Israel's kibbutzim were based on a collectivist ideology, and most of the spaces inside

of kibbutz were shared equally among its inhabitants.

The communal dining hall was where you took your morning coffee, not your own kitchen table.

Because to take your coffee at your own kitchen table would be to commit a crime against the kibbutz's spirit of solidarity.

It would be, to put a name to the sin, individualistic.

So it follows that the artwork that adorned kibbutzim in the early years was also suited to the collectivist ethos of the place.

That's a big reason that large wall murals were popular there.

Kibbutz members all had equal access to stand before them.

They could equally be gladdened by their beauty and take inspiration from their message.

And that message was very often agricultural in nature, glorifying the young, the fit,

brawny new Hebrew laborers working the land, settling the new state by mixing their sweat with its soil.

Kibbutz murals were perfectly fitted in their situation and in their subject to the

labor ideology they served. Things have changed a great deal over the past seven decades.

Hardly any kibbutzim of that kind exist any longer, and more strikingly still, the Labour Party

of David Ben-Gurion and Goulda Meir, the political organization that embodied this idealistic

ethos and erected the governing structures of the country. That political party has been reduced

to a mere three seats in the 23rd Knesset, and a poll conducted earlier this month, shows that if

elections were to be held right now, the Labor Party that founded Israel and dominated

its politics for decades would not win a single seat in the next Knesset.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. The Israeli writer, Mati Friedman,

recently toured the aging Kibbutz murals, paintings created in an era of optimism, colorful art,

recalling an earlier, more statist Israel. But seeing them now, they stand out as relics and

...