Our training at Teva is coming to a close and the children are arriving on Monday! I can't wait.

These 3 weeks have been unusually for me in terms of journeys - I have barely left these few square miles, have met few people outside this small community - and yet, intellectually, the journey has been immeasurable. So many of the events and moments that I want to share are spiritual epiphinies - hard and a bit hokey to express in this format. So I will start with more concrete recollections and perhaps continue on to the ephemeral ones.

This community is small - a bubble smaller than that of Kibbutz Ketura or Vassar - but I don't feel closed in. True, we are particularly undiverse from a first glimpse - but in spite of all this, and the lack of phone, television, newspaper or regular internet access, I do not feel antsy.
To underscore just how surprising this is, let me try and describe the communtiy here.
The staff has three parts - teva - those of us who work in education, Adamah - the peple who work the grounds and the farm - and Eyylat Chayyim - a group that runs spiritual, reconstructionist Jewish retreats.
In short - everyone here is a practicing Jew, an environmentalist and an activist. We are all people who have chosen occupations that we hope will make the world a bit better - and hope to practice and spread socially aware lives. (I am one of the least "hippy" people here, to give you an idea.) Most of the people have some background in music or the arts, certainly we all love to sing and dance. We're all in our 20s = mostly between 23 and 27. I would venture to say that we are all vote Democrat or green and that most of us hav eplans to go to Israel in the near future.

So - not diverse, right?
In a lot of ways, it's true. It's so weird for me to realize that i have left the "real world" and been almost exclusively with Jews since June. And yet, I have no real complaints either. I find there is so much to learn from the people here, and they challenge me and push my identity as much as anywhere else.