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In 1904, a new
breed of Jewish pioneer began to arrive in the Land of Israel:
young, single, secular, educated, and with a social agenda. These
immigrants viewed the act of settling in the Land of Israel as an
aliyah (ascent), an uplifting experience that would create a better
life.
For their
predecessors, those who had arrived in the first modern wave of
immigration, known as the First Aliyah (1882-1903), the Land of
Israel was a place to create a Jewish way of life along the lines of
the small Jewish communities they had left back home in Eastern
Europe and Russia. They were storekeepers, suppliers of agricultural
services, and in a few cases, farmers.
The young people
who were part of the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) also came from
Eastern Europe and Russia, but they had lived in cities and large
towns and wanted nothing to do with the old world they had left
behind. In Israel, they dreamed of creating a new life, a new social
order, a new world. They, together with their successors in the
Third Aliyah (1919-1923), would embark on one of Israel’s most
interesting experiments – the kibbutz.
The kibbutz was not
only a communal way of life and an economic entity. The groups that
founded kibbutzim wanted to develop a new Jew, with a new spirit and
culture. The new Jews would work the land, share in the proceeds of
their labor, and – like the Jews who had dwelled in the Land of
Israel in ancient times – be very close to nature.
One of the issues
debated intensely by these groups was how to define their Jewishness.
Old customs, festivals, prayers, the synagogue, were all part of the
old world – the new world had to be connected to the new land, its
beauty, and its nature.
The socialistically
oriented pioneers celebrated many of the new workers’ “festivals,”
such as May 1st. But as the groups began to settle on the land, the
Passover Seder began to emerge as the main celebration of this new
society. It was not the Seder they remembered from their childhood
homes, but a completely new entity: old texts were given new meaning
and a different ritual was devised. Rather than being geared to the
traditional private family Seder, this ritual was meant to suit a
public observance of the holiday, with the entire community
gathering together for a meal.
The traditional
Seder revolves around the reading of the Haggadah, which tells the
story of the Exodus – the story of a people that had emerged from
slavery in a land of plenty to freedom in a land that would provide
milk and honey only as the result of hard work. However, most of the
Haggadah consists of interpretations of the biblical text, offered
by Jewish sages over the centuries. The story itself – the flight,
the Jewish heroes, the sojourn in the desert, and arrival in the
Promised Land – is not the main focus. There is no happiness, no
great hope, as the slaves of Egypt regain their freedom.
For the kibbutz
members, who saw themselves as coming out of slavery to freedom, the
Exodus story was the main issue. They wondered why Moses and Aaron
were relegated to second place behind sages of later times. They
didn’t understand why the aspect of Passover as a festival of spring
was given only very minor mention in the Haggadah. After all,
rejoicing over the renewal of the land seems to have been a major
part of ancient Passover observances.
From their first
Passover in the Land of Israel, the people of the Second Aliyah had
a different kind of Haggadah on their Seder table. Using the
traditional text as a general guideline, they created a completely
new text. It included readings from the new literature of
Hebrew-language writers and poets, and references to contemporary
events.
Their Seder also
evolved into an annual meeting of all the members of the pioneering
group – scattered around the country making a living for the group
while they waited to be allotted land on which to settle. It did not
always take place on the 14th of Nisan, the official date according
to the Jewish calendar. Sometimes it was postponed to accommodate
all of the members of the group. Kashrut was never an issue – bread
was always served and matzot added if some of the members insisted.
As the groups
settled on the land, the members’ feeling of emancipation
intensified. They increasingly associated Egypt with the “Old
Country” – the homes they had left in order to create a life of
freedom in the Land of Israel.
The Seder was now a
major ceremony for which preparations were made long in advance. The
Haggadah readings and accompanying music and dance had to be planned
and rehearsed. A venue large enough to hold all of the members of
the kibbutz had to be found. The dining halls were inadequate for
this purpose: they were so small that meals were usually taken in
shifts. And so the Seder was held in a tractor shed, a chicken coop,
or outdoors.
At first, children
did not attend the Seder, because not everyone had children and the
group did not want to split up into families for the event. When
children did begin to be included, they joined the group as
participants in the program and were later packed off to bed in the
children’s houses while the kibbutz members concluded the evening
with dancing and singing.
A great deal of
thought went into decorations. Since the Seder would include a
musical program, it had to have a stage that everyone could see, and
since readings were assigned to various members of the group, the
venue had to be designed in a way that allowed everyone to hear and
see each another.
The Seder was
preceded by the ceremony of bringing in the Omer – the first wheat
from the fields. This event was first held at Kibbutz Ein Harod in
the 1920s, at the initiative of violinist Moshe Karmi, and the text
was written by the poet Moshe Tabenkin. The Omer ceremony spread
very quickly to the other kibbutzim.
On Seder night, all
the members wore clean white shirts, the tables were decorated with
wheat and freshly picked wildflowers, and the community sat down
together to read from its own special Haggadah.
Over 500 kibbutz
haggadot were published between 1930 and 1960 – a figure that does
not include those that have no connection whatsoever to the
traditional text. If we take into account the fact that from 1482 –
the date of the earliest known Haggadah – to 1960, a total of 2,717
haggadot were published, the body of work of kibbutz haggadot is
remarkable.
Yuval Danieli and
Muky Tsur have collected many of these haggadot and told their story
in a book they completed just in time for Passover, a volume in
Hebrew entitled Yotzim Behodesh Aviv – Pesach Eretz-Yisraeli
Behaggadot min Hakibbutz (official English name: The Kibbutz
Haggadah: Israeli Pesach in the Kibbutz).
The book is the
second in a series of publications about kibbutz life that Danieli
and Tsur are producing with the support of Yad Ya’ari (Givat Haviva),
Yad Tabenkin, Yad Ben-Zvi, and the Ben-Gurion Institute.
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