Field Note 12 of 22

A Kibbutz, Israel

“He spoke fondly of the community on the drive there. A group of women were running his machine when we arrived.”

This was 1998 or 1999. I'd gone to visit a dairy and yogurt equipment manufacturer, and he offered to take me to a kibbutz that was using one of his machines. On the drive there, he talked warmly about the kibbutz idea itself, production, community, education, and social purpose, all held together in one place, rather than separated the way they usually are.

When we arrived, a group of women were operating the machine. I don't remember what we discussed, only the sense of the place: something genuinely being tried, not just described.

I've thought about that kibbutz on and off in the years since, as the classic model gradually gave way to something more privatized, more market-facing. It leaves an open question rather than a settled one: not whether economic activity should be profit-driven or not, but whether an institution can be designed to hold both economic sustainability and a social purpose together, and whether it can adapt once the original design stops working.

Field Note 12