Growing Up Without Fences: Nir on Intimacy and Change in Samar

Details

• Interviewee: Nir Menachem
• Role: Former Kibbutz Secretary
• Community: Kibbutz Samar
• Date: 2026-01-14
• Language: en

Summary

In an interview with Nir Menachem, he shares his profound experiences growing up in Kibbutz Samar, emphasizing the strong sense of community that shaped his understanding of healthy communal living. Nir describes a high level of intimacy among community members, where boundaries between private and public lives were blurred, allowing for deep connection and shared responsibility. He also reflects on the evolution of Kibbutz Samar, highlighting its transition from a decentralized economic model to a renewed, more independent structure. This change, he notes, serves to instate personal responsibility and prepare the older generation to leave a legacy for their children, although he acknowledges the struggle and friction involved in this transition.

Key quotes

‘It completely shaped my perception of what a community is and what a healthy community looks like.’

‘Samar didn’t develop sufficient mechanisms of dialogue and communication to simply bridge gaps.’

‘The change serves the idea that now each person is responsible for their own livelihood.’

‘It’s very important that [the community] revolve around something clear.’

‘We’re turning from a very different and special community into a very standard, banal renewed kibbutz in Israel.’

‘The older generation that worked all its life and was left with nothing—will have something to bequeath to their children.’

Transcript

**Interviewer:** Okay, so let’s start with your name and where we are. Are we speaking in Hebrew?
**Nir Menachem:** Yes.
**Interviewer:** Oh, we’re speaking in Hebrew? Wow, what a treat, man, wow. Yes, I’m relieved by that. Treat or are we talking? Hebrew is easy—why didn’t you say so?
**Nir Menachem:** Yes. So hi, my name is Nir Menachem, I was born here in Kibbutz Samar. What else did you ask?
**Interviewer:** Where are we right now?
**Nir Menachem:** So we’re now in Kibbutz Samar and we’re at my workplace, Crystal Vision, which is a technology company. We do control and automation—mainly for agriculture, a bit for industry.
**Interviewer:** So Crystal Vision is basically one of Samar’s economy branches?
**Nir Menachem:** In a way, yes. Crystal Vision is a business branch of Samar and it happens to be a separate company—organized separately, a completely separate association, meaning a separate legal entity from Samar—but here it’s ultimately a Samar branch.
**Interviewer:** And what does Samar make a living from today?
**Nir Menachem:** Samar’s income today is mainly from two large agricultural branches: an organic date grove that mostly exports—mainly to Europe, you could say, though we’re constantly opening new markets—and a dairy, which sells its milk to the Yotvata dairy. And beyond that, there are other businesses of various kinds. We at Crystal [Vision]… Samar has a tourism venture trying to get off the ground in Shitim, Samar has a few contractors: one who builds bike trails, contractors who do electrical work, air conditioning. And a third of the members work in various jobs—what we call outside work—people working outside in all kinds of positions: teachers, school counselors/psychologists, the regional council head who lives in the kibbutz, the council engineer is from Samar—things like that, external roles in various places.
**Interviewer:** You basically grew up here.
**Nir Menachem:** Indeed, I was essentially born here.
**Interviewer:** How did growing up here shape your understanding of community life?
**Nir Menachem:** That’s a tough question. How did growing up here shape my understanding? Wow, it’s really a complex question, because it completely formed my understanding of community—what a healthy community looks like and what needs to happen for a community to be healthy and thriving. But also, in a funny way, it kind of… set a very high bar. Like, I saw the dream—I saw the ultimate community—and reaching… it sets a very, very, very high standard. From there, it’s like you can only go down.
**Interviewer:** What is a community—or your image of community?
**Nir Menachem:** A community that works together; where each person has a very deep sense of responsibility toward their neighbor, their surroundings, the other. A community that grows together and develops together. A community that really makes joint efforts toward a shared goal of building life and agriculture here, in this arid part of the world. And yes, the standard was high—because it wasn’t perfect, okay? Nothing is perfect. There are always tensions, always things, always whatever—but from my childhood memory, it was kind of an idyll; it was truly like one huge family. And you knew… of course you knew everyone, but you also knew everyone’s parents, everyone’s siblings, everyone’s cousins. Yes—an extremely high level of intimacy and closeness.
**Interviewer:** In what way did that intimacy show up?
**Nir Menachem:** It’s not about “in what way did it show up”; it’s simply that the level of intimacy was that everyone knew everyone really well, deeply. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there were more intimate situations created, but in practice the level of familiarity among community members was very intimate—really, to the degree that everyone knew, maybe not everything, but a very large part of each other’s lives. Because basically life happens with almost no separation between what happens at home and what happens in the public sphere. Yes, yes—there’s no separation between this and that, and there really was a strong desire to be together. Everyone’s families were around, like… it was diverse yet unified, people would come by, and there was real togetherness.
**Interviewer:** So at some point you also served as the community manager?
**Nir Menachem:** “What do you mean at some point?” At a very, very late stage, let’s say about four–five years ago—I served as the community’s business manager.
**Interviewer:** Can we break that down—what was the role and what made you want to do it?
**Nir Menachem:** So I was the business manager of the kibbutz. I was responsible for the kibbutz’s businesses, its branches—basically to make sure they were all functioning, efficient, producing, profitable; to guide them and help with whatever they needed. And what led me to do it? I think I’m someone who is always very involved wherever I am; I can’t sit on the side and let things pass by. I’m always very involved. And there was a point when there wasn’t really a person to do the job—no one wanted it or fit—and they were considering bringing someone from outside. It seemed to me I could do it, that it was a good time for me, and it seemed preferable to bringing someone from outside. So I put myself forward, and indeed… I was elected. In the end it wasn’t simple—it wasn’t by some big special majority—but I was elected. And actually—specifically because that’s how we wanted it—I didn’t do the role alone; I did it with another woman, which was basically the first time such a situation happened, certainly in Samar but I think in most kibbutzim it hadn’t happened before—that two people jointly handled the community’s business management.
**Interviewer:** From here—now we’re in some kind of transition. What was Samar’s structure—community and managerial? What structure was built and supported all this over the years?
**Nir Menachem:** Does our audience know what a kibbutz is? Yes. Okay. So Samar was originally founded by Samar’s first cohorts. Broadly speaking, they were kibbutz-raised—especially that first cohort—they were from large, veteran kibbutzim. Kibbutz kids who left, and essentially “inscribed on their flag” that they didn’t like the kibbutz of the past. They didn’t like the institutions of the old kibbutz, they didn’t like the conduct of the old kibbutz, they didn’t like the structure—socially, but also the power structure—of the old kibbutz. And they decided to establish a kibbutz whose power structure is decentralized—meaning no one has power over anyone else in any way.
**Interviewer:** In the old kibbutz there was a work allocator who told everyone where to work. There was a vehicle allocator who decided which car goes to whom, when, and why. Even at the level of financial decisions—the kibbutz of the past had a budget. At a certain point it was called a unified budget, but in any case there was a budget that determined how much money each member gets every month, and they had to manage with that. Samar didn’t even have that. Instead, there was what’s called a common purse, and everyone took on a broad “trust basis.”
**Nir Menachem:** Basically, the banner—the slogan—etched on Samar’s flag was: everyone does something; gives what they can and takes on a broad basis of trust. Gives what they can and takes on trust. And they took it to the extreme: “Work as much as you want, work where you want, do what you want, and in the end take, in principle, as much as you need”—but that “as much as you need” very quickly becomes “as much as you want.” So essentially life was very, very unstructured.
**Interviewer:** The kibbutz was organized: in principle, you had the productive branches, each with a business manager or ‘farm manager’ (merakez meshek) who kind of guided them, helped them, dealt with all the bureaucracy and the ties with the council and government ministries and such. On the other hand, there was a body called the Secretariat—kibbutz members who volunteered and were elected (in Samar usually whoever volunteered was elected)—and the Secretariat managed the social life: dilemmas, problems, frictions came to them; and they also advanced the community—public buildings, culture, etc.
**Nir Menachem:** Within that ideology—what decision-making system did exist?
**Interviewer:** There was no overarching system over anything. Decision-making was through the General Assembly (“kibbutz meeting”). Everything eventually got there, one way or another, to a kibbutz meeting and a show of hands.
**Interviewer:** How often did that happen?
**Nir Menachem:** Hard to say—it depended on the period. Sometimes there was a kibbutz meeting every week; sometimes once a month—it really varied. The Secretariat prepared the items and it went to the meeting. The meeting decided. The Secretariat almost never made decisions—almost never. And in the end, even when a decision was made in the meeting, as we said—since in Samar no one could tell anyone else what to do—if someone decided to act against the meeting’s decision, then to some extent that was also okay. Like, the collective decided not to spend money on X, and you go and buy it—because for you it’s important enough, or the most important, or whatever.
**Interviewer:** Were there other formal or informal structures?
**Nir Menachem:** Not really. Mainly people who volunteered to do something, and the community generally… anyone who volunteered to do something—that was great, basically. Everything—almost everything that happened or happens in Samar, even up to today, at the level of doing or activity—happens because there’s someone “crazy about it,” so to speak. A branch began because someone was crazy about it, or some social activity started because someone was crazy about it, or… I don’t know. And everything essentially came from the bottom up. From the bottom, always. That’s still how it is in Samar.
**Interviewer:** And where does it start to change?
**Nir Menachem:** Samar has been changing for quite a while. I came back to the kibbutz 11 years ago—10–11 years ago, you could say I returned. Yidi Lin says: when the first parents decided not to put their children in the communal children’s houses—that was a kind of point. She went far. That there needed to be a decision about who is a member and who isn’t—that wasn’t really such a point. Anyone who was here—“Are you a member?” Yes or no—everything was fine. It wasn’t really a decision to make; whoever was here at that moment was a member.
**Nir Menachem:** I can’t point to one specific moment. I can say in very general, big terms—without the fine details—that even when we came back 10–11 years ago, the situation wasn’t very different from before. Sure, some things were different. For example, once we had ice creams in the dining hall—open—anyone could come take ice cream until it ran out. That’s been gone for years. That’s on that practical level. But broadly, in terms of structure, social structure, hierarchy—the changes started slowly maybe 10 years ago and really accelerated in the last five years. For real.
**Interviewer:** What was that shift—what happened?
**Nir Menachem:** Many things. In the end I attribute it to… when you live in such a way that everything is free and anyone can essentially do what they do—it’s very hard to handle frictions; very hard to deal with things that deviate from the norm, because… if everything’s allowed, what is a norm, right? So I think Samar didn’t develop mechanisms that create norms; didn’t develop mechanisms that solve and treat problems rather than sweep them under the rug. In the end, you could summarize it all as: Samar didn’t develop enough dialogue and communication mechanisms to simply bridge gaps.
**Nir Menachem:** Our friend Yaniv always says that a level of closeness and partnership like in Samar requires a very high level of communication—which was never here—for it to really work. It’s hard. It’s tough communication—daily, daily, daily. Very, very complex. I mainly attribute it to that.
**Nir Menachem:** Because in the end I could tell you the kibbutz fell apart because of a handful of people who didn’t work and decided they basically didn’t need to earn a living and just became too heavy a burden—took money out and didn’t bring any in. You could say it’s related to older folks who suddenly decided they wanted to bequeath their house to their kids and now needed that house—which forced a change. You could… as a group, as a community, truly. Yes—but those are various triggers. In practice, we got to this situation because we didn’t manage to develop a sufficiently high level of communication. So yes, it’s not simple—very complex.
**Interviewer:** What is the change happening now—and what does it serve?
**Nir Menachem:** The change serves exactly the things I just mentioned, roughly. First, it serves the older generation—who worked their whole lives and kind of ended up with nothing—so they’ll have something to bequeath to their children. That’s one of the first and leading reasons for this whole process.
**Nir Menachem:** Second, it serves the separation whereby each person now takes care of their own livelihood and can’t live off the income of their fellow members. It’s a kind of separation—everyone needs to take care of themselves now. There’s no longer the kibbutz “backstop” giving unlimited, free “unemployment support” because it’s gone. You have to go take care of yourself. That, in my opinion, is mainly what this change comes to address as a symptom. But generally, the change comes to make life here bearable again—because right now they’re pretty unbearable.
**Interviewer:** What does this situation cause?
**Nir Menachem:** We’re now in an in-between state—the worst phase—where there’s no motivation to do things. A kind of limbo where half the things fall between the cracks; everything takes a lot, a lot of effort and there are lots of frictions. The transition phase is probably the worst phase.
**Interviewer:** What’s the technical process now—how do you go from fully collective to a “renewed kibbutz”?
**Nir Menachem:** You start by bringing in Ilan, the privatizer—he’s the expert on kibbutz privatization. It’s like when a company goes bankrupt, you bring in a liquidator—someone who’s supposed to turn as much of it as possible into… He’s that kind of liquidator—he’s a dismantler—he comes to dismantle, maybe in a sensible way.
**Nir Menachem:** It’s a long process. First, to make a change you need a 75% majority in a vote, with at least two-thirds of the members participating in that vote. So first of all—that’s a hard majority to achieve.
**Interviewer:** The process touches every aspect of life: income, livelihood, how much tax you pay; expenses—what you pay for, water, electricity—things people here never dealt with. It also defines what rights each person has; what jobs exist, what positions, what roles… yes, at the day-to-day level of life—what kind of mutual assistance exists, what mutual support is available for someone who isn’t managing, who’s struggling, who has this or that situation.
**Nir Menachem:** Beyond that, the process also defines how to distribute existing assets—really like a divorce. Samar has existing assets that the members created—the houses, for instance, and hopefully profits from businesses. You need to build a protocol or process for how to divide the money, how to allocate the houses—because the houses differ in size, and each member has different years of seniority. Obviously, a couple who’s been here 40 years—they’ve paid for their home; but a couple who’s been here 10 years—has purchased only a small portion of their home. That’s what the process comes to define and do.
**Nir Menachem:** In the end you get a booklet—around 200 pages—in which all aspects of a member’s life are detailed from A to Z—every comma—everything worded by lawyers and accountants, because it all has to be legal. And it has to pass by a big majority in a vote.
**Interviewer:** How do you do that?
**Nir Menachem:** There’s a group—called the Steering Team—that coordinates and leads the process, handling everything behind the scenes. They bring materials for the kibbutz to study; there are interim votes, questionnaires, surveys—to understand who thinks what. Then they took the four core topics: housing assignment and asset assignment; a team for mutual guarantee—what’s given and what isn’t, what a member is entitled to or not; a team for pensions and social security—pensions accumulated, long-term care fund, and matters of social safety net; and a team for admissions—how to accept new people from now on into the renewed kibbutz, what the path is and the goal.
**Nir Menachem:** Each team worked and prepared a proposed agreement—which will ultimately be part of the booklet. It goes back to the Steering Team; they sit with it. It goes to the community; the community gives feedback; more questionnaires; and in the end the Steering Team has to consolidate it all into a single integrated document—the “Budget Arrangement”—which, in practice, says: how much you receive from your salary, what taxes, what you pay for/do not pay for, what you’re entitled to. Then you hold one real vote on the whole thing.
**Interviewer:** Is there a chance that at the last minute it won’t pass?
**Nir Menachem:** Of course there’s a chance. I think there’s a good chance it won’t pass on the first vote. We’re at the agreement-finalizing stage, and the tugging begins—everyone with their interests. There are tons of interests here: personal, age cohorts, health situations, inheritances. And that’s even before the house interests. When they get into house allocation—plots, why mine was cut here, a power box on my lot, a road on my lot—then yes, it begins… the “fun” begins.
**Interviewer:** Looking positively to the future—how does this help, say, 15 years from now?
**Nir Menachem:** It helps in several ways. First—the older folks can relax, knowing they’re leaving their kids at least a house—they left something behind. Relaxed people—that’s positive for a community.
**Nir Menachem:** Secondly—Samar got to a really unpleasant place: because there are basically no rules and conventions and everyone does what they want—there’s tons of gossip, lots of anger behind people’s backs (or not behind their backs) toward those who don’t do anything—but in practice, you can’t do anything about it. The hope is that once we remove the economic partnership from our lives—so we’re not financially dependent on each other—we won’t be occupied with that; and then we can perhaps have healthier, deeper friendships and relationships, without constantly having this hovering question of “what does he do day-to-day,” “how much does he earn,” “how does he conduct himself.”
**Interviewer:** What would you say today to new groups around the world—Mexico, Portugal, Greece, Thailand—who bought land and are asking how deep to go with partnership?
**Nir Menachem:** I really love the utopian idea of economic partnership, but today I think it’s much more complex than it seems—especially if you want a multi-generational community. You have to ask: what kind of community do you want? For us, for now? Or multi-generational for the next hundred years? If you want multi-generational—the economic partnership adds too much pressure and too many intrigues—it’s a shame. You can do without it. Not recommended.
**Nir Menachem:** If it’s a commune for a period/for life but without a vision that remains—then you can play with economic partnership, but it’s very hard and brings in lots of intrigues.
**Interviewer:** Zooming out: to build a sustainable community—it’s very important that it revolves around something clear. What are we gathered around? Not “because it’s fun”—because fun sometimes ends. A value, an objective, a shared dream—even religion—something that provides a center and binds people. That’s something Samar didn’t have. Samar gathered around a value called freedom—but it wasn’t clear/defined enough.
**Nir Menachem:** The next stage after gathering around a value: all the time, without stopping—educate toward that value. If the value is freedom—constantly teach freedom: what freedom is, how you do freedom, within what framework, whether freedom has boundaries. Otherwise, newcomers can very easily drift away from the center. When too much periphery/satellites form—people not connected to the community’s essence—the community starts to unravel. And it doesn’t only unravel the edges—it erodes the center too. It’s frustrating, it takes the wind out of the sails, it makes it hard even for those who are really “in.”
**Nir Menachem:** So: education—very important. Communication—super important. Mechanisms for communication and conflict/problem resolution—keeping everyone in communication all the time. And also ensuring that those who join are truly connected to the purpose—and not just coming “for the ride.”
**Interviewer:** And for communities 10–40 years old—at a first wave of breakdown (Tamira, Damanhur, Auroville)? What elements help break through to the other side?
**Nir Menachem:** I don’t know all of Auroville’s pains—there are a lot of issues with the state there. In the end, the community’s weakness is what also… right, I suppose.
**Nir Menachem:** In Damanhur—the situation is relatively good. I don’t think there’s an internal breakdown there. The challenge: not enough young people. They try to bring them, but… I was there only ten days, in a bubble—but I didn’t experience a breakdown; on the contrary—I experienced a working, communicating, connected community. There’s activity.
**Interviewer:** A big challenge: community size. When there are many people—there’s less intimacy. You can’t be intimate with 100 people like with 30. There are people you don’t ‘really know.’ That creates a lack of empathy—distance reduces empathy—and then tensions and clashes start.
**Nir Menachem:** I really like what they did in Damanhur: a large community (about 600) divided into four communities, and each community into 7–10 houses; each house has 7–20 people. That creates very high intimacy with your house—there you can have a real community that works and cares—and at the same time all the small communities together create a functioning community. Your intimacy with person #492 is less important because your daily life isn’t with them. It’s a cool—maybe even revolutionary—idea: it enables a big community, but also an intimate one.
**Interviewer:** For you—can that help you get through and thrive?
**Nir Menachem:** I think for Samar—it’s a bit late. The change is so drastic—we’re turning from a very different and special community, with values and views different from elsewhere—into a standard, somewhat banal “renewed kibbutz” in Israel. And that’s fine—it just creates a different community: neighborhood-ness, neighbors; still a bit of shared business and things—but more like a community settlement.
**Interviewer:** What’s needed to get through the change and still preserve the fabric?
**Nir Menachem:** I don’t have much to say. These are things that should have been done long ago—it’s not something we could just “do five years earlier and it would work.” Communication, communication mechanisms, rallying around an idea, education toward that idea—yes, exactly.
**Interviewer:** And now—just accept the change?
**Nir Menachem:** Yes, absolutely. Absolutely—accept the change that’s coming. It also fits Samar’s values: if Samar was built on freedom and privacy/individuality (not the “communist” values of the old kibbutz), then it makes sense that the end would be economic independence: each member takes care of themselves—the ultimate freedom, the ultimate responsibility. You’re completely responsible for your life—be free to do what you want. It’s a closing of a circle—two tangential points on the circle, so to speak—just closing from the other direction.
**Interviewer:** What’s your message now?
**Nir Menachem:** What do I mean—“What’s my message?” Come to Samar before it’s over? Because it’s Samar before it’s over. Come to Samar before it’s over. Yes, we have those, those. Okay. Great. Thanks.