“As an occasional series, Unexpected Influences asks scholars to reflect upon one thing outside their respective fields that influenced their scholarship.”

The kibbutz has always been part of my world, even though I did not grow up in one. My grandparents met in Poland in a Jewish youth movement that prepared teenagers for kibbutz life in Palestine, and while they didn’t end up settling in a kibbutz they kept close contact with their friends who did. My mother later spent all her school holidays with these friends, and when I was growing up I spent all my holidays there as well. Without knowing much about what a kibbutz actually was – ultimately, a very demanding way of life in a tightly-knit community with strict protocols and close mutual scrutiny – I was positive that I would grow up and join a kibbutz. I was so compelled by the serenity, the greenery, the fact that everyone knew each other, and the children who seemed so independent, confident, and tan that I did not inquire much further.

By the time I grew up the fantasy of living in a kibbutz dissipated—and so did the kibbutz itself. Since the 1990s the kibbutzim in Israel have gone through a thorough process of privatization, and at this point almost all of them function as co-ops of independent households, with the old markers of regimented communality mostly gone. But as the kibbutzim were dying, literature about them began to thrive. Authors were erecting literary monuments to this unique phenomenon, for all the beautiful and awful things it entailed, and relating the story of a dream that both came true and was shattered. Two novels in particular made a lasting impression on me: Assaf Inbari’s Home (Habaita) from 2009 (which unfortunately has not yet been translated into English) and Ya’el Neeman’s We Were the Future from 2011 (translated into English in 2016). Inbari tells the story of the kibbutz he grew up in, Afikim, from its birth to its death, in a very matter-of-fact, dispassionate way that weaves together the grand historical events and the minutiae of everyday life into a rich and complex tapestry. Neeman relates the story of her own childhood and youth in kibbutz Yehiam, focusing primarily on the troubled and entangled web of relations between children, their peers, their parents, the collective, and the ideology (notably, Neeman tells the story in the first-person plural – as in the book’s title, ‘we were the future’ – and very rarely ventures into first-person singular).

These books helped me understand and articulate for myself what it was that I found most fascinating about rabbinic literature: the emergence of halakhah as a totalizing, all-encompassing way of life that attempts not only to regulate every aspect of the daily lives of those who adhere to it, but also attempts to re-create and re-shape their minds and their dispositions. The first time I saw kibbutz regulations (takanonim) from the 20th century, I was astounded by their similarity to the Mishnah in terms of their ambition to cover every aspect of everyday life and every possible scenario. The rules pertained not only to the allocation and use of goods (soap, bicycles, umbrellas, radios, etc., etc.) but also to the orchestration and function of every single service in the kibbutz. How many times a month can members have their sheets washed? How many times can they have their clothes washed? On which day of the week can one bring dirty laundry to be washed, and on which day of the week can one collect clean laundry? How many people should be working in the dining room at a time when there are 348 members, when there are 579 members, or when there are 863 members? How many cheese options should be available on a weekday morning, and how many cheese options should be available on weekends and holidays? What food items should members be allowed to take for themselves, and what food items should be dispensed by the dining room workers? Should members be allowed to take food into their rooms, and if so, what food? Should members ‘fill a table’ or should they be able to sit wherever they want? The kibbutz created, in short, a halakhic system. Inbari and Neeman’s books, which described so beautifully and artfully what it means for real humans to live in this system, directed my interest toward questions of human subjectivity and modes of personhood in rabbinic halakhah. And while I fully recognize that the rabbis’ halakhic system was more of a fantasy than a reality, and that I am only able to approach it as a set of ideas and not as a lived experience, I remind myself that the kibbutz, too, was first and foremost a fantasy, from its first day to its last.

Mira Balberg is Professor of History and Endowed Chair in Ancient Jewish Civilization at the University of California, San Diego.