Published: 26 July 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
For the first time in more than 30 years, there are growing waiting lists for Israel’s kibbutzim; Israeli agriculture may solve world tahini crisis.
Israelis looking for a different kind of community are continuing to move out of cities and into collective settlements, even as (almost) post-COVID normalcy returns.
The Kibbutz Movement — which represents a majority of Israel’s 279 kibbutzim nationwide — has set up a “matchmaking service” to help people find a suitable kibbutz to call home.
The number of people looking to move to a kibbutz, which often have wider spaces and more communal services, began to grow as the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions intensified in 2020. But even as life has returned (mostly) to normal, this trend is still going strong, according to the Kibbutz Movement.
Ayelet Harris, who leads absorption services for the Kibbutz Movement, told The Times of Israel in a recent interview that the movement has about 500 new members queuing up to join.
The death of the kibbutz ideal is predicted regularly. There have been times when the movement, founded in the early settlement days out of socialist ideology, has been seen as out of touch and out of date, a place for old-time socialists to live out their days. A funding crisis in the 1980s appeared to bang the nails in the coffin of what had been a global experiment in communal living.
But increasingly, there’s new energy to kibbutz life across Israel. And that energy goes both ways. Kibbutzim themselves have become more open to new members, and more flexible in the ways that they operate. Many have chosen to privatize and to adopt new ways of working. The focus is very much on community, although what that means varies across kibbutzim.
In other agricultural news, Israel is responding to a crisis threatening one of its favourite foods: tahini.
The civil war in Ethiopia is causing a worldwide sesame shortage, thus threatening the manufacture of the Middle Eastern dip.
Sesame was grown in and around Israel for thousands of years, but the crop diminished in the 1970s and finally disappeared altogether.
Now crop geneticists are reviving it to feed a hungry market that has seen sesame prices surge 30% in a year.
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As pandemic pushes people to greener pastures, kibbutzim see membership swell (Times of Israel)
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A Global Sesame Shortage Puts Tahini in Peril. Can Israel Save It? (Haaretz)
Photo: Agricultural workers on kibbutz (Kibbutz Lotan)
