We Were the Future

By Yael Neeman, Sondra Silverston (translator), Jessica Cohen (translator)

Book cover of We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz

Book description

The kibbutz is one of the greatest stories in Israeli history. These collective settlements have been written about extensively over the years: The kibbutz has been the subject of many sociological studies, and has been praised as the only example in world history of entire communities attempting, voluntarily, to live…

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Why read it?

1 author picked We Were the Future as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

One of the treasures in my large collection of kibbutz books is a signed edition of this dreamy memoir by Yael Neeman. In-person and in print, she is wise, funny, observant, and prone to memorable metaphors.

I savoured every word (in Sondra Silverston’s wonderful English translation) of her poignant and often ironic reflections about growing up in the most controversial experiment of the kibbutz movement: the collective “children’s house,” in which kibbutz kids slept apart from their parents to be raised by nannies in mini-communes of their own.

From David's list on Israel’s utopian kibbutz movement.

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