A group of Habonim activists has chosen an unlikely location for their collective — an apartment in Brooklyn
Gil Browdy lives with five of his best friends in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, New York. Like most roommates, they divvy up chores such as mopping the kitchen or buying milk. But this is not your typical room-mate situation. The six share not only household duties, but a bank account, too. Browdy and friends, all alumni of progressive Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror, are living on an urban kibbutz in the big city.
“Our group started up when four of us working in the Habonim Dror office decided it was a lifestyle we’d like to consider,” says Browdy, 25, who has served as Habonim’s director for almost two years. “We’re not just living this way because we want to live with close friends. We’re trying to create a different style of human interaction that’s community-based. We want to use the lifestyle to make a change.”
Zionist youth groups have always played a part in Israel’s kibbutz movement, sending members to work the land as early as the 1920s. Habonim Dror and other groups even founded a number of kibbutzim throughout Israel. But in the 1980s, the original kibbutzim began to run out of steam.
“The dream of the kibbutzim of old was to settle the land and create a utopian society,” says Browdy, noting that many of the agrarian communities grew too large and became breeding grounds for mistrust. Kibbutzniks were then drawn to the big cities, where the capitalist way of life was markedly different.
But one Israeli youth group made it its mission to keep kibbutzim afloat — with a modern twist, that is. Noar Oved ve’Lomed decided to send its members to found small urban kibbutzim (which they called “kvutzot”) throughout Israel. Instead of focusing on agrarian issues, each kvutza was organised around social problems.
“Instead of settling the land, they settled society,” says Browdy. “We’re coming from the same value base, the same pioneering spirit of creating a new society [as the original kibbutzim]. We’re just in New York, where settling the land isn’t the way to go about it.” The kvutza has not yet decided what area of social justice to focus on, but it hopes to come up with a plan in the near future, whether pursuing volunteer work, using the Brooklyn space for progressive activities, or something else entirely.
While Browdy and company are unsure if this distinctly Israeli way of life has any chance of survival in a place like New York, they still decided they would like to “try to do it as best we can”.
In late July, the six Habonim Dror kvutza members — ranging in age from 24 to 26 — found a five-bedroom apartment that could accommodate them and moved in immediately. They ran into some rather comical hardships when it came to opening up a joint account at Bank of America. At first, the bank adamantly refused to put six people’s names on the account, saying that there were rules limiting the number of people that could be on a single account. Later the bank agreed to bend the rules, however.
“Everyone contributes what he or she can,” says Browdy, noting that some earn more and therefore contribute more, but that all have equal access to the account. “It takes an incredible amount of trust” to do this, he says. “However, if theft is something we have to be worried about, then we’re not in a place to be doing this.”
But while the fact that these Habonim Dror alumni have an astonishing degree of faith in one another, they are not the only ones.
In October 2007, Hashomer Hatzair, another Zionist youth group, started up its own kvutza, known as Kvutzat Orev, in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn. “It was a long process,” says Orev’s Daniel Roth. “Over the last few years, Hashomer’s been going through a rejuvenation in ideology as a youth movement and a life movement, where living on a kibbutz or making aliyah were no longer satisfactory. So we began
looking at the idea of an irbutz [or urban kibbutz].”
Kvutzat Orev’s members range in age from 21 to 26, and the group works similarly to Habonim Dror’s in that they pool their money in a single account. “We all agree that sharing a bank account — our means of survival — is a way of bringing us closer,” says Roth, a native of Toronto who has been involved with Hashomer Hatzair since he was a child. “It’s a way of breaking down walls in today’s society.” In addition to Orev, Hashomer has another kvutza in Toronto.
Orev’s members spent a year living together on a typical kibbutz in Israel, building trust and a framework for the future, before embarking on their Brooklyn initiative.
“The original kibbutz movement was the right revolution at the right time,” says Roth. “This is the right revolution at this time.”
Kvutza members make a point of spending time together every week. They try to eat Shabbat meals together, and set aside one afternoon, one evening and one night each week for each other. Habonim Dror even holds a weekly Yom Kvutza, a day in which to discuss issues relevant to the group.
According to Michal Jalowski, 24, a resident of Kvutzat Orev, who works as an office manager for Hashomer Hatzair, the group’s mission is to revitalise the youth movement in New York. But their chosen location makes things difficult at times. “New York is so fast-paced,” says Jalowski, who comes from Brooklyn. “It’s so hard to do anything really revolutionary. We spend a lot of time commuting on the train. It’s hard enough for us to have time for each other.”
But they make time whenever they can. “We’re not just room-mates,” says Roth. “We live together. We work together. We’re breaking down walls together.”
Group members share their lives and their home, but they do have some items that they can call their own. Some even have their own laptops. “It’s not like I share my underwear and socks,” says Roth, admitting, with a laugh, that once, he did in fact lend those items to another in the kvutza. “Sharing brings us closer.”
Orev’s members have yet to actually open up a joint bank account, but not for lack of trying. “I guess it does seem pretty suspicious,” says Jalowski. “People are always like, ‘Are you all married?’”
While neither Habonim Dror nor Hashomer Hatzair can predict the future of their individual kvutzot, or indeed the growth of the urban kibbutz movement in the US, all of the members are clear that living their shared existences can only lead to harmony.
“Despite the weirdness or the hardness of living this alternative lifestyle,” says Roth, “we believe that living together as individuals is the right thing to do.” Adds Habonim’s Browdy: “What we have with our shared values and shared goals is almost analogous to a family structure. If the entire world adopted something similar to this, we’d be in a better place.”