In the course of building its institutional order, the Religious Kibbutz Federation established a social base – a “plausibility structure” – for its specific symbolic world, a world that integrated traditional–religious and innovative–ideological cultures. In this chapter we shall discuss both these cultures as embodied in the RKF's two basic reference groups: Orthodox Jewry and secular–national Jewry.

Had the RKF confined itself to its social boundaries and nurtured its symbolic reality within them, in all likelihood its seclusion would have advanced the crystallization of this reality. However, since the RKF regarded itself as a pioneering movement that aspired “to be among the molders of the Jewish people as a whole, and not to confine itself to elite sects,” its involvement in general society tended to stretch its cultural fabric in opposing directions. This is because both of the RKF's reference groups recognized a different transcendent center as the source of authority for its cultural system and identity. Moreover, these groups had mutually exclusive cultural centers. For Orthodox Jewry, the transcendent center of the past was focused on halakhah and mediated through the Rabbinate. For secular Zionism, the transcendent center of the present was mediated through radical national ideologues and quintessentially expressed in the secular kibbutz movement.

Alonim – a Religious Kibbutz Federation organ. Appeared irregularly, 1938–49, Tel aviv.

Alonim Le-Informatziyah Pnimit – a Religious Kibbutz Federation publication. Appeared irregularly in stencil, 1938–42, Tel Aviv.

Amudim – the Religious Kibbutz Federation monthly that succeeded Yedi'ot Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Dati. Began publication in 1956, Tel Aviv.

Ba-Mishot – a national religious weekly, 1940–6, Jerusalem.

Choser Bachad (Bachad Informationsrundschreiben) – organ of Brit Chalutzim Datiim in Germany. Appeared irregularly, 1929–36, Rodges and Geringshof.

Ha-Hed – a Religious Zionist monthly, Religious Department of the Jewish National Fund, 1926–53, Jerusalem.

Ha-Mizrah – a World Mizrahi Organization monthly, 1903–4, Cracow.

Ha-O'helah – the “left wing ha-Po'el ha-Mizrahi” organ. Published irregularly, 1925–6, Jerusalem.

Ha-Po'el Ha-Mizrahi – ha-Po'el ha-Mizrahi monthly, 1923–5, Jerusalem.

Ha-Tor – World Mizrahi Organization weekly, 1921–34, Jerusalem.

Netivah – World Torah va-Avodah Movement periodical, 1926–53, Jerusalem.

Ohaleinu – the central publication of the ha-Shomer ha-Dati and Bnei Akivah youth movements in Poland, 1934–9, Warsaw.

Shdemot – the organ of the Youth Division of the Ihud ha-Kvutzot ve-ha-Kibbutzim Federation. Began publication in i960, Tel Aviv.

Tikvah – bulletin of the East Galicia (Poland) Bnei Akivah youth movement, ca. 1933–5, Lwow.

Yedi'ot Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Dati – an organ of the Religious Kibbutz Federation, 1942–55, Tel Aviv.

Zera'im – Eretz Israel Bnei Akivah youth movement monthly. Began publication in 1935, Jerusalem.

Zion – German Mizrahi Organization monthly, 1929–38, Berlin.

Religious Zionism constitutes a national response to the identity crisis which arose within Orthodox Jewry as a result of the confrontation between tradition and modernity. In contrast to the vigorous development of Torah-im-Derekh Eretz that was elaborated into an innovative cultural subcenter within Orthodox Judaism principally by one person, Religious Zionism was established by various figures and organizations over several generations. Crystallized for the most part in the pre-Emancipation setting of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe – for it was not until the 1917 revolution that most East European Jews were awarded equal civil rights – Religious Zionism did not, generally speaking, develop an articulate and coherent modernizing ideology, as did Torah-im-Derekh Eretz in Germany. Thus, while it sought to overcome the dualism between the universal modern values fostered by East European Jewish Enlightenment, and particular Jewish values – a dichotomy epitomized by the slogan “Be a man in the street and a Jew at home” – Religious Zionism never quite achieved a systematic integration of traditional religious and modern cultures.

This may have something to do with the fact that Religious Zionism matured under the shadow of traditionalistic rabbinical authority which looked askance at religious change. Notwithstanding the deterioration of the traditional Jewish order in Eastern Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, the religious leadership that constituted the supreme authority for most of the Jews in that region almost until the end of the century, refused to acknowledge modernity.

What is the nature of the religious impulses and thought that prevail within the Religious Kibbutz Federation at the outset of the 1990s, a generation or so after its original effervescent period? And what is the relationship between the RKF's innovative religious culture and its commitment, as part of Orthodox Judaism, to the mainstream religious tradition? Against the backdrop of the dimming of revolutionary ideology in Israel society at large, the attenuation of partisan boundaries within Israel's Orthodox Jewry, and the formation of a second and third generation within the RKF – the modulation of the RKF original religious ferment calls for separate study. Here I can no more than sketch the change in broad structural lines.

I indicated at the end of the last chapter that since the late 1950s the conservative component appears to prevail within the religious consciousness of the RKF and that the latter's bonds with Orthodox Jewry have tightened. The institutionalization of the role of rabbi in the Orthodox kibbutz – a process that began in the mid-1960s – is the salient expression of this development. In 1990 most RKF kibbutzim have their own rabbis, usually graduates of both Torah va-Avodah youth movements and Zionist yeshivot, who perform defined tasks such as the teaching of Torah.

In the last chapter I referred to the charismatic experiences that inspired members of the new religious primary groups to envisage a full and complete life within the religious communal framework. In this chapter I shall discuss the relationship between charisma as an ordering power and rationalization as an ordering process, as this relationship unfolded in the thrust of the Orthodox pioneers to build such a life. Insofar as it was rationalization that systematically ordered the social reality which was prompted by the charismatic vision, on both the ideational and behavioral levels, rationalization acted as an agent of charisma. The workings of primeval and institutionalized charisma, as well as the relationship between the two modes of charisma and rationalization, can be seen in the efforts of the RKF leaders to define the specific religious kibbutz role on earth, within the perspective of a worldview shaped by ideological and traditional religious values.

The numinous power of the charismatic religious experiences has been described by Hanokh Ahiman, a member of Kfar Etzion, as follows:

The goal of the pioneering communities established by the Religious Kibbutz Federation – to give “rebirth” to the Torah on a community level – involved a confrontation between two modes of religious charisma: an innovative religious consciousness, and institutionalized religious elements, especially elements of halakhah. In the words of a participant in the RKF experience, this was a confrontation between

By integrating modern ideological elements and traditional religion operationally, in the process of building its pioneering communities, the RKF sought to outstrip the rationalization of religion attained by the modernizing Orthodox movements that preceded it. And, indeed, the RKF kibbutzim seem to have reached the farthest inner limit of the rationalization process.

In this chapter, I shall explore the nature of religious charisma in general and the spontaneous charisma that was used in the RKF; survey traditional Jewish society and the changes that followed Emancipation; and set the scene for discussing the modern religious–ideological Orthodox movements that culminated in the RKF.

THE TRANSCENDENT CENTER AND CHARISMA

According to Edward Shils, the “vital layer of reality” in the transcendent sphere of human experience derives its vitality from the “center of the universe.”

In 1990 the typical “veteran” religious kibbutz – established before 1950 – had a population of about seven hundred. Its diversified farm economy included hundreds of milk cows and tens of thousands of chickens. It grew field and industrial crops, as well as fruit and vegetables, on about 2000 acres of land, most of which were irrigated. It also had a manufacturing plant. This socio-economic complex developed within a double value-frame: of national–pioneering and of halakhah. The Religious Kibbutz Federation is unique in that it set out deliberately to rationalize halakhic and national–pioneering norms by bringing about a confrontation between them.

When the Orthodox pioneers of the 1930s and 1940s undertook to mold a new social reality subject to the authority of halakhah, they were aware that problematic situations would arise that would thwart the attainment of their goal. But they were also aware that it was only through the process of building pioneering social institutions that the RKF could stage the confrontation between these institutions and halakhah that would force their mutual accommodation.

This chapter, then, is concerned with the meeting between new religious–ideological norms representing the needs of the present, and halakhic norms representing religious continuity, as well as with the influence of the former on the perception of the latter. This may be viewed as an encounter between two channels of religious charisma.

In a summary of the settlement achievement of ha-Po'el ha-Mizrahi groups published in 1931, two communal groups of religious immigrants are mentioned, “Rodges” and “Shahal.” Each of these groups – the former from Germany and the latter from Eastern Europe – chose the kibbutz life-style independently, and they symbolized the two major geographical–cultural streams that were to converge in the founding of the Religious Kibbutz Federation. (A third, subsequent, component of the RKF in the pioneering period was the Bnei Akivah movement in Eretz Israel, which was to build kibbutz life within the mold cast by the major streams.)

In declaring for a kibbutz pattern of life, the members of Rodges and Shahal could draw upon the twenty-year experience of the secular kibbutz movement, which by 1931 had consolidated in three ideological federations. Thirty kibbutzim had already settled on the land. Many of them had originated as pioneering “nuclei” in the Diaspora, usually consisting of graduates of Zionist youth movements who had prepared themselves on training-farms sponsored by he-Halutz (the Pioneer) movement. Upon immigrating to Eretz Israel, the members of a pioneering nucleus would set up temporary quarters in a work-camp, in anticipation of settling on Jewish national land. Jewish-owned land was scarce until 1948, and a pioneering nucleus would usually have to wait from five to ten years for its turn to settle. In the meanwhile the group would endeavor to “flesh out” its kibbutz structure.

Admanit, Tzuri'el (1915–73) was born in Berlin, Germany, where he completed secondary school. He also studied at the Montreux Yeshiva in Switzerland. A member of the Ezra youth movement and Bachad, the Religious Zionist pioneering movement, he immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1937, joined Kibbutz Rodges (later Kibbutz Yavne), and lived on the kibbutz until his death, working mostly in its dairy barn and as a youth group educator. A posthumous collection of his articles, Within the Stream and Against It (Hebrew), was published in 1977.

Ahiman (Chmelnik), Hanokh (1917–) was born in Bialystok, Poland, and completed secondary school there. He studied at the Tahkemony Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw and was ordained as rabbi. A leader of ha-Shomer ha-Dati youth movement, he immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1940 and joined Kvuzat Avraham (later Kfar Etzion). He worked mostly as a vegetable gardener, and also edited Alonim (1944–6). He is one of the few male survivors of his kibbutz, that was destroyed in the Israel War of Independence of 1948, and lives today in the town of Efrat.

Friedman, Simha (1911–90) was born in Stryj, Poland. He studied at the University of Berlin and graduated from the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary. Immigrating to Eretz Israel in 1939, he joined Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi in 1943, where he lived until his death, working mostly as a teacher. He was a member of the Israeli Knesset, 1969–77.

Goldman, Eliezer (1918–) was born in Brooklyn, New York.

This is a study in the transformative capacity of traditional Jewish religious culture. I shall examine the ability of the historic Jewish religion structured around halakhah – Torah law – to sustain a modernizing thrust and systematically to design rational life-patterns toward the achievement of religious goals; in other words, to undergo rationalization in regard to modernization. I intend to show that within the bounds of Orthodox Judaism, traditional Jewish religion can provide vigorous mechanisms for legitimate innovation in response to modernity, as well as limit change.

The study's historical point of departure is the traditional Jewish society that preceded Jewish Emancipation. Its social agents are the major nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orthodox modernizing movements. And its main focus is a fairly small subsection of the Jewish national community of Israel: the Religious Kibbutz Federation, or RKF. In 1990 the RKF comprised seventeen kibbutzim, about six percent of the total number of collective settlements in Israel, with a population of about 8,000 souls. Yet despite their small numbers, the members of the religious kibbutzim play a significant role in Israeli society: they have enacted, and continue to enact in their daily lives, the creative tension between twentieth-century ideologies and a time-honored religious culture.

The Religious Kibbutz Federation formally came into being in 1935. The founders of the RKF were Orthodox pioneering youth, mostly of German origin, who opted for the kibbutz form of settlement as the pre-eminent route to Zionist self-realization.

RELIGION AND MODERNIZATION

Rationalization is immanent in man's intellectual urge to understand the world as a meaningful cosmos through symbolic ideational patterns, and to take a unified stance toward it through patterns of norms and value-orientations. According to Talcott Parsons, “Every sharp break with traditionalism involves rationalization, for the breaker of tradition is by his very act forced to define his attitudes towards that with which he has broken.”

The need to rationalize Judaism in relation to modernization arose in Orthodox Jewry in response to Jewish Enlightenment and Emancipation of the nineteenth century. For it was when these two movements opened the world at large to the Jewish people that Judaism was pressured to justify participation in the general cultural and social life, after being turned inward toward its traditional past for many generations.