By Elijah Stone

“...participate in the creation of a new social order throughout the world, based on the principles of self-determination, individual freedom, political democracy, and cooperative economics, the equality of all people and the equality of human value.”

Awesome, we have a direction but we need to answer a really important question: how are we going to do that? We have roughly two choices, in order to create this new society. One path states that the creation of the new society “must come from below, that the free society must be the result of the will to[wards] freedom from a large section of the population” or that “the will to freedom can only emerge once the existing economic and political system has been replaced [or overthrown] by a... [strong centralized leadership] which, as the awareness and sense of responsibility of the people grows, the leadership will wither away and [then] the free society [will] emerge.”

The Jewish peoples most cherished story tells us that the later is true, that an oppressed people needs a strong powerful leadership to liberate them, that they can't do it by themselves, that even if they tried they would fail. That we NEED God in order to be freed. That we must do as GOD says for fear of punishment for only GOD truly knows how we ought to live in order to be free. I believe we have made our choice, we seek to embody the “New Jew” we no longer wait around for god to deliver us to freedom we take our destiny into our own hands. We oppose any authority that thinks they know better, instead we choose to be the leaders that that tell the world to think for themselves, to be critical of the world around you and to take action when you see injustice. You can't just wait for a large section of the population to realize the world around them is corrupt, and that it is their personal responsibility to change it. Instead we pursue a goal that is very special, Martin Buber said it best when

he spoke for the kibbutz movement “ we do not seek to start a revolution, we are living a revolution.” Instead of trying to spark a revolution based on principles of “ self-determination, individual freedom, political democracy, environmental sustainability and cooperative economics, the equality of all people and the equality of human value.” Instead we live out these principles, we seek to live our revolution, and spread it by taking responsibility over our community. This makes education, and kvutzah the most revolutionary tactics we have. Without it we would not be able “To develop within its members the will to realize their own capabilities.” We would not be able to live in kvutzah, and definitely would not be able to provide it as an alternative lifestyle. We would not be able to critic society while providing an alternative. We would not be able to claim that we are rebels! But we have a problem our education is focused inwards, and largely inaccessible to others that didn't grow up at a machaneh. We must expand our educational structures, we must provide kvutzah as an alternative to this individualist, isolating, and anonymous society. We must seek to establish cooperative economic structures as an alternative to the rat race that is capitalism. In order to create this new world order we must not only live this revolution but we must spread it as well. We say we are sitters and thinkers, please I beg you, do not allow this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

<< Back to Previous Page