The secular kibbutz movement
coulda-woulda-shoulda engendered polyamory. It almost did,
but fell just short of the mark. It behooves us, we polyamorists, to consider
why polyamory was aborted from a womb so superlatively fertile as was the
kibbutz in its early days. All of the social conditions for the birth of polyamory
as a norm existed on the early kibbutzim. The first kibbutzim were social
islands. There were few laws in
During the late 1930s, British delegations
were sent to
In response to the clarion call to
"look respectable" (according to Western standards of
respectability), marriage ceremonies indeed took place for the sake of
appearances, but to the kibbutz members they were farcical. According to Jewish
law, a man must present his wife with a ring that he purchases. The couples shared rings at the wedding
ceremonies. A standing joke on kibbutz was
that curtains rings could be used for the wedding ceremonies. This was not done, of course, but the
jocularity reflects their attitude about marriage in general. In 1984 , when I was living on a secular kibbutz,
and engaged to be married to my husband Dani'el, the jokes about the marriage ceremony
that bespoke the lack of humorless seriousness with which society-at-large
regards the institution were still being
told. Kidding, members said to me: "You know on kibbutz we do not follow
the ordinary wedding formula of the man saying to the woman: "äøé
àú î÷Ëãùú ìé áèáòú æå" ("You are betrothed [made holy] unto me with this
ring") and then placing the ring (which is, in fact, a fancy, small, symbolic
shackle) on his new chattel's right forefinger. "No,
no. On kibbutz
we say: "äøé àú î÷Ëãùú ìé, ìîù÷ åìîé ùéù ìå çù÷" ("You are
betrothed [made holy] to me, to the commune and to whoever has the hots".
It rhymes in Hebrew and sounds cheekily irreverent.) The telling of those jokes to couples about to
be married was traditional. Nary a married couple on kibbutz that has not heard
them was to be found, at least into the 1980s.
Family and children were of central
importance in kibbutz society from the early days and marriages were taken
seriously as relationships of commitment once the institution of marriage was
firmly established on kibbutz; yet having "affairs" was very
common. Part of my initiation as a
newcomer to kibbutz was being told, in rather lurid detail, who was having, and
who had had, an affair with whom. Some of
the peccadilloes involved relationships that were so passionate, and of such
long duration, that they had become the stuff of kibbutz legend, which were recanted
to newcomers to kibbutz fifty years after the fact. Acceptance on kibbutz
involved the feigning of rapt awe at hearing these stories. Clearly, the senior members told the stories
to each and every newcomer in lieu of living the lifestyle of sexual freedom,
which they were once allowed. There was
a good deal of nostalgia in the retelling of their youthful adventures. The
message that sexual freedom would be tolerated was also made quite clear by the
long-time members to the newcomers.
Rather than adultery being so very prevalent
on kibbutz, I believe that kibbutz society would have arrived at the concept of
polyamory as the family structure most suited to the kibbutz way of life had
they not had to marry en masse on pretense in order to favorably impress the
British and UN delegations that were sent to Palestine to "examine"
the Jewish settlement and report back for the sake of determining policy
concerning the Jews in Palestine.
This conclusion begs the question: Why then did the kibbutz movement not adopt
polyamory as a way of life after the State of
The children who had grown up in children's
houses together on kibbutz thought of each other as siblings. The thought of
marriage between two youngsters who had grown up in the same children's house
was tantamount to incest in the mind of kibbutz children. On rare occasion, marriage did take place
among couples who were not in the same children's house at the same time and
whose ages were a few years apart. More common was the phenomenon of those born
on kibbutz marrying people born on other kibbutzim.
However, for the most part, kibbutz children
looked outside of the kibbutz to find mates. Some left the kibbutz to live with their mate
in a town or city. Many of those born on
kibbutz brought their new husband or wife to live with them on kibbutz for
purely economic reasons, without sentiment and without idealism. There was no
selection committee, no training in communalism and no vow of loyalty to the
socialist way of life demanded of the spouses of people born on kibbutz.
Spouses of kibbutz members who had been raised in traditional families in towns
and cities came to kibbutz en masse over the years. They used the kibbutz for
the economic advantages that kibbutz offered, even as they gradually whittled
away at the socialist social structure of kibbutz that created kibbutz wealth. They made deep inroads relatively quickly and
turned the kibbutz into a traditional, materialistic society with traditional,
materialistic notions of family and property alike. Those who came to kibbutz at the behest of a
mate were possessive of their spouses and children and exerted considerable
pressure upon the kibbutz to fall into line with competitive capitalism.
As
the kibbutzim became wealthy and came to be thought of as the elite of Israeli
society, couples from towns and cities who never intended to live a socialist
lifestyle joined the kibbutzim. The
kibbutzim were delighted to increase their numbers and welcomed the couples and
families who applied for membership without any real examination of their motives
for joining. The applicants "played the game" during their period of
candidacy, then quickly joined forces with the spouses of those born on kibbutz
to bring kibbutz into line with capitalist, materialistic society when their
membership was finalized. They wished to
enjoy the wealth, services and security of kibbutz even as they were systematically and purposefully undermining,
and would eventually destroy, the collective nature of kibbutz that generated
the wealth which established kibbutzim came to enjoy. It was these people who
pressured the kibbutz to change over from raising kibbutz children in
collective children's houses to having them live with their parents. That change would sound the death knell of
kibbutz society as it had existed from its earliest days. It also brought about
the economic collapse of the kibbutz, as the construction costs involved in
building houses large enough to accommodate the children as well as their
parents amounted to billions of shekels. Greedy members of kibbutz had
speculated in the burse far in excess of what the kibbutz could afford to lose
if there was an economic downturn. That
downturn occurred in the 1980s. The
kibbutzim could not weather the double pecuniary whammy of the stock exchange
bottoming out and being in debt to the banks for billions of shekels due to the
massive construction projects they undertook. Under these influences, the
creation of a polyamorous way of life was absolutely impossible, unthinkable.
The author is convinced that despite the
fact that polyamory did not develop on kibbutz to date and although the kibbutz
movement is at a nadir, the unique sodality of a genuinely, properly
functioning, socialistic kibbutz is maximally conducive to living the polyamory
way of life.
For the very same reasons that the majority
of the kibbutzim failed as a whole, polyamory was not adopted.
It is very likely, then, that if kibbutz is
to succeed it will have to protect itself from the influences that brought
about its demise, the very same influences that did not allow polyamory to
blossom. Polyamory is a logical corollary of a genuinely socialist society that
describes its own social structure. The
evolution to polyamory will flow quite naturally in a genuinely, and
comprehensively, socialist environment.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,