Nicholas Wade

So the first astounding thing they did was to abolish the family.

So the family has been sort of the basic unit of human society since the dawn of time.

So the kibbutz is arranged that the children would live apart from their families in sort of dormitories.

They were allowed to see their families just at the end of the day for a brief period, but otherwise they were raised communally.

And the idea was that the woman would be released from the patriarchy of the father.

So these guys came from sort of patriarchal Jewish families that they really wanted to get rid of entirely.

So women didn't depend on their husbands for anything and they could have whatever jobs they chose.

Those were the features of, that was one big thing that the kibbutzim did.

And the other was to abolish pay.

So everyone got the same pay, whether they worked hard or slacked off.

And the reason was to make sure that you had a condition of total equality.

No one was richer or better than anyone else.

No one could boss anyone else around.

So on paper, it was ideal.

Women weren't dependent on men.

No one...

No one was superior to anyone else.

And it's a great tribute to the idealism of the founders.

The system did last, at least while they were alive.

But when a second generation grew up who weren't imbued with the founders' ideology, they started to reject all these things.