Hakibbutz Hadati

   The Federation of Religious Zionist Kibbutzim in Israel, affiliated since its inception in 1934 with the religious Zionist Mizrachi Movement and the National Religious Party. The first religious kibbutz, Tirat Tzevi, was established in 1930 by German-Jewish immigrants (see ALIYA) affiliated with such religious Zionist youth movements as Hashomer Hadati and Bnei Akiva. The movement's founders were motivated by a desire to integrate the labor-socialist principles central to early Zionist initiatives in Palestine with Orthodox religious observance. It arose in part as an Orthodox response to the secularist tendencies exhibited by many of the early kibbutzim. Many of its earliest settlements, such as the Etzion Bloc (Gush Etzion) south of Jerusalem, were destroyed in the War of Independence (1948—49). After the Six-Day War (1967), it moved to immediately reestablish several of them. Elements of the religious kibbutz movement are affiliated with Gush Emunim.