Page 15 - C.A.L.L. #47 - Winter 2020/2021

So, what’s next on the list? After satisfying their basic needs, people are craving a sense of

belonging, identity and meaning. The aspiration to become a better version of one’s self
comes from there, not from egocentric selfishness. In fact, data shows that almost half
Millennials would move to less paying jobs if they offer a better sense of meaning and serve
a greater purpose than themselves. One can only wonder what would such a poll show in our
parents’ generation? But again, it’s not people who changed but rather the circumstances,
and today even a relatively low paying nonprofit job enables higher quality of life than
corporate jobs of the past.

However, the unprecedented
economic-technological leapfrog has

its side-effects. We all know of the
environmental and immigration crises,
but there’s another one: loneliness.
According to a recently published
Harvard research, loneliness is
already an epidemic, riskier to health
than physical inactivity, and almost as
risky as smoking. The UK government
even established a new Ministry to
deal with loneliness. And no, social media doesn’t alleviate loneliness. Research shows it
actually increases it. Like we still don’t have a better solution to hunger than food, we still
don’t have a better solution to loneliness than families and communities. What we do have is

new technologies to produce those.

One idea that has been tested successfully in Israel and other countries, rather lately, is
Intentional Communities. An Intentional Community is a small and non-hierarchal group of
people who have consciously decided to live together spatially and temporally around a shared
purpose. In this sense, an intentional community can serve as a framework for both individual
growth and moral behavior, as well as give people the opportunity to work collaboratively to
make the world a better place. To become the better version of themselves.

In an Intentional community, togetherness is not a mere byproduct of something else, nor is

it simply a means to other ends, but it is an intention in and of itself, what sociologists call a
“primary group.” At the very same time, the group gathers for a purpose larger than itself,
what sociologists call a “secondary group.” It seems fuzzy, I know, but that is not because
Millennials are fuzzier human being than their predecessors. We have the same genes and
underneath our neocortex we have the same lizard brain. The world has become fuzzier and
harder to make sense of, and those who will succeed in attracting Millennials, the leaders of
the new world, are those who will offer – no, sorry – create with them the appropriate
complex response.

Rabbi Aharon Ariel Lavi is a social entrepreneur who believes that Judaism can inform all
walks of life. He is Co-founder of MAKOM: the Israeli umbrella organization of intentional
communities, and of Hazon’s Hakhel Jewish Intentional Communities Incubator.

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