Page 6 - C.A.L.L. #41 - Summer 2016

member holds their own job and manages their own finances. They invested heavily in local schools and
communal activities. They have attracted dozens more households to the area, and have been able to
work from within to drastically improve the educational prospects for residents of the area.

Our group spent several days, including a Shabbat filled with celebration, at Shuva, a moshav near the
Gaza border. Shuva was founded by Moroccan Jewish immigrants in the 1950s, but many families left
over the years. In the last decade, a group of “eco-Hassidic” young Jews has joined the moshav, and the
two groups are working to revitalize it together. The new residents have built a Waldorf-inspired
preschool and lower elementary school, which we were able to visit. They are very serious about infusing
ecological concepts and Jewish learning into every aspect of life.

Celebrating with the Torah at Shuva.

I was just blown away by my experience on this tour, and feel like I can learn so very much from them
about what the Berkeley Moshav can be. First and foremost is the lesson that the community comes
before the building. I have been thinking that Berkeley Moshav will exist when we open up our co-
housing project and live there. But in reality, the community exists now and deserves nurturing and
investment. I learned about the tenacity, dedication and flexibility required to actualize a project like all
moving into the same building. I was impressed by the methods of working in small groups to make
decisions, operating from a place of trust and respect, and putting the community before the individual.
I also witnessed the extreme lengths to which many intentional communities are taking communal living
– sharing jobs, income, cars, nearly everything. I realized that Berkeley Moshav does not need to be in
that place to be successful. We just need to be who we are.

If you are interested in learning more about the tour and the communities we visited, please check out
the Hazon blog: http://hazon.org/news-musings/hazon-blog/. Each day one of the members of the
group (including me) wrote an entry about the happenings of the day.

This was an incredibly rich week. I look forward to learning more about the future successes of other
members of the tour, witnessing the flourishing of the intentional communities movement in Israel, and
applying lessons learned from this tour to the building of the Berkeley Moshav.

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