ABSTRACT
For many years, the kibbutz and the moshav were the most potent symbols of
the Zionist movement. The kibbutz, a communal rural settlement, and the
moshav, a co-operative workers’ village, were perceived as tools for moderniz-
ing Jewish society, for transforming the Diaspora Jew of European cities into
the ‘new Jew’, a Nietzschean Superman: a secular man of nature who lives a
productive life in the village and will lead the Jewish people on the path to
national rejuvenation.1 The idea of the co-operative village was adopted by
Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who referred to it as
‘Neudorf ’ in his utopian book Altneuland, published in 1902.2 During the follow-
ing decades, the Zionist movement presented the co-operative village as the
epitome of a healthy society, rejecting the idea of the city as a place of torment,
the relic of an old world.
