of the kibbutz belonging to a party, and leaving the kibbutz meant abandoning a home, a job, security, a circle of friends, practically everything that makes up the life of a family, to start a completely new life in the unknown world outside. (The kibbutz would generally be composed of a group of people who had known each other since childhood, might have come to Palestine as a group, and belonged to the same party. Until quite recently, it was impossible for a kibbutz member to belong to a different party from his fellow kibbutzniks, as the commune itself was an integral part of the party machinery. Even today, in some of the Mapam kibbutzim, a witch hunt starts after every election to hnd out who the three or four anonymous dissidents were.) Outside the kibbutz, conditions were less extreme but not different. A party member woul live in a party housing scheme, work at a job provided by the party labor exchange and controlled by the party trade union, get a loan from the party credit bureau, read the party newspaper and move in party circles. Breaking party discipline would be for him a very serious thing indeed.
National business was conducted by agreements between party secretariats. Before the state was set up, the Zionist congresses, convening every few years in Europe, acted as a kind of parliament. The congresses were elected only in theory. In many countries, there was no individual membership in the Zionist organization; one became a member automatically by joining a Zionist party. The parties distributed the so-called shekels, a Zionist note bearing the name of ancient Hebrew coins and endowing its possessor with the right to vote. Quite often the actual voting would be dispensed with and the number of seats distributed among the parties by common agreement. As the leadership of Zionist parties hardly ever changed (it rarely does even today), the oldtimers knew each other and were used to cooperating, often in complete disregard of the violent denunciations with which they showered each other at election time.