Day Seven: The Arava Valley
Day Six: Kibbutz Lotan
After our meeting with the minister, we suffered rush-hour traffic one more time, fought our way out of Tel Aviv and headed south, past Beer-Sheva (where years ago I visited the market, bought a keffiyeh like the typical young tourist, and later saw several Bedouin men running beside my bus, laughing and shouting, “Arafat! Arafat!”) and, as night fell, descended off the plateau of Negev Desert and down into the Arava Valley. We dropped our bags in a guest room at Kibbutz Lotan and then woke the next morning for breakfast and a tour of the kibbutz’s innovative eco-education facilities.
Netta, a resident (but not a member), gave us a brief history of Lotan, and then led us to the Bustan, the student quarters where she also lives—a series of energy-efficient mud-covered straw-bale huts, like earthen igloos or Luke Skywalker’s home on Tatooine. We tried out some of the solar ovens and then walked to the Ecokef, a demonstration park and teaching area, with a cool playground made up of clayed-over garbage, composting toilets and an organic garden, where we plundered tea leaves and the last of their tomatoes. “Permaculture is my religion,” Netta told us. And it’s here on Lotan (where members also practise Reform Judaism) that newcomers get initiated into this philosophy of living lightly on the land.
After lunch, we hooked up with Alex Cicelsky, the director of research and development at Lotan’s Center for Creative Ecology, and had a long, wide-ranging and engaging conversation about the history of this unique kibbutz, its mix of spiritual and ecological philosophies (an environmental spin on tikkun olan), the challenges of building eco-friendly buildings, and other topics related to how ecological literacy has sprouted out of the communal life of Lotan. He invited us to the kabalat shabat ceremony later that evening and for Friday night dinner, where we met some of the students and volunteers. The song and prayer and shared meal helped us appreciate the melding of spiritual and communal life in this fascinating desert community.
The only disappointment of the day? The sign on the gate to the swimming pool: “Closed due to sandstorm.”
Day Five: Tel Aviv
Coming up: A consciousness-expanding journey into the desert…
Day Four: Jaffa and Beit Shemesh
Sadaka-Reut
We gave ourselves more time and fought our way through the traffic jam on the main highway. This time we arrived a half0hour early to our destination: the Sadaka Reut organization near the Old City. There, we met with Lena and Jawad, both 19, and Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian respectively. They’ve been living together with six other young people as part of “The Commune”, a one-year experiment in co-existence and co-operation. (Imagine “The Real World: Israel” with less binge-drinking, fewer cameras and way more political activism.”) They are amazingly passionate individuals doing impressive activities; every month they collectively organize a political or educational act: erasing racist graffiti, protesting house demolitions, producing educational videos about Gaza.
Jaffa can be a tough neighbourhood, we’d heard, and we saw evidence of that after leaving Sadaka Reut. Several police cars and ambulances had stopped by a house, and an Arab woman was crying on the sidewalk. Attendants with stretchers rushed through a door. We asked a nearby parking lot attendant what had happened. “There was a shooting,” he shrugged. “Someone got hit.” Time to get out of Jaffa.
Kibbutz Tamuz
After a swim at Neve Shalom, we drove to the town of Beit Shemesh and visited Kibbutz Tamuz—an urban kibbutz, which I’d heard so much about last year but had yet to see in person. There, Yiftah Goldman, one of the members, showed us around and gave us a history of the community, which combines urban co-housing and communal economics with a sense of social purpose. Tamuz has struggled recently, however, as Beit Shemesh has become an increasingly ultra-Orthodox town; these new religious residents have been resistant to cooperating with the Tamuz residents in the types of social projects that drew them to the city in the first place. That said, Tamuz looks like a wonderful place to raise a family, amongst close friends, with an open green space where residents gather and talk as the sun goes down. Again, we left with our heads full of new ideas and new ways of living.