It was as if under the extreme pressures of persecution and revolution in Europe at the turn of the century, Ashkenazi Jews had reached back through the depths of their own history and psychology to retrieve the archetypal practices and norms of primal politics. But the vision of Kibbutz Zionism was incompletely developed in theory, and it was ultimately overwhelmed in practice by a strange mix of warfare and consumerism. Like almost all political movements of the twentieth century, the four elements were never fully grasped as converging in the value of all values — the creative and spiritual life of the primal truth quest.
Without a clear vision of the quest at its center, the kibbutz remained vulnerable to corruption by the universal temptations of wealth and power — ego battles, selfishness, parochialism. The vision of political community had no meaningful place for Palestinian Arabs, nor was there place for the larger community of beings, our animal relatives from our wilderness birth. The kibbutz emerged out of a universal commitment to liberation, but its ideals never extended to our shared planetary predicament. There was little to inspire the community to think beyond tribe, nation, and civilization.
However, in its early days, the kibbutz was still infused with the charisma of its creative founders and had an enormous influence in building up the country. Kibbutzim were responsible for producing the food and growing the export crops. They shaped the new institutions, provided the political leadership, and generated an Israeli national culture of chalutziut. This is most often translated as “pioneering,” but as Amos Elon points out in The Israelis, the English fails to capture the sense of selfless service to an ideal of the Hebrew with all its biblical resonance, ranging from “liberation” and “exaltation” to “expedition” and “rescue.” Each kibbutz, depending on its ideological taste, was affiliated with one of the three main national kibbutz movements, which in turn were affiliated with one of the major political parties.12 A coalition of kibbutz- and labor-based political parties ran the country until 1977, when religious and political conservatives came to power, initiating deep changes in Israeli society. Within a few years the army’s response to the Palestinian intifada had shifted the global image of Israel from noble David to Goliath. Until that time few nations had been shaped for so long by such an ethos of utopian idealism. Nevertheless, it was an idealism that tragically neglected the “other.” Both Jews and Palestinians remained prisoners in their caves, largely ignorant of, and unconcerned with, the aspirations and the suffering of each other.
In the summer of 1970 I enrolled for an ulpan — a kibbutz-based Hebrew language study-work program — and I was assigned to Kibbutz Hanita on the northern Lebanese border. My sense of heroic mission was deflated when I found the ulpan full of American Jewish volunteers. They were mostly refugees from the burnout of the counterculture who knew little about Zionism and Israel and seemed to care even less. Many were attracted by stories of the kibbutz as a utopia realized; some came for the free board and lodging in return for work in the fields. They were playful and irreverent, pacifists and spiritual seekers. Despite my initial disdain, they intrigued me and planted the seed of a vision of America as “the land of the free.” Years later this helped me make a move to another new world.
The Jewish Primal
After five months I was sick of peace-loving hippies and impatient for something more intense. I followed the example of my cousins and volunteered for an Israeli army combat unit. I knew robust army service was the quickest, most effective initiation into Israeli society. But I was also hungry for what seemed then to be that quintessentially masculine initiation in a world of wars fought by men. I felt compelled to test my courage, to face death and even, if necessary, kill in defense of myself and my community.
I volunteered through the framework of Nachal — the acronym for Noar Chalutzi Lochem, or “fighting pioneering youth” — which was organized to integrate military service with establishing new kibbutzim on the borders. After basic training I volunteered for Sayeret Habika, a ranger unit based outside Jericho near the Dead Sea. We spent a summer completing advanced training, running and shooting in one of the hottest places on earth. During the day, gunmetal would be too hot to touch, and at nights our shirts would dry white and stiff with sweated salt. Training was followed by four months of active duty. We spent alternate weeks sitting night ambushes on the banks of the Jordan River and doing dawn patrols in the mountains above the Dead Sea during the most peaceful time in the country’s history. Our patrols were like picnics, bouncing in command cars along mountainous dirt roads, scaring off ibex, below us the “Sea of Salt,” the lowest point on the surface of the earth. At the end of the patrol we would stop to brew coffee with our Bedouin tracker while watching the sun appear above the hills of Jordan.
Wanting to test myself more strenuously I requested transfer to the paratrooper battalion of Nachal. Unlike the armed forces of the United States, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF, or TZAHAL in Hebrew, for Tzva Haganah Le Yisra’el) is very much a people’s army. Israel is one of the few modern countries to conscript all men and all women at age eighteen, with men serving for three years and women for two. Men are then obliged to do a month’s reserve duty every year until age forty-five. The IDF is also exceptional in having the flattest hierarchy of any modern military, being intentionally understaffed at the highest levels in order to drill responsibility, improvisation, and flexibility at lower levels. This makes the fierce Israeli martial spirit quite unique in being connected to an assertive individualism. One of the most common army terms of abuse for a soldier who is too ready to obey orders is sabon, or “soap,” a brutal reference to the Jews of Europe who were seen as obediently marching into the Nazi gas chambers and letting their bodies to be boiled into soap.*
During reserve duty a university professor can find himself under the command of a kibbutznik or a bus driver, and a twenty-five-year-old can be training his uncle. The closeness of combat means there is little attention given to parade-ground drills, saluting, or any of the other rituals of military discipline, and a private has been known to tell a general if he thinks he is doing something wrong. Such informality reinforces a sense of shared purpose and responsibility. Since units tend to be kept together through training and subsequent active service, lifelong friendships are made and then sustained during annual reserve duty. An infantry soldier will travel all over the country, much of the time on foot, and mix with people from all walks of life. The “nation” is not an idealistic abstraction but a matter of direct experience. This makes the army crucial in creating a sense of national solidarity and the single most powerful and respected institution in the country.13
In 1971 Israel was a very different country compared to the Israel of world news today. It was still something of a second-world democracy — poor, egalitarian, well educated, doing noble development work in Africa, and even admired in the West for its moral example. There were no beggars, no homeless, and no hungry. America had only recently started supplying the air force with fighter planes; all our infantry equipment came from France and Europe and was generally inferior to that of the surrounding Arab armies. Our assault rifles were the long, ungainly Belgian FNs, which jammed easily in the desert sand and weighed twice the compact, more reliable AK-47s supplied to the Arabs by the Russians.14 Our combat webbing was World War II vintage, canvas and brass, which rubbed the skin off our hips and was impossible to run with until home customized with strips of foam padding. In the field we slept in two-man tents made by pairing up and buttoning together two rain ponchos, which were only waterproof when covered with plastic sheeting (which we had to buy ourselves). We slept on an army blanket spread on the ground, and the food was simple but healthy: plenty of raw vegetables to make our own salads — Israel is the only country where it is not unusual to eat salad with all three meals — supplemented with eggs, cheese, yogurt, hummus, black bread, and tea.* We ate chicken and turkey, but red meat was a rarity and coffee a treat for special occasions. It all seemed