At a symbolic level, chauvinism still insinuated itself insidiously into the foundations of the movement. One of the basic images of kibbutz culture was a new, proud, masculine Jew who had not been made effeminate by exile.
The experiment exceeded all expectations: the kibbutz created a completely new personality type in the course of a single generation. A personality with the theatrical pathos of ghetto life, those deep currents of emotion that previously overflowed so extravagantly and loudly before the whole community, rooted out from it. A “masculine”, calculating sensibility took the place of “feminine” emotionality.
This was the departure of the Wandervögel of Central Europe from their ghettos at the turn of the century. They took off into the air from their shtetlekh, their tiny Jewish towns, whose atmosphere nauseated them. The eating ceremonies of the ghetto particularly disgusted them. The father’s place, second only to God, was at the head of the table. The mother’s place was bustling about with the pots and pans. First the mother boiled, roasted, and stewed. Then everyone ate, and finally came the questions: “How was it?” “Did you like it?” “Did you really get enough?” All said by the ghetto mother in a voice that aroused guilt in the heart of even the most stubborn offspring.
In the kibbutz, food only had instrumental value. We ate nutrients, stomach filler, not “food”, and especially not “delicacies”. We always ate in the communal dining hall, without ceremony. We scarfed down the meals we prepared as quickly as possible, without needless chatter.
The previous symbolic value of food was completely nullified. In one’s own quarters it was improper to prepare or eat food, because eating alone could involve unbridled private pleasures that represented a crime against the spirit of the kibbutz. Eating alone, just like fasting alone, were impossible concepts.
At first I thought this was the best thing about the whole kibbutz: I could eat without anyone watching, mechanically, at specific scheduled times of day. My weight climbed to a normal level within my first year at Methuselah. Eighteen months later I became pregnant with my first child.
I have two children, my firstborn son Moti, who is now thirty-seven years old, and my daughter Malka, who is one year younger. I haven’t seen them once since I left. That has been a difficult experience. I understood that they really didn’t need me. That the community was their mother, and they accepted that without complaint.
After Moti’s birth I was so confused about all the big changes happening in my life so quickly that I didn’t know how to question the kibbutz methodology. I let things happen, even though inside I knew that something was seriously wrong. But with Malka, my maternal instincts came into their own.
I was only allowed to nurse her for six months. The central committee of our kibbutz had stipulated so. After that she had to learn to eat from the cups owned by the community, which the metapelet used to feed her purees. My breast was too personal. It didn’t belong to the kibbutz, so they wanted to wean her from it as quickly as possible.
According to the declaration of the central committee, breastfeeding past six months no longer served any nutritional purpose. It was only for pleasure, in other words pointless and possibly harmful.
Whose pleasure was in question, the suckling child’s or the nursing mother’s, they didn’t say. I would argue that the two cannot be separated. Mother and child are one, joined by the sweet milk, the most perfect nutrition possible. I’ve never experienced any feeling of completion quite like it!
Once again, this is an example of how pleasure, especially women’s pleasure, is seen as a threat in Jewish culture. The fact that this negative view of pleasure was hiding in the tenets of the kibbutz ideology, which are in complete opposition to so many religious diktats, is irrelevant. The dogmas are still there, and they can be used to shrink and curtail a person when necessary, no matter how noble the principles.
So oral, maternal pleasures were off limits at Methuselah. Children weren’t even allowed to suck their thumbs. I asked about this at one of the general meetings. My husband, Dovid, elbowed me angrily in the side. “We’re still in our trial period,” he whispered and asked me to keep my mouth shut. But I didn’t. I raised my hand, and when my turn came I asked, “Why aren’t children even allowed to suck their thumbs?”
Patiently they replied that thumb sucking emotionally separates the child from the community she has to belong to. That the thumb becomes an insidious hiding place where the child can escape. That the child gets more pleasure and safety from the thumb than from the collective. And that this is not acceptable.
The kibbutz has also been studied from the perspective of eating disorders. According to some studies, the ideology built around collectivity, especially the socialistic tendencies in the movement, protects against eating disorders.17 Contradictory results also exist which suggest that kibbutz life creates a predisposition to pathological eating behavior since those brought up there live in a cross-fire of conflicting messages: on the one hand you have kibbutz life and on the other the western lifestyle, and these two are not easily combined.18
My own time at the kibbutz definitely strengthened my identity as an anorexic. After having my children I was in a very vulnerable condition even though I looked mostly fine on the outside. When I wasn’t able to be a mother to Malka and Moti after that first six months of nursing, I became completely estranged from my own body. I had given birth to them, but suddenly I had to pretend that they hadn’t actually come from me. That I could just be replaced by a “professional
