Information
on Kibbutz
I've searched numerous times for kibbutz related material on the web, and much to my surprise have found very little, with that little devoted more to information on kibbutz study programs and the like rather than to the kibbutz idea and the problems the kibbutz movement is facing today.
As part of a remedy, I'll try and list some information and links here. If people find this worthwhile and interesting, I'd be happy to keep this up and expand the information available, both as web pages, bibliography, and web links when and if these become available.
So please let me know if this is of interest. Send comments to: Jay Hurvitz: jayh@zoot.tau.ac.il
For starters, this is the introduction to a monograph by Stanley Maron, a highly respected kibbutz sociologist, "Kibbutz in a Market Society" , published by Yad Tabenkin, Israel, 1993
Other possible items of interest:
A gopher site that looks as though it has promise, though in terms of real information there doesn't seem to be that much here. There may be some good links from here to other information, though I haven't found them yet.
An overview of what a kibbutz is, apparently put on the net by the Information Division of the Israeli Foreign Ministry which either is still preparing the site or simply gave up on the whole idea.
My
Year at Kibbutz Negbah is a report by Erez Segal of Montreal,
Canada, who was a volunteer on that kibbutz in 1984. The report is definitely
worth reading, as it gives quite a good picture of what life can be like
for a temporary visitor.
Until December of 1996 this link wasn't credited, since the report doesn't
have its author's name on it, nor (at least when I found it) any link to
him, but due to the wonders of the web, Erez
Segal found that his page was being viewed, and when he tried to check
out why he found that this page linked to it. He then wrote me, informing
me that he was the author, and I'm more than happy to give him credit.
Thanks.
Kibbutz Trends is a quarterly devoted to kibbutz issues. It covers topical issues as well as research into kibbutz life. I admit it, I used to be on its editorial advisory board. Much of the time it has information which can be very interesting to anyone concerned with the directions collective communities are taking. This link isn't yet active. Either I'll get permission from the magazine to put some of their articles here, or, if it decides to set up its own web site, I'll make the link a connection to that site. I hope it will be soon.
And here's a new link which I only recently found. Kibbutz Cabri has a home page which gives a bit of an explanation of what a kibbutz is, and then leads to an extensive list of kibbutzim in Israel that have web pages. Be forewarned -- most of these pages aren't about the kibbutzim proper but about their industries or tourist attractions, but this definitely seems to be a sign that kibbutzim are waking up to the possible uses of the internet.
Audrey Beth Stein is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. At the end of 1996 she uploaded to the web an as yet unpublished but very extensive and well researched article written for an independent study class: Sexual Equality on the Israeli Kibbutz: Ideology, Reality and the Future. It seems to be one of the most serious pieces about the kibbutz avilable on the web, and is well worth a read.
Many families are using the web to educate their children without the aid of schools. Considering what a bad job schools have traditionally done in this venture, it certainly seems to be a good idea.
Sometimes building a family home page is an educational experience unto itself, but sometimes the links that an experienced home schooling family provides for the uninitiated are a fountainhead of great leads. I've been most impressed with The Teel Family in Alaska who seem truly to be doing somthing positive and constructive.
Through the Teel Family I became familiar with the Alaska
Home Schooling Alliance which offers just about everything, from interesting
programs to full curriculum.
Another good link is Jon's
Home Schooling Home Page
At present the web seems to be blessedly clean of the craziness
of horn players, but we all know that nature abhors a vacuum.
For general information on the world of horn playing (and an answer to the age old question, "is it a horn or a French horn?" try the: Horn FAQ
Also worth looking into is the Horn
Warm-Up Book. This is a work in progress by a well respected professional
horn player. It gives a picture of what horn playing is like from a lighter,
and much needed, perspective.
Being married to a horn player gives you an insider's look into the technology of producing music. Listening is one thing, but developing an understanding of just what it is that causes the blurps and kicks and everything else that can go wrong is an ongoing process. Hearing horn players discuss mouthpieces, for instance, can be downright frightening. Giardinelli Band Instruments has been the major (or at least best known) supplier of horn (and in general, brass) accessories, and they've recently opened up a web site which can be enlightening to people who think that all you have to do is "put your lips together and blow".
Update - 1997: The opening sentence in this section seems no longer accurate. The web seems to have ceased being blessedly clean of the craziness of horn players. A number of horn oriented individual pages are available. Among them are:
Carl Ek
(http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/4100)
Hans Pizka
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PizkaHans) - a very well known
character on the horn scene
Thomas Bacon (http://www.public.asu.edu/~sirtomas)
- a world class player with a very high quality site
These home pages were found through Tzippi's first internet adventure, a subscription to the INTERNATIONAL HORN SOCIETY INTERNET ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION GROUP. Anyone intereseted in the list can join, or get information at: majordomo@spock.nlu.edu, but be prepared for a deluge of material that even the most addicted of horn addicts can't keep up with.
Here's a short
poem I grew up with that seems to be an excellent metaphor for people's
different impressions of the internet. I've never heard of the poet before,
and after searching through numerous anthologies and almost giving up,
succeeded in finding it on the net where it seems that numerous others
thought it was fitting for the point they wanted to get across.
Aren't there lots of beautiful home pages around? Don't you just love looking at them? Don't you too often get the feeling that there's an awful lot of icing on a very small cake? When you look beyond the impressive graphics and try and find some real information, often there's much too little there. This brings me to the JUSTIFIED MARGINS METAPHOR. I doubt that this is an original of mine, but since I haven't come across it anyplace else I guess that I can take a bit of credit.
Actually, what I'd like to do is provide links to cutting edge thinking. But without any false modestly and a great deal of jealousy I've got to admit that someone I've never met, Alexander "Sasha" Chislenko, seems to have done it much better than I might ever have been able to. So why not use his list? I came across this home page when I was searching for a possible review of a book I was interested in. I found a great deal more. I have no idea whether others have found their way to Sasha or not, though I urge them to do so.
Howard Rheingold is much better known than Sasha Chislenko, and I doubt that anyone needs me to tell them about him - it seems that thousands get to his homepage every month. For a sixties graduate who stills has his dog-eared Whole Earth Catalog on the shelf, Rheingold's name is one that can be trusted, and his very extensive links are always worth reviewing in order to get a good picture of where we're headed. This connection is to his Brainstorms homepage - from there you can find leads to just about everything related to digital community.
Another highly prolific person who seems to be paving the way for actually getting interesting and worthwhile information onto the World Wide Web is William H. Calvin. Calvin's own interests are very broad, as his on-line bibliography and his list of links on the Web will attest, but perhaps most interesting is his Science Surf Webzine. To me it seems to be true state of the art for Web use and design, and perhaps most significant, it's packed with lots of fascinating information.