Movie Review - 'Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment' : NPR. This 1. 94. 8 photo shows children from Hulda, a collective community, or kibbutz, located in central Israel. Along with a crew of other young Jewish socialists and refugees from European anti- Semitism, these two city dwellers set to work draining swamps and replacing them with fish ponds and fruit orchards, building collectives out of spartan shacks and collective dining halls, and raising their children in communal nurseries. My father, a loner who liked to do things his way, never came to terms either with the stringent rules of the collective or the failure of those around him to observe them to the letter. Within six years, my parents left the kibbutz with us in tow, and in another four, stymied by the difficulties of survival in an emergent subsistence economy, they returned to London.
Set against the backdrop of the kibbutz movement's glorious 100-year history, Inventing Our Life reveals the heartbreak and hope of Israel's communal living experiment as a new generation of women and men confront an essential.
One of them, at least, regretted that decision forever. In the atomized wastes of suburban London, I feasted on my mother's vivid memories of communal life. I'd go on to spend time on various kibbutzim between bouts of schooling, and in 1.
I prepared to follow in my parents' footsteps. But when it came to the crunch, I balked, realizing that the kibbutz . Remembering my previous sojourns, I also had to admit that the scrupulously egalitarian social arrangements of which I so approved had on a daily basis bored me silly. In theory, utopia is thrilling; in practice, it can be a recipe for monotony. Those dilemmas, among many others, are explored in Inventing Our Life, Toby Perl Freilich's sympathetic but probing account of the rise, fall and rebirth of a movement that defined the early character of the fledgling state of Israel. Disproportionate to its numbers (only 5 percent of the rapidly growing nation of immigrants), the kibbutz movement .
It was in the kibbutz, dedicated to nature, agriculture and self- reliance, that the muscular New Jew rose from the ashes of the Jew as a helpless victim of persecution. Until, that is, those same New Jews, weary of regimented living and restless for adventure, left the kibbutz in droves to travel the world, then embraced the vital, chaotic and robustly capitalist Israel that emerged in the 1. They broke their parents' hearts .
Instead, Inventing Our Life hosts a conversation about a utopian dream as it encounters the realities of social change and human limitation. One grizzled founding father tells of having commandeered the abandoned houses of fleeing Arab villagers in order to build his paradise on earth. She tracks down a philosopher and a poet who remember their kibbutz childhoods with affection tempered by frustration at the enforced conformity, and in some cases the trauma of being ridiculed merely for straying from the norm. Today there are 2. Israel. Most have industrialized and privatized; as one older member observes wryly in the film, . Cash- strapped kibbutzim have hired privatization consultants and abandoned strict income equality in favor of differential pay for different work. Only a handful still raise their kids communally; most have closed their dining halls.
Judged by the ideological terms on which it was founded, you could say the kibbutz experiment has failed. I, for one, could never have made a permanent home there. Yet the sense of community was real, and those cavernous dining halls supply some of the happiest memories of my youth. You can keep your rock- concert reminiscences: For me, there was nothing finer than Shabbat dinner with several hundred of my close family, dressed in white with flowers on the tables, arms linked as we sang for our supper.
Buy Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment on Amazon.com FREE SHIPPING on qualified orders. Children on a kibbutz in 1948, as seen in Toby Perl Freilich’s documentary “Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment.” Credit First Run Features. In 1910 a dozen young Eastern European Jews moved to the. Watch the latest Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment Clip on IMDb. Set against the backdrop of its glorious 100-year history, Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment reveals the heartbreak and hope of Israel's modern kibbutz movement as a new generation struggles to ensure its. Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment A film by Toby Perl Freilich 80 minutes, documentary, color, English & Hebrew w/ English subtitles, 2011.
Inventing Our Life examines the 100 year history of Israel's kibbutz movement, one of the world's longest running and most successful experiments in pure communism. Recreating its glorious. Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, Toby Perl Freilich's informative doc about the first 100 years of the famed communal-living experiment that.