Whitmont: They may be the end of an Israeli tradition. The third generation of children born on an old style kibbutz, and the last in all of Israel to grow up in the old kibbutz way, living and sleeping separately from their parents.
But now even these last old style kibbutz children and the questions of where they go to bed at night, have become the focus of a painful dilemma.
Haddas: I believe that if the children will sleep at home, it will change the system, it will go too far.
Hagit: I want my baby in my home.
Whitmont: Once, Israel's communes were seen as pioneering and idealistic. Now, to many Israelis, they are as obsolete as the socialism that inspired them. To find what some call the last real kibbutz in the world, you have to travel almost to the end of Israel.
It's called kibbutz Baram and in some ways its a piece of history. While other communes have changed, Baram is hanging on, to old kibbutz ideals like communalism and old kibbutz traditions like security.
Haddas Zohar was born on Baram. She left briefly to study, but came back to live and raise a family. For her kibbutz life isn't about idealism, it's simply practical and she likes it.
Haddas: It gives me strength. I feel it gives me, in a way, a meaningful life. The very usual things in life like going on shopping, preparing food laundry and things like that are made for you, you don't have to do all the hassle. And then you can say your mind is free for other things like work, like taking care of my children, like being a member of the community, an active member in the community.
Whitmont: On Baram, like the original communes almost everything is shared. cooking and eating are communal. Decisions are made in long general meetings where every member has a vote. There's no need for money, no bills to pay and everyone's supposed to be equal.
It's a way of life that Haddas' partner Neri found hard to get used to. They met outside while Haddas was studying. Like most modern Israelis, Neri never dreamed he'd end up on a kibbutz.
Neri: Well, I was sure I am not going to live here. I planned to take Haddas out from here to live somewhere else, somewhere else in the world or in the country.
Whitmont: But Neri began picking apples and tried to get used to not being paid a salary. Eight years later, he's running the apple shed.
Neri: It takes some time to get used to learn how the life is here now and to see that we are just a community and we live together, work together, raising our kids together, just doing everything together and I'm being part of this place.
Whitmont: These days kibbutz members get a yearly cash allowance. Haddas and Neri could easily earn more outside. But both say they like living with other people. Like all kibbutz children in the old days, Haddas grew up in a children's dormitory from when she was a few months old til the time she turned eighteen.
Haddas: The children I grew up with are my best friends. As a child it was really great because you live with other children, you have your own life. You learn to be very independent because you don't grow up with your parents all the time.
Whitmont: It's the way Haddas and Neri would like to bring up their eighteen month old daughter Noa, taking her, every night like they do now, to the children's house. But it's a ritual neither believe they'll be doing for long.
Over the past ten years, nearly every kibbutz in Israel has closed down its children's house. Every kibbutz that is except Baram. Now, even here, many parents want their children at home. Recently the kibbutz held a
secret ballot. Just over half of the four hundred members voted to keep the children's house, but the decision was close. So far everyone's accepted the result, but for the first time, the kibbutz is divided.
Hagit: In the middle of the day I go there and I have half an hour to see him but it's not the same when you see how he is awake in the morning and it's not enough time for me.
Whitmont: Hagit Lerner is one of Haddas's closest friends. She too grew up in the children's house. But now she's a mother and she wants her baby at home.
Hagit: When he was small, he was younger, it was very difficult for me because he was sick many many days and many many nights they called us to the dormitory at 2 o'clock in the night. To know that he is crying and he wants his mother and every day there is another woman that is taking care of him.
Whitmont: Unlike most women on the kibbutz, who work in the kitchen or the apple shed, Haddas is a trained engineer, running Baram's high tech plastics factory. She admits her career has a lot to do with her views about the children's house.
Haddas: Okay, like everyone else, I'm a whole person, I'm a mother and I'm a working woman and I'm a member of this community. For me the system give me the opportunity to keep the right balance.
Whitmont: But for many old time kibbutzniks, the debate over where the children sleep is a symptom of a wider problem.
Every few weeks Haddas takes a turn on the factory floor, for night shift. Tonight she's working with her father Yacov. One of Baram's founders, he came here in 1949, in the days of nation building and idealism.
Yacov: Well, we came here to create something new, some new system, new place and to settle in Israel in a deserted place. We knew that we were going to live in a system that is different from all the world and mainly from
our families. And we knew that we are going to a very rough place, Baram is a very rough place. I can tell you that when we started, we didn't have water, land, clothing, and it's rough weather here.
Aliza: It was supposed to be a very important thing to do for the state, for your people, for the future. It was so highly regarded as a pioneering great enterprise.
Whitmont: In Baram's first year Yacov met and married Haddas's mother, Aliza. All over the country teenagers like them were setting up communities and laying claim to the new state of Israel. They had little, shared everything and were prepared to make sacrifices.
Aliza: It was the second year of Israel as an independent state being a kibbutznik was such an honour I mean when my mother told every one that her daughter went to a kibbutz in the galil on the Lebanese border she was so proud.
Whitmont: Crucial to Israel's settlement policy, the kibbutzim and their farms and their populations flourished. As the country industrialised so did they. But in the seventies Israel's government changed. Support
for the old style communes dwindled. By the mid eighties when Israel's inflation skyrocketed, many kibbutzim were in debt and the government was no longer interested in bailing them out.
Whitmont: To many on Israel's communes, the loss of government support was shattering Kibbutzniks, no longer heroes, were now seen as failures. Their hard work and sacrifices began to look pointless. Many wanted a more comfortable life. Economic survival became a priority.
Aliza: When you are doing something very important you are more ready to give up some of other things, if you know everyone that regards you as the elite. It was not anymore and the political part of it is an expression of a very deep process of changing in the society as a whole.
Whitmont: On Baram there's still some of the old kibbutz magic, some of the old idealism.
But Israel has changed and so have its communes. Most here believe that the children will eventually live with their parents, then if families cook and eat at home, how will Baram be different from any other Israeli suburb?
Now even for Baram believers, like Aliza, it may be the end. If the children's house goes, she might go too.
Aliza: I am here because it's a kibbutz. If it won't be a kibbutz I don't want to live in a just an ordinary remote village somewhere in the mountains.
Yacov: It will be a loss for the human kind, not for Israel, for everybody.
Whitmont: The kibbutz may have been a real social experiment or just a new way of settling Israel. Either way, on Baram at least it's not finished yet.
But now even these last old style kibbutz children and the questions of where they go to bed at night, have become the focus of a painful dilemma.
Haddas: I believe that if the children will sleep at home, it will change the system, it will go too far.
Hagit: I want my baby in my home.
Whitmont: Once, Israel's communes were seen as pioneering and idealistic. Now, to many Israelis, they are as obsolete as the socialism that inspired them. To find what some call the last real kibbutz in the world, you have to travel almost to the end of Israel.
It's called kibbutz Baram and in some ways its a piece of history. While other communes have changed, Baram is hanging on, to old kibbutz ideals like communalism and old kibbutz traditions like security.
Haddas Zohar was born on Baram. She left briefly to study, but came back to live and raise a family. For her kibbutz life isn't about idealism, it's simply practical and she likes it.
Haddas: It gives me strength. I feel it gives me, in a way, a meaningful life. The very usual things in life like going on shopping, preparing food laundry and things like that are made for you, you don't have to do all the hassle. And then you can say your mind is free for other things like work, like taking care of my children, like being a member of the community, an active member in the community.
Whitmont: On Baram, like the original communes almost everything is shared. cooking and eating are communal. Decisions are made in long general meetings where every member has a vote. There's no need for money, no bills to pay and everyone's supposed to be equal.
It's a way of life that Haddas' partner Neri found hard to get used to. They met outside while Haddas was studying. Like most modern Israelis, Neri never dreamed he'd end up on a kibbutz.
Neri: Well, I was sure I am not going to live here. I planned to take Haddas out from here to live somewhere else, somewhere else in the world or in the country.
Whitmont: But Neri began picking apples and tried to get used to not being paid a salary. Eight years later, he's running the apple shed.
Neri: It takes some time to get used to learn how the life is here now and to see that we are just a community and we live together, work together, raising our kids together, just doing everything together and I'm being part of this place.
Whitmont: These days kibbutz members get a yearly cash allowance. Haddas and Neri could easily earn more outside. But both say they like living with other people. Like all kibbutz children in the old days, Haddas grew up in a children's dormitory from when she was a few months old til the time she turned eighteen.
Haddas: The children I grew up with are my best friends. As a child it was really great because you live with other children, you have your own life. You learn to be very independent because you don't grow up with your parents all the time.
Whitmont: It's the way Haddas and Neri would like to bring up their eighteen month old daughter Noa, taking her, every night like they do now, to the children's house. But it's a ritual neither believe they'll be doing for long.
Over the past ten years, nearly every kibbutz in Israel has closed down its children's house. Every kibbutz that is except Baram. Now, even here, many parents want their children at home. Recently the kibbutz held a
secret ballot. Just over half of the four hundred members voted to keep the children's house, but the decision was close. So far everyone's accepted the result, but for the first time, the kibbutz is divided.
Hagit: In the middle of the day I go there and I have half an hour to see him but it's not the same when you see how he is awake in the morning and it's not enough time for me.
Whitmont: Hagit Lerner is one of Haddas's closest friends. She too grew up in the children's house. But now she's a mother and she wants her baby at home.
Hagit: When he was small, he was younger, it was very difficult for me because he was sick many many days and many many nights they called us to the dormitory at 2 o'clock in the night. To know that he is crying and he wants his mother and every day there is another woman that is taking care of him.
Whitmont: Unlike most women on the kibbutz, who work in the kitchen or the apple shed, Haddas is a trained engineer, running Baram's high tech plastics factory. She admits her career has a lot to do with her views about the children's house.
Haddas: Okay, like everyone else, I'm a whole person, I'm a mother and I'm a working woman and I'm a member of this community. For me the system give me the opportunity to keep the right balance.
Whitmont: But for many old time kibbutzniks, the debate over where the children sleep is a symptom of a wider problem.
Every few weeks Haddas takes a turn on the factory floor, for night shift. Tonight she's working with her father Yacov. One of Baram's founders, he came here in 1949, in the days of nation building and idealism.
Yacov: Well, we came here to create something new, some new system, new place and to settle in Israel in a deserted place. We knew that we were going to live in a system that is different from all the world and mainly from
our families. And we knew that we are going to a very rough place, Baram is a very rough place. I can tell you that when we started, we didn't have water, land, clothing, and it's rough weather here.
Aliza: It was supposed to be a very important thing to do for the state, for your people, for the future. It was so highly regarded as a pioneering great enterprise.
Whitmont: In Baram's first year Yacov met and married Haddas's mother, Aliza. All over the country teenagers like them were setting up communities and laying claim to the new state of Israel. They had little, shared everything and were prepared to make sacrifices.
Aliza: It was the second year of Israel as an independent state being a kibbutznik was such an honour I mean when my mother told every one that her daughter went to a kibbutz in the galil on the Lebanese border she was so proud.
Whitmont: Crucial to Israel's settlement policy, the kibbutzim and their farms and their populations flourished. As the country industrialised so did they. But in the seventies Israel's government changed. Support
for the old style communes dwindled. By the mid eighties when Israel's inflation skyrocketed, many kibbutzim were in debt and the government was no longer interested in bailing them out.
Whitmont: To many on Israel's communes, the loss of government support was shattering Kibbutzniks, no longer heroes, were now seen as failures. Their hard work and sacrifices began to look pointless. Many wanted a more comfortable life. Economic survival became a priority.
Aliza: When you are doing something very important you are more ready to give up some of other things, if you know everyone that regards you as the elite. It was not anymore and the political part of it is an expression of a very deep process of changing in the society as a whole.
Whitmont: On Baram there's still some of the old kibbutz magic, some of the old idealism.
But Israel has changed and so have its communes. Most here believe that the children will eventually live with their parents, then if families cook and eat at home, how will Baram be different from any other Israeli suburb?
Now even for Baram believers, like Aliza, it may be the end. If the children's house goes, she might go too.
Aliza: I am here because it's a kibbutz. If it won't be a kibbutz I don't want to live in a just an ordinary remote village somewhere in the mountains.
Yacov: It will be a loss for the human kind, not for Israel, for everybody.
Whitmont: The kibbutz may have been a real social experiment or just a new way of settling Israel. Either way, on Baram at least it's not finished yet.