Kibbutz Ovadia’s unique blend of “Torah and Avoda,” learning and labor, served as a model for religious kibbutzim forming in prestate Israel and beyond – but the demands of this Polish Jewish collective experiment took their toll

In the summer of 1998, I visited Sławków, a small town in southern Poland’s Zagłębie region. Like all other children on Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, I’d been raised on the legacy of Sławków’s Kibbutz Ovadia as remembered by Hanokh Ahiman, one of the few members of Kfar Etzion to escape its destruction at the hands of the Arab Legion in 1948. Armed with those memories and a photograph of my father in Sławków, I discovered that the farm that had housed the commune still looked exactly as in the photo. The nails that had held a mezuza in place on the back door were still there, though the religious article itself was long gone.

 

The Nucleus

In the 1920s, would-be Jewish pioneers underwent a year’s agricultural instruction (hakhshara in Hebrew) before arriving in the land of Israel. Hundreds of training communes were set up by Zionist youth groups all over Poland, and dozens of these collectives belonged to Torah Ve-avoda (previously Young Mizrahi), an umbrella organization of pioneering Orthodox youth movements loosely affiliated with the religious-Zionist Mizrahi movement. Nathan Gardi, Torah Ve-avoda’s emissary from the land of Israel in Poland, helped set up and run several such programs. In 1933, he selected youngsters training in Sosnowiec and Olkusz to establish a commune in Sławków. The kibbutz began with five members, who then recruited another seven. Those rejected were devastated. 

Gardi named the kibbutz Ovadia, “God’s servant,” implying a new kind of Jewish life, combining physical labor and spiritual values. The commune opened on January 8, 1933, at 1 Zevelnaya Street. Gardi set the tone of kibbutz life, paying admiral attention to discipline, detail, and order. There was a daily schedule, socks and undergarments had to be laundered promptly, and shoes had to be removed before going indoors. 

Some of the original members had permits to emigrate to Mandate Palestine but deferred their departure for a year to train the next generation of pioneers. By waiting, they also ensured group emigration, allowing them to start a settlement of their own. 

The first contingent arrived in the land of Israel early in the summer in 1933 and established a new Kibbutz Ovadia just west of Herzliya. Ovadia soon merged with another collective, the Shahal group, and moved to Rehovot. In 1935, the Ovadia graduates moved to the newly founded Avraham group, in Kfar Pines (near Hadera). A newsletter, Hayenu (Our Life), updated Gardi’s trainees in Poland on their friends’ achievements and hardships.

 

 

Spiritual Aim

Most of the young people joining the commune came from Hasidic backgrounds, instilling Kibbutz Ovadia with Hasidic ideals of spiritual devotion as well as the character refinement emphasized by Hasidism’s Lithuanian competitor, the Musar movement. Yet Ovadia was surprisingly universalistic, as noted by commune secretary Barukh Melamed in a newsletter circulated a few years later by Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, in the Jezreel Valley:

The will to create something sublime, to realize a great dream, was active here […] to lay the foundations of a renewed society, to educate humanity for a new life. (Barukh Melamed, “Over the Wall,” Ba-tira [Inside the Tower], 26 Shevat 5698/January 28, 1938, p. 2)

Zionist activists sent to the few religious kibbutzim in Mandate Palestine waxed biblical about the Sławków commune, hailing it as no less than “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” As one graduate of the program put it many years after the fact:

We were like family, bound by bonds of hope and yearning. It was like living in a warm cocoon beyond time and space. No stranger could ever understand. (Sławków Graduates Conference, Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, April 1991 [Hebrew]) 

The refectory walls were plastered with such inspirational slogans as “Our aim – complete harmony for humanity and for the entire world” and “Purify your life with labor, and sanctify it with Torah.” Every meal was preceded by long, silent introspection. And after Yom Kippur, commune members even delayed the breaking of the fast to curb their baser instincts. 

Though labor was a central value, evenings and Sabbaths were devoted to intellectual pursuits. Apart from Torah study, the aspiring pioneers applied themselves to literature, economics, sociology, and Hebrew, reading extensively and engaging in passionate debate. 

Kibbutz Ovadia harvested and sold its first potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini in the summer of 1938. The commune grew flowers commercially as well, adding a greenhouse, chicken coops, a dairy, and beehives to its successful economy. 

Swimming in the river was a favorite pastime, and there were also competitive sports. Every aspect of communal life was debated and voted upon in frequent meetings, often continuing into the wee hours. Whenever a new member was accepted, these gatherings opened with the movement’s anthem, after which the recruit signed a declaration dedicating his or her life to the principles of communal religious partnership. Such meetings ended with spirited hora dancing.

Many of Kibbutz Ovadia’s rank and file had struggled religiously, having found yeshiva study unfulfilling. They came to Sławków to be inspired and uplifted by its ideals. Often cut off by their families for embracing Zionism, these “converts” threw in their lot with the kibbutz. Quite a few had no one else. Determined to cast off the old world and build anew while maintaining their halakhic observance, the members of Kibbutz Ovadia made work a supreme value, almost a ritual. There were no limits; they labored tirelessly, day and night. Equality, partnership, and frugality defined their lives – but above all was the commune. As Shalom Karniel (originally Terreller), a leading member of Ha-shomer Ha-dati in Poland and later a founder of Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, summed it up, the individual was to be totally absorbed – body and soul – into the whole. 

There was no such thing as private property. Members shared beds and even plates of food, preparing for the stark new settlements in Mandate Palestine and reinforcing the value of thrift. Even the most personal issues were openly discussed in the name of brotherhood and comradeship. In a letter to his sister, Yoel Eshel (subsequently of Tirat Zvi) described the collective yearning to imbue every step with intentionality and content. Later he insisted that no other stage of his life compared with his time at Kibbutz Ovadia, with its meetings, dances and refined yet intimate interactions.