Director: Toby Perl FreilichRun Time: 89 min.
Call Number: HX742.2 .I58 2012
"In 1910 a dozen young Eastern European Jews
moved to the Jordan Valley, then under Ottoman rule, and began to build
an agrarian community based on a utopian socialist vision. Men and women
were treated equally, everyone shared all they had, and no one had more
than anyone else.
That collective, called Degania,
was a kibbutz, the first of a communal movement that symbolized
aspirations for a Jewish homeland and became, after Israel’s statehood,
an influential force that eventually was overwhelmed by the capitalistic
society that it had helped to foster.
As 'Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment,'
an engrossing documentary by Toby Perl Freilich, shows, the kibbutz
movement, now more than 100 years old, has been under constant siege of
one form or another. The film meshes interviews with first-, second- and
third-generation kibbutzniks— including those from Sasa,
the first kibbutz founded by Americans—and commentary from Israeli
scholars with tours of numerous kibbutzim today and vintage footage from
as far back as the 1920s."
—Daniel M. Gold, New York Times
