Last update - 03:29 01/10/2006
'Religion of work' gives way to fasting, Kol Nidre and new rituals too
Tonight Tal Almaliah's bicycle will stay where it is instead of being taken out for a spin as it was last year. Barbecuing meat on the shore of Lake Kinneret, as he used to do with his friends, is also out of the question. Almaliah, a member of Kibbutz Snir, is busy hunting down the last three people to make up the minyan prayer quorum of 10 needed for the Yom Kippur services that will be held in the kibbutz recreation room.
Almaliah, a journalist and teacher working on his doctorate in history, says, "I made the decision some time ago to have a traditional Yom Kippur this year. To my delight, an opportunity was created when residents of the non-members' neighborhood turned to the members in search of people to fill out the minyan, so this year we'll benefit from the fact that we've become a heterogenous population - no longer just blue-eyed people with red necks. We've been joined by residents with a different ethnic origin and background," Almaliah says.
Residents of the new neighborhood, some of whom moved from Kiryat Shmona or other urban communities, sent out SMS messages asking for people to complete the minyan. "The request gave me an amazing feeling," says Almaliah.
Almaliah is not the only kibbutznik to make Yom Kippur into something new. More and more kibbutznikim are adopting the holiday's traditions. Some of them preserve the Orthodox elements, others add new content to the traditional frameworks and a few are creating new, kibbutz-based rituals. A survey carried out by the Kibbutz Institute for Festivals and Holidays at Kibbutz Beit Hashita reflects changes to the way that kibbutzim mark Yom Kippur.
Institute employees asked members at about 40 kibbutzim about their holiday traditions. The responses indicate increased openness to Jewish tradition and ritual. On some kibbutzim, about half of the members fast on Yom Kippur. That was the finding for Kibbutz Yotvata. On Afikim and Ginegar the figure climbs to 60 percent, while on Kibbutz Ketura 80 percent of members fast.
According to Kibbutz Movement spokesman Aviv Leshem the increased interest in Jewish tradition on kibbutzim can be attributed to the greater openness on kibbutzim today and the more varied population that now lives in these communities.
Avi Zaira, the head of the Kibbutz Institute, speaks of a trend toward "blurring the differences between social mores on kibbutz and within the general secular population."
"If there is still a cultural alternative for most of the holidays [on kibbutz - A.A.], on Yom Kippur we see the adoption of the patterns of the majority of Israeli society."
Many kibbutzim once continued to work on Yom Kippur, but now it is a day of rest in all of them.
The differences between the United and Artzi kibbutz movements have also disappeared. Zaira says that "a type of crossroads, or opportunity, or vacuum has been created on the kibbutzim that must be filled. The feeling is that the form exists, and is waiting to be filled with new content." Zaira sees a willingness to accept tradition. "There are kibbutzim with synagogues and with Orthodox prayer leaders who hold lectures and lessons."
On Kibbutz Gilgal, for example, students from the yeshiva in Ma'aleh Adumim will come for Yom Kippur, and yeshiva students and a rabbi will come to Kibbutz Gonen to conduct the services there.
Tal Almaliah relates that in the past Yom Kippur had no particular significance on kibbutzim. "The important holidays were the ones with significant agricultural connotations," he explained, "but today the kibbutz is losing its spiritual 'religion of work' content. The holiday rituals are held more because of the need to celebrate and to be together than because of their spiritual content. At the same time there is a renewed interest in Judaism in the form of secular study forums, as there is throughout the country. Yom Kippur reflects that processes.," Almaliah said.
Zaira and Almaliah both point to the 1973 war as central to the change in the attitude toward Yom Kippur on kibbutz. Zaira says that until then there was "near-total disregard" of Yom Kippur, while afterward "there was a fascinating convergence of Israeli identity and Jewish identity: Suddenly the remembrance of souls [of the dead] also became a remembrance of the war dead, the idea of 'heshbon nefesh' [personal moral reckoning] took hold, and the like."
Almaliah explains it a little differently: The Yom Kippur War created a group tradition, and people began intuitively to recognize the sacredness of the day. A logic was created that linked the two."
Today, Almaliah says, in the wake of the enormous changes to the kibbutz, "there is a vacuum. The kibbutz is a way of life that has been emptied of its innermost point, and naturally people are searching and drawing from the new and from the old."
In one example of what Zaira describes as "taking traditional customs and giving them new meanings," this morning at 5 A.M. members of Kibbutz Ein Shofet will walk to the nearby reservoir for what kibbutz member Dr. Sagit Mor calls a "Tashlich Trip." "We will stand there and think about what we want to leave behind from last year. As the sun rises we will do guided meditation while looking inward, using the Jewish concept of 'casting away our sins.'" This will be the third year that Mor, a facilitator at the Midreshet Oranim educational center for the renewal of Jewish life in Israel, has led Yom Kippur rituals at the kibbutz, which include group singing, memorial rituals for members who died in the past year and the sharing of personal experiences.