Under what circumstances would kibbutz-born young people leave a society which symbolizes, more than anything else, the Zionist dream? Naama Sabar explores this question by examining the lives of a group of Israeli emigrants living in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s. Through extensive interviews in which these "kibbutzniks" share their life stories, she uncovers what pushed them to leave the kibbutz and what pulls them to remain in L.A. The underlying leitmotif is the search for identity under changing conditions.

This study discusses questions surrounding kibbutz and Judaism through examination of different kibbutzim and Thier issues.

One Hundred Years of Kibbutz Life shows that the kibbutz thrives and describes changes that have occurred within Israel's kibbutz community. The kibbutz population has increased in terms of demography and capital, a point frequently overlooked in debates regarding viability. Like the kibbutz founders who established a society grounded in certain principles and meeting certain goals, kibbutz newcomers seek to build an idealistic society with specific social and economic arrangements.The years 1909-2009 marked a century of kibbutz life?one hundred years of achievements, challenges, and creative changes. The impact of kibbutzim on Israeli society has been substantial but is now waning. While kibbutzim have become less relevant in Israeli policy and politics, they are increasingly engaged in questions of environmentalism, education, and profitable industries.Contributors discuss the hopes, goals, frustrations, and disappointments of the kibbutz movement. They also examine reform efforts intended to revitalize the institution and reinforce fading kibbutz ideals. Such solutions are not always popular among kibbutz members, but they demonstrate that the kibbutz is an adaptive and flexible social organization. The various studies presented in this book clarify the dynamism of the kibbutz institution and raises questions about the ways in which residential arrangements throughout the world manage change.

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.

Winner of the 2003 Thomas and Znaniecki Award, this book based on extensive research in all of the major Israeli communities including New York, Paris and London, looks at their reasons for leaving, their relations with Israelis who have not left and with the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the countries in which they settle, as well as those who after years of emigration, decide to return.

After discussing briefly the history of Israel and the philosophy of the kibbutz, describes the way of life on a modern kibbutz.