[From Yedioth Hakibbutz, 2.12.2011]
In Memory of a Friend and Historian
Henry Near, member of Kibbutz Beit Haemek, passed away on 27 November, aged 82. He was Professor Emeritus in the Jewish History and Education Departments at Oranim Academic College and the University of Haifa.
Henry, who graduated from Oxford with honors, was awarded his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and wrote numerous books and articles on the kibbutz, religions, and philosophy. He was a graduate and secretary of British Habonim, and in 1955 immigrated to Israel with his late wife Aliza, where he joined his friends and other movement members for hagshama in Beit Haemek.
In the kibbutz he stood out as a dedicated worker and head of the banana branch; he worked in education, teaching, as principal of the local school, served as kibbutz secretary and chaired numerous committees, mainly in the social and educational fields. Henry was active and involved in kibbutz life to his last day. He was also coordinator of the Ichud Hakvutsot Vehakibbutzim Youth Department, and was an active and involved member of the International Communal Studies Association.
In his many years of work Henry combined spheres and activities that on the one hand are possible only in the kibbutz, and on the other, almost impossible in it. He succeeded in this because he was outstanding in his endeavors, and because he managed to persuade the kibbutz to allow him to engage in research and teaching.
Henry was the world's leading expert on the history of the kibbutz movement. Only he engaged in subjects – in addition to his research – such as the image of the halutz; hired labor; cooperative organizations in the Second Aliya period; the pioneer women, and many other varied topics. His book, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, was published in two volumes in 1992 and 1997 by Oxford University Press. It is the authoritative work on the kibbutz movement, and the primary source for the history of the kibbutz for every researcher and scholar in the world.
Henry wrote the narrative of the history of the kibbutz movement; the long road it took from the formation of the first kvutza, and the ideological values that accrued over the years. He emphasized the importance of youth in building the kibbutz and the havruta motif, or at least “the memory of havruta”; the positioning of the kibbutz as a realistic society constantly engaged with the utopia that guided it; the disparity between the desire to be a “serving elite” and the unrealistic aspiration to be a “leadership elite” – the vast gap between rhetoric and action.
Henry succeeded in conveying feelings stemming from his belonging to the kibbutz and his great endeavors in it from the ideological, practical, and personal standpoints, as a man who engaged in education, society, absorption, administration, agriculture, work in the movement, dealing practically with equality, self-labor, and movement and party politics.
My dear, erudite and strong-minded friend: I shall miss you.
Ronnie Azati
Director, Yad Tabenkin Archives
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