Imagining the Kibbutz

Imagining the Kibbutz PDF Author: Ranen Omer-Sherman
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271070579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.

Imagining the Kibbutz

Imagining the Kibbutz PDF Author: Ranen Omer-Sherman
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271070579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
In Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.

Chasing Utopia

Chasing Utopia PDF Author: David Leach
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1770909389
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
A fascinating, non-partisan exploration of an incendiary region Say the word “Israel” today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades, the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws readers into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together. Crisscrossing the nation, Leach chronicles the controversial decline of Israel’s kibbutz movement and witnesses a renaissance of the original vision for a peaceable utopia in unexpected corners of the Promised Land. Chasing Utopia is an entertaining and enlightening portrait of a divided nation where hope persists against the odds.

The Kibbutz

The Kibbutz PDF Author: Daniel Gavron
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847695263
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Focusing on the human story, journalist Daniel Gavron movingly portrays the fears, regrets and hopes of members of kibbutzim ranging from traditional to modern and agricultural to urban.

Growing Up Below Sea Level

Growing Up Below Sea Level PDF Author: Rachel Biale
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942134633
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
An informative memoir of kibbutz life that reveal a piece of Israel's early story that should not be forgotten.

A Living Revolution

A Living Revolution PDF Author: James Horrox
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781904859925
Category : Anarchism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An exploration of the influences on Israel's early kibbutz movement.

The Kibbutz Experience

The Kibbutz Experience PDF Author: Joe Criden
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description


The Mystery of the Kibbutz

The Mystery of the Kibbutz PDF Author: Ran Abramitzky
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691202249
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
How the kibbutz movement thrived despite its inherent economic contradictions and why it eventually declined The kibbutz is a social experiment in collective living that challenges traditional economic theory. By sharing all income and resources equally among its members, the kibbutz system created strong incentives to free ride or—as in the case of the most educated and skilled—to depart for the city. Yet for much of the twentieth century kibbutzim thrived, and kibbutz life was perceived as idyllic both by members and the outside world. In The Mystery of the Kibbutz, Ran Abramitzky blends economic perspectives with personal insights to examine how kibbutzim successfully maintained equal sharing for so long despite their inherent incentive problems. Weaving the story of his own family’s experiences as kibbutz members with extensive economic and historical data, Abramitzky sheds light on the idealism and historic circumstances that helped kibbutzim overcome their economic contradictions. He illuminates how the design of kibbutzim met the challenges of thriving as enclaves in a capitalist world and evaluates kibbutzim’s success at sustaining economic equality. By drawing on extensive historical data and the stories of his pioneering grandmother who founded a kibbutz, his uncle who remained in a kibbutz his entire adult life, and his mother who was raised in and left the kibbutz, Abramitzky brings to life the rise and fall of the kibbutz movement. The lessons that The Mystery of the Kibbutz draws from this unique social experiment extend far beyond the kibbutz gates, serving as a guide to societies that strive to foster economic and social equality.

Israel in Exile

Israel in Exile PDF Author: Ranen Omer-Sherman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252092023
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Israel in Exile is a bold exploration of how the ancient desert of Exodus and Numbers, as archetypal site of human liberation, forms a template for modern political identities, radical skepticism, and questioning of official narratives of the nation that appear in the works of contemporary Israeli authors including David Grossman, Shulamith Hareven, and Amos Oz, as well as diasporic writers such as Edmund Jabès and Simone Zelitch. In contrast to other ethnic and national representations, Jewish writers since antiquity have not constructed a neat antithesis between the desert and the city or nation; rather, the desert becomes a symbol against which the values of the city or nation can be tested, measured, and sometimes found wanting. This book examines how the ethical tension between the clashing Mosaic and Davidic paradigms of the desert still reverberate in secular Jewish literature and produce fascinating literary rewards. Omer-Sherman ultimately argues that the ancient encounter with the desert acquires a renewed urgency in response to the crisis brought about by national identities and territorial conflicts.

Zion in the Desert

Zion in the Desert PDF Author:
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 0791480062
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description


Kibbutz Makom

Kibbutz Makom PDF Author: Amia Lieblich
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description