DREAMS OF UTOPIA

Utopia is something we dream but never possess. I came to this conclusion after tasting several utopic contenders - living in harmony with nature, farming, vagabonding, and living on various Marxist kibbutzim.

One of them was Kibbutz Yehiam in the western Galilee, where our daughter was raised communally for the first five months of her tender life.

She made a hit with the attendants. She smiled at each as if they were treasured friends. We would come for her each evening for two hours after our work was done.

I was therefore thrilled to find Yael Neeman's account of her early life in Yehiam. In "We were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz," she illuminated the kibbutz life that I had never perceived as an outsider.

The preface provides an overview:

·       The kibbutz movement is one of the most fascinating phenomena of modern history and one of Zionism’s greatest stories. Several hundred communities attempted to live the ideas of equality, freedom, and social justice by giving up private property, individualism, and the “bourgeois” family unit to create an Israeli utopia following the Holocaust—the only example in world history of entire communities voluntarily attempting to live in total equality. However, for the children raised in these communities, the kibbutz was an institution collapsing under the weight of an ideology that marginalized its offspring to make a political statement.

The Marxist kibbutz movement, Hashomer Hatziar, represented the most radical social experiment where all forms of "ownership" had been rejected. Instead, everything was to be "owned" by the collective - children, clothing, and even decision-making. Neeman explains:

·       Public and private issues were decided upon at the kibbutz meetings, and committees were elected there. If someone wanted to leave the kibbutz for higher education, the secretariat, the Education Committee and finally, the kibbutz meeting decided whether he would go or wait, and also, what he would study: Did the course of study he wished to pursue correspond to what the kibbutz needed? If it didn’t, he had to adjust himself to the needs of the community.

Even coupling with one specific sexual partner had originally been disdained.

However, this perspective had been disbanded long before my arrival in Israel. Eventually, human nature overtook this severe ideal, and eventually, everyone settled down with their chosen spouse and were visited by their biological children for between one and two hours every evening.

At the time, I had thought that this had been an ideal arrangement, which allowed the parents to spend quality time with their children. However, according to Neeman, the youth did not connect with their parents. Instead, the parent-child relationship felt artificial and uncomfortable.

This discomfort became magnified when the youth from a neighboring kibbutz visited, necessitating the Yehiam youth to stay with their parents for three days. About this Neeman writes:

·       Our parents’ close proximity seemed sick and crazy, as if we were locked in an embrace with death...We could hardly wait for morning to come.

In this Marxist utopia, there was no room for God or for anything that might undermine Marxist purity. Neeman writes:

·       And not only did God not exist in Hashomer Hatzair, but he was forbidden; he was an irrational, pagan obstacle to the remarkable abilities and productivity of the sublime human being. God was a vestige of the dark Middle Ages.

Anything that smacked of the bourgeoisie was disdained:

·       The [kitchen] workers called us [children] over for a minute, quickly, so no one would see or hear them pampering us, and let us taste the food. And they also asked us if it was good, fishing for compliments because there were no compliments on our kibbutz. Applause at the end of a performance was frowned upon too; that was a bourgeois custom.

Meanwhile, the children would sing:

·       We were born to the sun. We were born to the light.

The vacuum created by the banishment of God had to be filled, and the children "born to the light" had to fill it.

I hadn't been aware of this burden that the youth carried, the weighty expectations placed upon them to fulfill their commune's Marxist ideals. Nor had Neeman in her early years:

·       We were proud that we worked on Yom Kippur and ate wild boar that we roasted on campfires. No circumcision ceremonies were held on our kibbutz. No rabbi set foot on it to perform weddings. The dead were buried in coffins, the Kaddish prayer was not said over them, and any mention of the Bible was forbidden.

Later the vacuum would become oppressive. Meanwhile, the ideal was accepted as the unexamined norm in the automatic way that lunch would follow breakfast. Neeman reflects:

·       The boys and girls who graduated from the educational institution [where they would go at age 12 on a neighboring kibbutz] had been born on the kibbutz, had absorbed its values from the very beginning, and had not been damaged by the bourgeois institutions of family and education. They would lead the kibbutzim and the city dwellers, who came from the various city branches of Hashomer Hatzair to fulfill their ideological dreams in the kibbutzim, to a better world. During his years in the institution, the new child would mature into a new man living on a kibbutz, fully connected to and involved in the life of the country.

However, the ideal was never able to fill the vacuum. Neeman reports that, once into their teen years, they began to be plagued by questions of the meaning of life, which would not be satisfied by the standard kibbutz answers. While they felt a debt to the kibbutz, it had a stomach that could never be filled:

·       We worked out of a guilty conscience for a system that would never be satisfied. We felt as if our conscience was a biological, organic part of our body, like an invisible inner hump.

It was an ideal Neeman knew she could never meet. In this regard, I found a recent interview quite revealing:

·       Nevertheless, her childhood memories are happy ones. Contrary to popular characterizations, she said, separating children from families was not an inhumane policy: “It was created from a belief that it would make a better human being and a better family, After all, families are not so ideal all the time. When we ex-kibbutzniks speak among ourselves about this issue, we call it a paradox because most of us were really happy in this strange arrangement. Yet none of us want our children or grandchildren growing up like that.”

As a result, most of the kibbutz youth have voted with their feet and have fled their utopia for the world of the bourgeoisie.

Time has passed its verdict on what seems to have been the world's most successful communist/socialist experiment and has found it wanting.

Time has also been ruthless with other communal experiments. The 70s had been the heyday for communal living in the States. My wife and I visited several, none of which can be found today. Nevertheless, in each instance, it members had been convinced that they had found their permanent home.

We had also spent time in the Longhouse in Borneo, where the tribesmen live communally under their chief. They share games, singing, and the communal connectedness of a large extended family. But once again, the youth gladly give it all up for their own dream of an education, a city job, and enough money to buy a pickup.

Why can we not find utopia? Why is it only vapor that we cannot grasp and keep? Perhaps we can understand this with the help of a couple of analogies:

A man saw a butterfly struggling mightily to emerge from its cocoon, and so he helped free it. However, it died. Why? The butterfly needs the benefit of the struggle to pump its liquids into its wings.

Similarly, baboons build stable communities through the practice of grooming. However, grooming loses all its relevance without the troublesome pests – ticks and lice. Without these predators and other threats, the baboon community cannot survive.

Is it possible that we too require an assortment of threats in order to prosper? To use an extreme example, perhaps we also need death. I remember seeing a video of a woman recovered from the rubble of an earthquake, after five days. The hugging and the tears of joy shed by the husband were touching, to say the least. I wondered, “Had he been complaining about her the week before?” If so, what had changed his disdain into joy? The prospect of losing what he had had!

What would we be like if we lived in a perfect utopia where there was no death and no loss? Wouldn’t we become callous and take every relationship for granted or even as a burden? Would we have any room for gratefulness and love?

Instead, it seems that there are many blessings that we cannot yet handle, blessings that might destroy us. Perhaps all we can do is just dream about a more perfect world. Perhaps we would again just spoil Eden if we were there. Perhaps the door to this enchanted Garden will swing open to us once we have been readied for it.

Playing with Sin

      

There are some things we can’t control, like gravity. However, there are things that we can’t control that are also highly dangerous and life-controlling. Heroin addiction is a good example.

One probationer explained crack addiction to me. “After one hit, I was hooked. I turned around and went back to the guy who sold me my first hit, and that was it.” At least with crack and heroin, you are aware of what you did to get you hooked. However, sin itself is more stealthful, life-controlling, and destructive. There are some things we think we can just taste without running the risk of addiction. However, sin can take over without our even knowing it.

The best example of this is the Garden of Eden debacle. Adam and Eve had been enjoying unbroken fellowship with their God. Their every need was fulfilled daily. They were even so comfortable within their own skin that they didn’t experience the slightest discomfort or taint of shame with their nakedness (Gen. 2:25). They were at peace.

Although they had no reason whatsoever to distrust God or to fault His provisions, the woman succumbed to the serpentine temptation to believe that God was holding something back from them (3:5), and so they sinned and ate the forbidden fruit with devastating consequences:

·        Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (Genesis 3:7)

Shame struck like a thunderbolt, and they knew they had to do something about it. Instead of crying out to their Creator, they were determined to handle the guilt and shame their own way. Foolishly, they covered themselves with sewn fig leaves, as if this would cover the real source of their shame. However, their problem was much deeper, going to the core of their very being - their righteousness and sense of self.

Their response is reflective of our own response to guilt and shame. We too cover ourselves, not only with clothing but also with “good deeds” – anything to try to regain our original sense of okay-ness. We march for various causes, make personal sacrifices, achieve socially-respectable goals, and compete for positions of power and respect.

It is not that all of these aren’t worthy endeavors. However, they are not able to address the core problem. They are no more than band-aids. Consequently, the “lift” we derive from our achievements only lasts temporarily, and we are afterwards coerced to seek other mountains to climb. This is evidence that these coverings fail to address the core issue, and then we are doomed to futilely spend the rest of our lives trying to establish our worthiness.

We understandably laugh at our first parents’ attempt to deal with sin. However, our efforts are no less laughable than theirs. The sin had to be confronted along with the disruption of their fellowship with their Maker. Covering our sins with fig leaves or with our accomplishments, like obtaining a mansion in DC, is nothing short of denial and a refusal to walk in the light of truth. These are things we use to tell ourselves, “I’m OK,” when we really are not!

However, the power, deception and utter destructiveness of sin didn’t stop there:

   

·        Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Genesis 3:8)

Instead of acknowledging the futility of trying to cover up their sin, they hid from the only source of their deliverance. And what made them think that they could hide from their Creator? Even more startling, they now regarded Him as their enemy and not their friend. He had become an additional problem with which they had to deal and not their answer. What caused this massive conversion? Sin!

Sin is so powerful and deceptive that most of humankind regards God as their enemy, as Jesus reflected:

·        This is the verdict: Light [Truth] has come into the world, but men loved darkness [sin and denial] instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

Sin had taken charge. Therefore, the light was now intolerable to Adam and Eve. Darkness, no matter how destructive, has become our residence of choice. We justify our sins even as they squeeze the life out of us. While sexual liberationists celebrate the sexual liberties that women have won in Western societies, a recent study has just revealed that women are less happy than ever. Darkness can be more comforting than the light, which painfully reveals our sins, mistakes and what we’re really all about. 

Nevertheless, our God is patient, wanting all to come to confession and repentance. He didn’t crush His first humans with judgment. Instead, He asked them a series of questions:

·        But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9)

Of course, the omniscient God knew exactly where the man was hiding.  He was giving  Adam space to freely confess his sin. However, Adam filled this space with deceptive half-truths:

·        He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." (Genesis 3:10)

Technically, Adam told the truth. However, this “truth” amounted to obfuscation. He refused to acknowledge his sin, his rebellion against the Word of God. When sin takes over, we don’t suddenly throw away all moral considerations. Adam didn’t respond, “I don’t care a wit about obedience, righteousness or rebellion. These are your concerns not mine!” Knowing right from wrong is knowledge indelibly imprinted on our conscience. Therefore, even the worst sinners retain this knowledge in varying degrees and, as I’ve pointed out before, are forced to clothe their sins in facades of righteousness.

When we reject the righteousness that comes as a gift from God, we are coerced to achieve our own righteousness. Hitler’s hatred and genocide were clothed in the rationalizations of building a great and enduring empire. Stalin and Lenin murdered their millions justifying it by claiming that they were merely creating a workers’ paradise. When we reject the light, we embrace a darkness that offers substitute ideals and a counterfeit righteousness. However—back to Adam—his “truth” was no better than the deception to which he had fallen prey. He had become a child of the darkness.

However, God wasn’t finished with His questions:

·        And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" (Genesis 3:11)

True to the nature of darkness, Adam flung out another “truthful” response:

·        The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." (Genesis 3:12)

One sin becomes the mother of the next. We always need one more sin to cover the last. God had pinned Adam against the wall. He now had to confess that he had been disobedient. Will he now take full responsibility and cry out for mercy? No way—instead  he responded with blame-shifting. It wasn’t his fault; it was the woman’s fault. Along with this was Adam’s not-too-subtle charge that he had disobeyed because of "The woman you put here with me.” According to Adam, it was God’s fault!

The rational thing to do would have been to plead for mercy. However, sin is not rational; it wants to destroy. Rationality should have informed Adam that his only hope now was in the mercy of God.  Instead, Adam was convinced that he could get-over on God.

But now the Creator turned His questions to the woman:

·        Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." (Genesis 3:13)

Sin’s handiwork is easily recognized. It never humbly confesses sin, even when caught red-handed. Instead, it points the finger at someone else. It was the serpent’s fault. No true confession here! No taking of responsibility. Self righteousness seeks to do either of two things – justify self or denigrate others. Self-righteousness must always stand above the crowd.  It must convince itself (and the world) of its own moral superiority. Consequently, “All of a man’s ways are right in his own eyes” (Proverbs 21:2), and we live out our futile lives blinded by the logs we have refused to remove (Matthew 7:1-5).

Sin had taken control, so much so that Adam and Eve never once protested the curse that would stamp not only their lives but also the rest of the human race. Even the land would now be cursed because of them. Besides, they would now taste death:

·        “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:19)

No indication of any remorse! If anything, they were trapped in the webs of denial. They didn’t even seem to have heard the “death” verdict:

·        Adam named his wife Eve [“life,” in Hebrew], because she would become the mother of all the living. (Genesis 3:20)

God’s last word had been “death,” while Adam’s next word was “life.” They no longer saw eye-to-eye. Clearly, their relationship had been seriously ruptured. We even get the feeling that their banishment from God was more than a relief to this couple, who could no longer tolerate the light of His presence.

We cannot play with sin. One puff of the cigarette can pave the way to addiction. It did so for me – seven times! I was smoking two packs a day, and it was killing me. I had to give up, but I didn’t want to give up entirely. I thought I could control smoking only two cigarettes a day. However, I underestimated the power of sin. After smoking the one, I convinced myself that I had done pretty well and could handle a second. Then I determined, because I had done so well with the second, I could handle a third. On each of six occasions I returned to my two packs a day.

Throughout my struggle to quit, I’ve learned that I cannot even handle taking a single puff. Not that a puff is addictive, but once I open the door to one puff, I have no problem opening it again to the second and the third.

Tasting sin is like feeding a stray dog. Once you feed it, you can no longer get rid of it.