With the face to the future: The kibbutz in recent literary works

The kibbutz, which was considered one of the greatest successes of the socialist dream, failed to survive history, which replaced socialism with both capitalism and globalization. Numerous texts, literary, documentary, and scholarly, have tried to comprehend the social developments that took place in the kibbutz during the period of its demise, especially over the 1980s and the 1990s. This article focuses on two works – Habayta (Home, Assaf Inbari, 2009) and Bein haverim (Between friends, Amos Oz, 2012) – both of which refrain from solely addressing the rift that the kibbutz underwent, but rather attempt to see in the moment of the kibbutz's disintegration a stage in a historical process that will ultimately enable creation of new values on the ruins of the old ones. Both works triggered powerful response from literary critics and from the general public, and contributed to shaping a new perspective on the history of the kibbutz.     

Permission to Stay in “Enemy” Territory?

Muslim scholars writing about the legal situation of Muslims living under non‐Muslim rule during the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries were primarily concerned with whether Muslims should be allowed to live under non‐Muslim rule or whether they should emigrate (or go on hijra) from it. Two ?anbalī legists, Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) and Ibn Mufli? (d. 763/1362), both of whom lived and wrote in Damascus (Ayyūbid and Mamlūk, respectively), address this issue in their legal works (fiqh). Their scholarship, when compared with that of the ?anbalī scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), is instructive, particularly when one considers differences between these scholars’ experiences of non‐Muslim rule. A guiding question is how experience may shape (or fail to shape) a jurist's position on hijra, since the events of the time (the Crusades and, later, the Mongol invasions) forced Muslims living under non‐Muslim control to decide whether they must leave such lands. Loyalty to one's school (taqlīd) appears to have influenced the jurists most in their thinking, but experience shaped how they justified their positions on whether a Muslim must emigrate from lands under non‐Muslim control.