Kibbutz Deganiya Aleph announced yesterday that after a three-year-long debate, the kibbutz members had voted to "privatize" the kibbutz. In doing so, Deganiya Aleph joined the 150 other kibbutzim that have chosen to adopt this path.

The announcement was received with a lot of interest by the  Israeli and international press. The press conference in the Old Deganiya Courtyard, the renovated site of the original kibbutz farm, was well attended by media representatives from around the world. The headlines were as expected - the Mother Kibbutz (as Deganiya Aleph is known) has gone private, marking the end of the kibbutz idea and ideals. The free economy has won, were some of the other headlines, while the extremists claimed that the kibbutz is now officially dead. All these make good headlines, but are very far from the truth.

Basically, what the members of Deganiya  Aleph voted for was that, on one hand, members would be paid a differential salary for their work and, on the other hand, members would pay for the services that they receive from the kibbutz. This does not make the kibbutz into a private community - far from it, even though it is a deviation from the socialist motto of "everyone will work according to his ability and receive according to his needs." The kibbutz still retains responsibility for the older members of the society, for the needy, and for the basic needs of those that cannot earn a salary, meaning that it will allow them to obtain the services that they need from the kibbutz. The kibbutz also has set a limit on the difference in salaries for different jobs. The director general of the kibbutz factory or enterprise will not be able to receive a salary that is 50 or a hundred times bigger than that of the workers on the factory floor. The members of the kibbutz are still the owners of the kibbutz production facilities and companies and they remain the beneficiaries of the profits of their assets.

The media is right, Deganiya Aleph is a symbol. However, it is not a symbol of decay or decline, but a symbol of the success of the kibbutz idea. Deganiya Aleph was the first kibbutz ever founded. Its name included the letter Aleph (the Hebrew equivalent of A) because its founders believed that there would be many more Deganiyas (deganiya means cornflower). And shortly after Deganiya Aleph was founded in 1910, its next door neighbor, Deganiya Beth (B), was established. The communal ideals of Deganiya Aleph were not born out of ideology but out of necessity. It was the only way, the founders thought, that a viable Jewish farming community could be created in the Land of Israel under the conditions existing in the Ottoman Empire. By the time the third Deganiya was about to be established, after World War I, the Ottoman Empire was dead and the kibbutz already had changed. Instead of a small community of dedicated individuals, the ideology now believed in a large all-encompassing community that would be able to embrace a large amount of members. While the first two kibbutzim were known as a kvutza (small communities), the third, which was founded 10 years after the establishment of Deganiya Aleph,  was referred to as a kibbutz (a large community). And it was not named Deganiya Gimmel (C), but Ein Harod.  In 1922, a new kibbutz movement came into being: Hashomer Hatzair. Its first kibbutz, Beit Alpha, was founded in 1922. In 1923, the kibbutz movement split again, with many kibbutzim breaking into two and creating two different kibbutzim that existed side by side, with what were, at the time, deep ideological differences.

The strength of the 97-year-old kibbutz movement is not in its ideology, but in its ability to change as a community. The results of yesterday's vote at Deganiya Aleph, after a three-year debate among the members, provide an interesting insight into the strength of this ability to change. 85 percent of the members voted for the change, among them the vast majority of the older members of the kibbutz - those who will not benefit from the "salaries" that are now to be paid.

Of the 270 kibbutzim in Israel, 150 have voted for "privatization" so far and 50 of them have chosen to remain fully "cooperative." This process is not, as many of the headlines screamed yesterday, a process of decay and decline, but part of what has made the kibbutz such a sustainable movement - its ability to change. The kibbutz today is far from dead, it is alive and renewing itself and coming out of a 20-year-long crisis. The living force of the new kibbutz is easy to measure. All you have to do is to check the growing number of people who are joining the long waiting list to become kibbutzniks.