ABSTRACT
Ever since the early kibbutz settlement of the Jordan and Jezreel valleys, the kibbutz concept has been perceived by many as the principal innovation of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael. This chapter focuses on three coordinates through which the main trends can be marked. They are the various representations of the kibbutz as a "topos," a place; the tension between collective and individual forms of expression; and the conflict between the "superego" of the kibbutz as a total ideological system. The collectivist trend encouraged the writing of collective anthologies that documented the experiences, troubles, and dreams of groups of pioneers. The sketch genre claimed a central place in the sphere of literary production. With the institutionalization and stabilization of kibbutz life, there appeared in the various kibbutz movement journals an explicit call to abandon the sketch form and replace it with more complex literary forms.
