Kfar Hanasi

February 13

on Friday, i braved a packed bus up to the north to stay with a friend of a friend at kibbutz kfar hanasi. the kibbutz is near the town of Rosh Pina, in the Galilee area. the whole north is really beautiful and the kibbutz is on a hill overlooking the Golan heights, the Jordan river, and snowcapped mt. hermon, the highest peak in Israel. Needless to say, it was breathtakingly gorgeous.

kfar hanasi was started over 50 years ago by mostly british and other english speaking folks involved in habonim, the Zionist socialist youth movement. they have the usual kibbutz type industries; a large factory that makes metal fittings, some agriculture and chickens, other stuff that I’m not remembering. there are about 600 people living there now, 300 are members and the others are renting or in the army etc. the mother of my new friend had been there for a long time (30 years?), she teaches Hebrew and Yiddish and came there originally b/c she was very interested in socialism.

over the years, kfar hanasi, like the majority of kibbutzim, has had financial difficulties and as a result has become almost entirely decentralized. the dining hall used to serve 3 meals a day, now it does maybe one. most radically, income is no longer egalitarian: when you get your wages (either from working on the kibbutz or increasingly common, off the kibbutz), the money goes through the kibbutz first and a graduated percentage (like income tax) is taken off to pay for basic upkeep and services. the rest you keep! even kibbutz jobs are compensated differently now, you make a lot more if you're a manager than if you're cleaning toilets. my twin oakian ears were quite shocked to hear this!

i asked sara (the mamale) what this meant for kfar hanasi's status as a kibbutz, in the eyes of the Israeli government. she said that in the last year or so, the gov't has invented a new category of kibbutz, the "new" kibbutz. there are 270 kibbutzim all together, and about two thirds belong to this new, totally decentralized category of kibbutz. The other third are either rich enough to provide for the middle aged desires of their members or are still struggling through the (at times painful and arduous) process of decentralizing. the "new kibbutzim" basically function as progressive, communally minded villages with some shared resources.

friday night, sarah’s kids took me to the local pub (its on the kibbutz, open friday nights only). apparently its usually a quiet social setting, people chatting, drinking beer etc. mostly from the kibbutz. but that night it was PACKED with young folks in the army who were staying at various kibbutzim in the area. it was quite a scene.