Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Oh, Pioneers: Urban Kibbutzniks Cultivate Community in Brooklyn

By Victor Wishna

As another Friday evening sets in, the approach of Shabbat brings a sense of pause and anticipation to the members of Kvutzat Orev. In the kitchen, Michal keeps one eye on the oven and another on the stove. Eugenia and Yotam chop vegetables and slice bread.

A few feet away, silhouetted by the waning sunlight through their bedroom window, Daniel and Karen pore over the week’s parsha—the portion of the Torah designated to be read on each Shabbat—in preparation for the evening’s program. Tal, meanwhile, greets the first of more than a dozen guests who will file in for dinner.

The residents of Kvutzat Orev refer to themselves as a kibbutz, but don’t look for them, say, in the shadows of the Golan Heights or anywhere near the river Jordan. They live much closer to New York City’s East River, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn—a neighborhood populated largely by African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants that is also home to a sizable Hasidic community. The shadows cast here by the late evening, pre-Shabbat light reflect the contours of the once proud limestone town homes that line the avenue.

It’s not the least bit unusual for twentysomethings in New York to share space. But besides a narrow duplex apartment, these six roommates also share a sense of mission, a set of social justice ideals—even a bank account. Reared in the summer camps and afterschool programs of Hashomer Hatzair (literally, “The Youth Guard”), the century-old socialist-Zionist youth movement, the half-dozen friends are, in their own way, holding true to a collective way of life that once spawned dozens of kibbutzim in the Land of Israel.

Whereas Israel’s early pioneers set out to revitalize the land seed by seed, the founders of this urban model are cultivating community. (In fact, the backyard vegetable garden was recently covered over with artificial turf to create an extra gathering space for the many friends and friends-of-friends who visit.) They very much see themselves as heirs to that legacy of reclamation. “We’re no longer draining swamps,” says Tal Beery, who spends his workdays as director for one of Hashomer’s summer camps. “But we like to say that we are draining social swamps— the idea of building an egalitarian, trusting, productive, loving community.”

Shabbat is essential to that mission and plays a key role in the weekly rhythm here. Guests are commonplace; Orev members play host to everyone from family to friends, old and new, to members of other Jewish youth movements. Orev is actually one of three urban kibbutzim in New York City and Toronto, group homes where young people embrace the concept of community to the extreme. But the idea of having some friends over on Shabbat, sharing each other’s company and cooking, is something anyone can do, regardless of their living situation.

In Hebrew, kvutza means group or collective; orev means crow or raven, the bird that Noah sent out from the ark to look for dry land before later sending a dove. Although it was the dove that famously returned with an olive branch, some Torah commentators suggest the orev served a vital function in the search. “One of the morals in that story is the significance of playing an active role in a processthat you believe in,” says Eugenia Manwelyan, “even if you’re not the one who will ultimately make the great accomplishment.”

The formal history of Kvutzat Orev begins in 2006, when the friends—some in college, some just out—moved to Israel, as part of a larger group, and established an urban kibbutz in a mixed development town where they taught drama classes to Arab and Jewish children. By the fall of 2007, they agreed to relocate to New York, partly because they saw an opportunity to take what they had practiced in Israel and apply it in somewhat less hospitable environs—Orev members joke that crows and ravens are known for being able to thrive in harsh conditions.

Tal says that sharing one bank account for all the members is crucial to their mission-oriented approach—it removes all the “discomforts” of discrepancies in income. Karen Isaacs is a fulltime grad student, Eugenia puts in time at a café and does event planning, Michal Jalowski works “about a hundred jobs,” Daniel Roth teaches kindergarten at a

Jewish day school, and Yotam Moran works with Tal in the Manhattan office of Hashomer Hatzair as its North American program director.

On this particular spring Shabbat, some twenty guests are planned, all of whom will be counselors at Hashomer Hatzair’s summer camps in upstate New York and Ontario. Upstairs, the many pizzas Michal began preparing three hours earlier are just about ready—there’s a mixture of vegetarian pizzas, with and without cheese, along with more inventive hummus-and-cheese creations. The kvutza gets much of its groceries from a local co-op, organic and locally grown when possible. Four of the six are vegetarians, with one dairyintolerant “lactard,” and everyone’s needs are met.

Eugenia and Michal do a lot of the shopping and cooking, but there’s no “chore wheel” here; everyone seems to know when to pitch in. “That’s one of our biggest strengths, that we have a sense of responsibility to each other,” Tal says. Michal, pulling another pizza from the oven, agrees: “Preparing food for just yourself when other people are around is definitely a faux pas.”

As tonight’s guests make themselves comfortable, there is a sense of spirited devotion in the air, but the kvutza’s style of Shabbat observance is anything but traditional. Says Daniel: “We are constantly recreating traditions for ourselves, and we strive to balance past, present, and future.”

When the time comes for the evening rituals, not a single prayer is spoken. Instead, Daniel asks for two volunteers to make a dedication as they light each of the two votives set out as Shabbat candlesticks. (“I light this candle to celebrate the connection between generations,” Karen offers— tonight’s crowd ranges in age from 15 to 27.) A pint glass of wine is then passed around, with each guest offering up a salient thought or two before taking a sip. Most touch on uncertainty and change, from a high school senior’s looming college decision to a teen’s excitement over her new cockapoo, Timbo.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about pirates this week…” offers a shaggy young man draped over a stuffed chair. Daniel raises the challah and offers a reflection in lieu of the blessing: “[Making] the challah requires time and space, fields and seasons. Time and space are also the foundations of community.” There is a silent amen.

These traditions, too, will be open to reinvention in weeks to come. Another Friday night might begin with a song in the round, itself an act of community in which everyone gets a personalized “Shabbat Shalom” set to music. The point, Tal explains, is that nothing should ever become routine.

Even the apartment the kvutza has called home for the last year and a half will soon become a casualty of change. Notes on a dry-erase board in the kitchen map out different scenarios for moving and expanding the community. Tal says they now have a group of about 15 people interested in living together—if not in one apartment or house, then hopefully near the same intersection or subway stop. “The really revolutionary thing is that people don’t often get to live close to the people they care about,” he says. “What we’re doing is making that a priority. There is a real quality of life shift when you live close to your closest friends.”

“We are an intentional community,” Tal adds.

And whether or not everyone would opt for the lifestyle they’ve chosen, it’s hard to find a dictionary definition of community—“a unified body of individuals;” “people with common interests living in a common location;” “a group linked by a common policy”—that doesn’t apply rightly to those who cohabitate in Apartment 1L. By bringing in outsiders, as many as 40 on a single Friday night, Daniel says they can share that community for an hour or two and plant seeds every week. “To be a Jew is to take responsibility for others,” he says.

“Shabbat is all about stopping, reflecting, bringing people together,” Tal echoes. “To me, faith is about community, coming together over a shared legacy, a shared story—and food! It’s amazing.”

He shrugs, as if what he’s just said should be—no, is—the most obvious thing in the world. “On Shabbat, everything just stops, and you’re together,” he says. “That’s the point.”

Tags: Area Codes

Posted by Sarah, Friday, November 27th, 2009, 2:03 pm, Area Codes.