The Eco-Village Attitude

I'm leaving in just about three weeks, and I didn't know I could get this excited for something! As stressful as getting ready for this semester has been (especially since I am doing it all from Eagle River, WI, at camp) I am starting to feel ready: flight's been booked, applied for my student visa, started making introductions via email with the other 3 kids, and am making some headway on my pre-semester assignments. I've been doing a lot of reading, and just finished the first draft of my first "learning journal entry" so I thought I would share it with you all. I titled it "The Eco-Village Attitude":

For the last year, since I’ve known I would be spending a semester at Kibbutz Lotan, I have been subject to countless jokes about the “mud hut” I will be living in, and the waterless toilets I will be using. Many of these jokes are my own, however I know that what I am about to experience is far more than taking eco-showers and cooking in a solar-oven. An eco-village is an attitude; a kehilah (community) that says “we can do it” when facing a challenge. 

Kibbutz Lotan, a member of the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN), specializes in environmentally friendly practices from composting and recycling organic waste to alternative building materials and an eco-campus neighborhood. The people at Lotan have committed to the concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world). However, just as in many other ecovillages, Lotan is dedicated to not only environmental activism. Residents of Lotan are also passionate about social justice and equality, striving to raise quality of life for people both on and off the kibbutz. This ecovillage is one of only two kibbutzim in Israel that is a member of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, and written in Lotan’s Mission Statement is an effort to create a “progressive expression of Jewish religion and culture into our day-to-day life through mitzvot.” Lotan’s vision is irrefutably bright, yet like all other ecovillages and kibbutzim, Lotan faces many difficulties.

There is no universally accepted definition of the term eco-village; they vary from traditional communities attempting to maintain small footprints to research retreat centers to living laboratories. However, most have many commonalities: Firstly, maybe most importantly, work in ecovillages is about process (not product). This means that ecovillages are not perfect, completed places, but instead communities on their own path towards success. Even the Findhorn Foundation eco-village, the community with the smallest environmental footprint in the modern world, is not entirely self-sustaining; “...if everyone on Earth lived like a Findhorn Community member, we’d still need several planets to support our lifestyles” says Daniel Greenberg. Eco-villages are also linked by a number of features including group decision making, mindfulness practices, ecological designs and interests in social justice. 

Many of my friends and family were surprised that I would be interested in spending four months at an eco-village. I am coming from a stereotypical suburban life––I “can’t survive” without my daily Starbucks coffee, hate bugs, and spend more time on my computer than is healthy. Nevertheless, I think that mine matches the eco-village attitude. I am strong willed, and when I set my mind to something I almost always find a way to achieve success. I am passionate about social justice and equality, and am creative in finding ways to solve problems. I love to learn hands on, and my experience with theater has helped me to appreciate a process-over-product way of thinking. Also, my time at a Jewish camp for 11 summers in a row has taught me the value of community. 

I hope you will continue reading as I start to post more regularly when I get to Israel! It's weird trying to write papers from camp... not exactly the same mindset here as at school. However, it has been fun to start exploring what my next four months will be like! Here's a picture of the "dome-atories" I will be in.

Welcome to My Journey

Although writing this post may be considered––and probably is––premature, take it as a sign of my excitement for what lies ahead! I hope that you will continue to follow me through this blog as I study abroad in Israel this fall. For four months I will be participating in Kibbutz Lotan: Peace, Justice and the Environment with an organization called Living Routes. Taking courses on peace and social justice in Israel/Palestine, sustainable design and construction, permaculture, Hebrew, and group dynamics, I hope to discover new things about myself, the world around me, and the ways I can make it better.

While the semester does not begin until August 20th (only 112 days away, but who’s counting?), my overwhelming amount of eagerness to begin my studies has led me to begin devouring the reading list. Keep in mind that other than The Hunger Games trilogy, I have not voluntarily read anything since the sixth grade––as much as I have enjoyed reading for CIS Intro to Literature this semester. Needless to say, I have never been this excited to read. However, as quick as I was to purchase the first few books, starting off with Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything was maybe not the best choice. It was neither brief nor easy...I lugged it around with me for a few months, at times considering giving up. I had never read a philosophy book before, and as tedious and confusing as it was, in the end I found it to be extremely eye-opening. In fact, I felt enlightened; my english class was beginning to explore metafiction and in avant-garde theater we were discussing post-modern art, when suddenly everything clicked! All of my academic classes started to come together in my mind, as I approached knowledge from a new post-modern perspective. Several months later, I still continue to find links to post-modern philosophy in several of my classes, and excitedly raise my hand to share what I learned from months of reading.

Next on the list was The Holocaust is Over, We Must Rise from Its Ashes by Avraham Burg. This book, highly controversial when first published in Israel, provides a very provocative criticism of Israeli politics and society. I found many of the points valid, and while I never have believed that Israel is totally correct in all of its actions, Burg highlights several issues that made me further understand motivational issues behind Israeli actions––I won’t be able to justify his points with a brief summary, but I would say this is a book worth reading if you are interested in hearing a unique perspective on Israel; Burg is a former Speaker of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and has held many important political offices in the country.

My next door neighbor lent me Einstein’s Rabbi, a fiction/philosophy book by Michael M. Cohen, a founding member of the Arava Institute (the leading environmental studies program in the Middle East, only a few miles away from Kibbutz Lotan). While it is not on the reading list for my program, and I still have a few more pages left, I am officially declaring this my favorite one (so far) – you have to read this book! It is a very easy read, and while the story is fictional the philosophies and facts about Albert Einstein are true. Did you know that David Ben-Gurion invited Einstein to be the second President of Israel in 1952? I didn’t. More importantly, this book invites readers to change their opinions about science vs. religion; society has come to think these are competing binaries and that one must choose between them...this is not the case! Albert Einstein was a deeply spiritual man, his faith and curiosity in the unknown leading him to make famous discoveries such as the theory of relativity. Seriously, read this book! It is super interesting and exciting, even if you don’t consider yourself at all religious. 

Next I’ll be reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace Begins Here: Palestinians and Israelis Listening to Each Other, and then An Introduction to Islam for Jews by Reuven Firestone. Other books on the list that I might read include a book on “ecopsychology” and one on the rise of heterosexuality with the invention of the “Jewish Man”. I doubt I’ll post again before arriving in Israel this August, but check back then! I look forward to reflecting on my mud-hut ecovillage lifestyle, classes, and overall experience - I’ll try to post pictures too, when I get the chance. If you have any suggestions for other related reading that I might find interesting, feel free to let me know! 

Lehitraot! (see ya later)