ovided on the basis of need and/or seniority in the community, there is little emphasis placed on occupation, and no stigma is attached to jobs which are often considered menial in the outside world, such as cleaning lavatories. In fact, contrary to practice in the outside world, where scholars and professionals hold high-prestige positions, in the kibbutz system, physical labor is highly valued--in fact, "the further removed from physical labor, the less prestige a job confers" (16). The emphasis placed on the importance of physical labor is so strong that chaverim are subject to excessive feelings of guilt when they do not work, even if their absence is due to sickness or some other reasonable cause (16). Spiro even reports that he, as an outsider, fell prey to this philosophy. For the sake of his research, he was allowed to pay for some of his expenses and work for others; when he was forced to cut his work hours further, he discovered he was able to do even less work on his research because his feelings of guilt were so strong (18).
The concept of personal freedom is also a soli
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