We Were The Future

In this memoir, an Israeli woman born on a kibbutz recounts her childhood there and examines the movement’s effects on the nation.

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 in total equality. But there’s a dark side to the kibbutz, which has been criticized in later years, mainly by children who were raised in these communities, as an institution which victimized its offspring for the sake of ideology.

In this spare and lucid memoir, Neeman—a child of the kibbutz—draws on the collective memory of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who grew up in a kibbutz during their height and who intimately share their memories with her. We Were the Future is more than merely a compelling personal account of growing up in the kibbutz movement; it is an unstintingly honest examination of the perils of pioneering and a new lens through which to see the history of Israel.

Praise for We Were the Future

“An eye-opening look at a fascinating era in Israeli history and what happens when a child is part of a sociopolitical experiment.” —Kirkus Review

“Readers curious about life on a kibbutz in the 1960s will love this poetic autobiography. Readers who have never wondered about life on a kibbutz should read this book anyway, as they will be well rewarded. . . . The history of the movement and [Neeman’s] own kibbutz are deftly woven together, and readers come away with a sense of this not as merely an autobiography of an individual woman but as the story of the hopes, dreams, and struggles of an entire movement. A spare, and startling book.” —Christine Engel, Booklist

“A highly recommended introduction to the kibbutz movement.” —Library Journal

“Both beautifully lyric and devastatingly illuminating.” —The Times of Israel