Page 5 - C.A.L.L. #23 - Spring 2004

From the Secretary’s Desk

Dear Reader,

We received a fine selection of community greeting cards for the festive season.
Among them, Solheimar's snowy Icelandic scene was especially beautiful, but
perhaps the most symbolic was Niederkaufungen's buildings with a
superimposed rainbow. (The latter is the Biblical sign that mankind will not be
destroyed, despite all its efforts to the contrary.)

Only one Community Calendar reached us, but it is outstanding. (Were any
others published?) Damanhur has not only issued another most aesthetic calendar, but this time added lots
of information about this very special spiritual/artistic commune in Italy.

In Iowa, at the end of June, you will have an opportunity to meet with communitarians and community
scholars from various parts of the world. The ICSA (International Communities Study Association)
Conference will give you a chance to hear – and talk – about all the topics that concern you, plus others
that maybe should. If it's half as good as the 2001 Conference at ZEGG, Germany, it will be well worthwhile.
Unfortunately, no one from the Desk will be present – because of the expense to get there.

Although "community tourism" to this part of the world has been very slack since the last report, quite a
number of visits are planned for the near future. As always, the exception is the German Catholic
communal movement, the Integrierte Gemeinde. Their members keep coming here and 4 of them are at the
moment residing at their centre, Bet Shalmon, near Jerusalem…. At the Christmas/Chanuka get-together of
the Urfeld Circle, some 40 Israelis met up with no less than 10 IG members! The official programme was
about various types of education in community, but no less important was the personal contact.

Last time I wrote about two separate attempts to set up Arab/Jewish communities. Sadly, but perhaps not
surprisingly, one has collapsed for lack of potential members. The other has found a couple possible sites,
but here too there may well be a problem of membership. Good luck!

I'm continually trying to establish new contacts, often without success. As a result, interesting letters have
arrived from members of 2 different co-houses in Sweden, one of which is for over-40s only. (See pages 22-
25) A promising start has been made in contact with Korea and Japan…. Old correspondents are no less
valued. Do keep writing. I promise to reply.… If you find English too difficult, we may have the answer. If
you write in German, French, Spanish, Dutch or even Portuguese, we'll be able to translate your letter.

Communal interest in Israel centres on the urban kibbutzim and the newer communes of the youth
movement “graduates”. The kibbutz movement press gives them a lot of attention and even the general
media has discovered them. Simultaneously, new "private" communes – that is, not linked the youth
movements - are being set up, but are not easy to contact…. In this connection, the Desk held a well-
attended forum of community representatives at a big get-together on the Festival of Sukkot.

At the same time, the problems of the kibbutz movement are receiving not a little publicity, most of it not
positive. How Israel has changed and become more like the big wide world! (See page 26 for the first part
of an up-to-date survey.)

A new discussion forum for intentional communities can be found at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IC-info/. This, of course, by no means supercedes the veteran forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/INTENTIONALCOMMUNITIES/.

The hard-pressed Kibbutz Movement was also forced to cut our modest budget. So, a small donation from
YOU, instead of a subscription to CALL, will be very welcome indeed…. And if you know of someone (or
some organization) who might be prepared to make a more serious contribution to our activities, do let us
know and we'll do the rest.

Yours ever hopefully,
Sol Etzioni, Kibbutz Tzora, DN Shimshon, Israel 99803
solrene@tzora.co.il

Please note! Because of the budgetary cutbacks, our old e-address is no longer valid. You'll have to use mine
from now on. The phone number too has changed to (972) 3 5346 078. Sorry about the mix-up!

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