Published: 6 August 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
THE YOUTHFUL MAN in cut-off shorts and sandals punches in the security code of a nondescript apartment building in the centre of this desert city, bounds up its three flights of stairs, and announces, “this is our kibbutz”.
It’s a jarring declaration for anyone familiar with Israel’s iconic kibbutzim – the verdant, mostly agricultural socialist cooperatives that helped pioneer pre-state Israel and define the country’s borders.
Yet in this so-called urban kibbutz, 16 members live here in four apartments, including members with children; another 14 members live in another building nearby, and a smattering live in apartments in the neighbourhood. Members share not only living space, but some of their possessions, and pool their incomes.
They also share a modern mission: building a rich communal life for themselves, and doing so in a low-income, underserved urban setting in Israel’s so-called periphery with the goal of improving life for local residents, specifically through education.
In the past two decades, some 220 urban cooperatives have been established across Israel, some in the form of kibbutzim and communes with shared economies, others in the shape of individuals or families who are economically independent but live in the same apartment buildings or neighbourhoods and see themselves as a unit.
FULL STORY Kibbutz in the city? The healing mission of Israel’s new communes (Christian Science Monitor)
Photo: Nir Sabo (left), Hyla Kemeny and Harel Felder on the rooftop of their urban kibbutz in Beersheba (Dina Kraft)
