Say the word “Israel” today and it sparks pictures of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades, the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and producing the deserts bloom: the famous kibbutznik. Just what exactly ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the property called Palestine?

Chasing Utopia: The continuing future of the Kibbutz within a Divided Israel attracts readers into the quest for answers to the defining political issue of our era.

Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life being a kibbutz volunteer and profits to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge an improved long term together. Crisscrossing the nation, Leach chronicles the controversial decrease of Israel’s kibbutz motion and witnesses a renaissance of the original vision for a peaceable utopia in unforeseen corners of the Guaranteed Property. Chasing Utopia is an interesting and enlightening portrait of the divided country where hope persists against the chances.