glorious war—if indeed war can be so called.

The movie has roots in Freilich’s life. The press notes indicate that when his sister, then eighteen years of age, moved from America to Israel to settle on a kibbutz, her parents were horrified, seeing this type of community as nothing more than a copy of Stalin’s failed collective farms of the 1920’s, “a prison camp in the guise of a commune.” The most severe criticism of kibbutz life to emerge from Freilich’s doc (which he directs, wrote, and produced largely with the help of D.P. Itamar Hadar, narrator Tracy Thorne and editor Juliet Weber) is that children were not allowed to be with their parents for more than a half-hour each day. It seems that the nuclear family was considered a corrupt form of capitalism leading to greed rather than to mutual caring. (What the movie does not go into are studies showing that children denied considerably more quality time with parents but who are brought up principally with their own age groups turned out to be neurotic adults.)

What’s been happening lately could almost have been predicted. The young people are leaving the kibbutzim in droves, heading for the cities like Tel Aviv where they can earn their own money and compete for jobs with others of similar skills. As a result, some kibbutzim voted to privatize, to work for money, and to allow individual members to make their own salaries based on production. One interviewee asked why he should work for twelve hours a day while another put in only six, and yet both made the same income. The capitalization which seems to mirror what’s going on in China today has not worked to any great extent, leading the viewer of this film to believe that the days of the remaining collectives are numbered.

I would have wanted a deeper penetration, so to speak, into the sexual practices on the kibbutz. If they’re anything like what went on in New York State’s Oneida Community where teen boys were initiated into sex with post-menopausal woman to avoid pregnancies, then it’s anyone’s guess whether similar customs would bring more young people back into membership. From my own experience, having spent part of a summer on Kibbutz Givat Hashloshah, life was freer than it must have been in Jerusalem or Haifa.

The film is in English and in Hebrew with clear English subtitles.

Unrated. 80 minutes (c) 2012 by Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online

Overall – B+