A small community deep in the Negev desert in southern Israel invites visitors to connect with nature and learn to live more consciously.
My first visit to Israel was as a teen volunteer at a kibbutz, and after 25 years, I was back to stay at the country’s newest one, Kibbutz Lotan. These small agrarian collectives (whose name means “gathering” in Hebrew) were established at the beginning of the twentieth century as a communal, egalitarian way of life and work for Jewish immigrants and settlers. Today, there are approximately 270 such communities spread throughout Israel.
The kibbutz system’s goals evolved over time, and it came to play a role in defining the borders of the new state of Israel. Late in the 1930s, Many of these communities were founded in the Negev and other outlying desert areas in order to claim land that they hoped would be included in a future Jewish state. After cultivating the once-fertile land, these communities also contributed to the development of the nation’s highly acclaimed agricultural industry through advances such as drip irrigation technology, which Israel pioneered in the 1960s and is now used globally. The kibbutz movement has been at the forefront of global agricultural technology, from water conservation systems to pest control innovations.
Originally, a kibbutz’s wealth and income were shared among its members, and profits were reinvested in the community. Today, roughly 75% of these collectives have shifted to a more privatised model, providing members with greater financial independence and the ability to work away from the kibbutz while still residing there. Meals were traditionally prepared and eaten communally, but more and more kibbutz members are eating as families at home. However, all communal matters, such as building renovations or allocating funds for the kibbutz’s children to attend university, are still done through voting, and jobs are assigned through rotation, choice, or skill sets.
However, as time passes, Many young families are being drawn away from these rural collectives and into towns and cities by economic opportunities. As a result, since the 2000s, the kibbutz movement has been steadily declining. Kibbutz Lotan, located four hours south of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has 200 residents and is expanding. It has also discovered a new reason for being. Lotan, established in 1983, is the only kibbutz educating tourists about sustainable living while also changing how tourists experience Israeli culture and transforming people’s relationships with food and the environment.
Years ago, I discovered the kibbutz’s bohemian “eco campus” on social media. Visitors can get a taste of communal living by visiting a series of sustainable, carbon-neutral mud domes.
Tourism is one of the three means of funding for the kibbutz, which also has a separate guest house, along with a dairy farm and extensive date orchards.
[The kibbutz] feels like a very beautiful window into Israeli life and culture
Lotan visitors understand that their trip will not be a typical vacation, so I rolled up my sleeves with my work clothes in hand. From Sunday to Thursday, we worked from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., learning everything from gardening to seed cutting. Anyone can drop in for a few nights or sign up for Lotan’s month-long academic courses, where they can learn skills like solar cooking with a box oven and building functional objects out of mud. They can also see how compost is used to grow vegetables in the organic garden and fuel the kibbutz’s two biogas systems, a completely renewable source of energy.
The air-conditioned mud domes (made of clay, sand, straw, and water) use 60% less energy to heat and cool than other arid-region structures. They are surrounded by endless mountains in the distance, and at night, the sky transforms into a plethora of stars. From the waterless composting toilets to the solar-powered hot water showers, lighting, and biogas-powered kitchen, everything on the eco campus is environmentally friendly. The fruits and vegetables you eat are grown on the small kibbutz farm or on nearby Israeli farms using Israeli methodologies and techniques, such as using brackish water from aquifers beneath the Negev, to grow a diverse array of crops ranging from cherry tomatoes to avocados, which are more native to the Mediterranean than the Middle East. The journey from Israel’s two largest cities to Lotan is an adventure in and of itself, taking you through the colourful and dramatic rocky desert landscape. I drove 324 kilometres south from Tel Aviv to the kibbutz, past winding mountain ranges and the picturesque Dead Sea coast, a vivid landscape of blues, salt formations, and sinkholes. Only sporadic date plantations punctuated the cratered, Martian-like landscape. I stopped halfway through the four-hour drive at one of the Dead Sea’s public beaches, Ein Bokek – the lowest point on Earth. As I lay back in the hot water, I felt weightless in the silky – almost oily – water that is nearly 10 times saltier than any ocean.
The work at Lotan was hands-on and dirty, which was the ideal way to reconnect with nature. My first day consisted of learning how to plant and care for sweet potatoes. After that, a group of three other tourists and I planted vegetable seeds such as kale, chard, and pak choi, all of which would be enjoyed by future kibbutz residents. Mark Naveh, the program’s director, a soft-spoken man whose Hebrew revealed his Australian upbringing, later demonstrated how to build a new mud bench for the eco campus.
There was a one-hour break for breakfast during the five-hour workday, which usually consisted of eggs, salad, and pita bread – a traditional Israeli breakfast sourced from the kibbutz. The rest of the day was free to enjoy the kibbutz pool or take the bus to nearby attractions such as Timna Park, which has popular hiking and biking trails and where visitors can see indigenous animals such as oryx and ibex.
The kibbutz is also well-known among bird watchers. It’s on one of the world’s busiest migratory routes, attracting half a billion birds from more than 230 species each year from Europe, Western Asia, and Africa.
