I feel the need to share the following Jewish experience with you. This past Yom Kippur synagogue services took place at eighty (80!) left-wing formerly anti-religious kibbutzim in Israel.

This is a shocker in every sense of the word. Most of us who are already familiar with the contribution of the kibbutzim to the secularization of Israeli society and the way in which the movement attempted to uproot religion from our national life -- ever since the first kibbutz was founded a century ago -- can appreciate that prayer services in such a large number of kibbutzim is an indication that a great revolution has occurred.

Of course this turnaround didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere. An organization known as Ayelet HaShachar stands behind it. Its mover and shaker is Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan. Some years ago this organization tasked itself with infiltrating Judaism into the most leftist kibbutzim. This was an incredibly bold undertaking. Jewish chutzpah at its best. Everybody knew that an impenetrable wall protected the kibbutzim hermetically sealed against the faintest trace of Jewish tradition. Yet these yungeleit came along and dared to breach that wall with considerable success. Just recently our indefatigable reporter Aharon Granevitch-Granot wrote about his visit to one such kibbutz in northern Israel [A Kippah for Rosh HaNikra/Jewish Geography #324] where he reported the activities of Rabbi David Ben Saadon who was trained by Ayelet HaShachar whose members know how to reconnect kibbutzniks to our ancient traditions. It is hard to believe but a wind of Jewish renewal is rippling over the fields of the kibbutzim.

And now they’re holding Yom Kippur services.

***

No it isn’t a simple matter at all. Or perhaps after all it is.

We must remember that not too long ago the kibbutz with its model of communal living was the pride of the State of Israel. The kibbutznik was idealized as a national hero. He stood at the forefront of every aspect of secular life in Israel. In politics he was the prime minister. He was the pioneer at the vanguard of all movements to settle the land and reached the top ranks of the military. For many Israelis the kibbutz exemplified life as it should be lived. They viewed it as the ancient Israelites looked to their Pillars of Cloud and Fire to lead them through the wilderness. And it wasn’t so long ago that it was incumbent upon every visiting dignitary to include a tour of a kibbutz on his itinerary right up there with a visit to Yad Vashem.

Recent attempts were made to organize a mass celebration commemorating the centennial of the establishment of the first kibbutz in Israel. But the occasion doesn’t resonate much with people. The kibbutz has fallen from its pedestal. The ideal of communal life with no private property has lost its luster. Like every manmade ideal it lasted only a few generations. The first cracks appeared when Holocaust survivors refused to hand over their reparation payments from Germany to the kibbutz’s communal pocketbook. Their sense of personal entitlement overpowered the kibbutz’s ideal of annulling the human drive to acquire personal possessions. That was the first sign that the kibbutz was losing its prestige in the eyes of the public. So the initiative to hold a showy celebration marking the first agricultural settlement in modern Israel evaporated into the whirlwind of stormy events that never cease to disrupt our lives here.

So what is left now that the old vision and dream have dissipated? A void.

***

Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan tells us about conversations he has had with young people who are full of indignation against their parents for having cut them off totally from their ancestral traditions. One kibbutz member expressed it well in the following lines which appeared in a community newsletter:

“At night there is no sleep

Between despair and anticipation;

I thought of you my grandfather.

Our generation falters our succah falls

And so I try to grab hold of the chain

The link before my father’s generation.”

Still it is a long haul before despair over the death of the socialist ideal can be turned into the impetus for a Jewish revival. Rabbi Ra’anan explains that we are dealing with a generation that has been completely disconnected from the Jewish experience. When he comes to a kibbutz and suggests that they at least hold services on Yom Kippur the first reaction he gets is a raised eyebrow. Sometimes he finds that the person he’s speaking with doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Words like “tefillah” and “Yom Kippur” aren’t in their vocabulary. The alienation is total.

“What are you asking us to do?” they say with cold politeness in these initial encounters with Rabbi Ra’anan. A minyan for the Yom Kippur tefillah; is that what you suggest? The questions that follow are simply incredible: “When is Yom Kippur? What is it anyway? What does ‘minyan’ mean? Tefillah? How is that done?” Rabbi Ra’anan gives me his word of honor that this is the sort of response he gets from Jews living in Eretz Yisrael.

Of course they automatically say no. “We aren’t interested. Maybe some other time. Try us next year.”

But Rabbi Ra’anan as a scion of a stiff-necked people doesn’t give up until he’s broken through that wall of indifference. He hones in on his target by seeking out one individual young or old who is willing to hear him out. A young heart tends to be more open.  Rabbi Ra’anan calls this “aliyas hadoros.” Usually he finds someone who will agree to help him organize a minyan of bnei Torah who come to spend the day on a secular kibbutz sacrificing the familiarity of the nusach they are used to and ruach of their familiar Yom Kippur minyan back home. The process is assisted by a sort of anthropological yetzer a curiosity on the part of the kibbutzniks to witness this alien cultural experience firsthand. Rabbi Ra’anan can relate many fascinating dialogues he has had with kibbutzniks on the way to achieving his goal.

And this year he has harvested a crop of eighty kibbutzim. Eighty minyanim attended by many kibbutzniks who came to get a taste for the first time in their lives of rituals that are unfamiliar even strange to them. But for me the real sign of a budding revolution is the fact that even the kibbutzniks who stayed away and wouldn’t even come to watch didn’t stir up any opposition. There were no vehement protests against religious coercion and that means that something has changed in these strongholds of aggressive bulldozer-style secularism which once took pride in the stunning blow it thought it dealt to Torah Judaism a few generations ago.

But Torah Judaism has been waiting patiently for its day to come. We have a promise that “the fourth generation shall return hence” and it looks as though the first tiny buds are sprouting. As the Medrash says about the coming Redemption “The dawn at its inception is very faint.”

And while some would like to “celebrate” the centennial of the kibbutz with a proclamation that the kibbutz movement is dead it seems to me that it is just beginning to live.

Eighty kibbutz minyanim — this is the kibbutz movement’s holiday gift to the Jewish People this year.

To the entire House of Israel a chag sameach.