Transforming Kibbutz Research: Trust and Moral Leadership in the Rise and Decline of Democratic Cultures Reuven Shapira The Israeli communal settlements (kibbutz, pl. kibbutzim) were established a hundred years ago in Palestine. The kibbutz movements spearheaded the Zionist movement project to settle Jews on it. The settlers labored to set up just in egalitarian communities, inspired by the ideal of a combined national and personal redemption. Since the 1940s the kibbutz society engendered a voluminous political, ideological and scholarly literature. Now comes Dr. Shapira and exposes the most of these writings misunderstood essential aspects of the kibbutz. In particular, they did not treat the essentially non-democratic and unchanging higher echelons of kibbutz leaders and the numerous extraterritorial organizations and enterprises controlled by this powerful elite which became self-serving. Nor did they fully grasp the fact that the kibbutz has always been integrated in the wider society and shred many of its norms and beliefs. The anthropologists who studied the kibbutz were profoundly affected by the ideological statements of their interlocutors an, even more so, by the manner in which the socialist work ethos was translated into practice. The book's thorough analysis and explanation of the kibbutz movements as a whole overcomes these mistakes, will make it possible to overcome kibbutz current crisis and using its lessons for the invigorating of democratic work organizations elsewhere. Reuven Shapira was born, bred and joined for life Kibbutz Gan Shmuel. A senior lecturer of social anthropology and sociology in Western Galilee Academic College, Acre, Israel, he has held executive positions in Gan Shmuel, received PhD from Tel Aviv University, lectured in colleges and published extensively in Hebrew and English on kibbutz organizations.