Page 18 - Demo

neighborhood. %u201cIt doesn%u2019t work to just have a whole community of Be%u2019eri move in one day. While the construction was taking place, we were preparing Chatzerim for this influx. Take young children as an example %u2013 how do you prepare an eightyear-old girl in Chatzerim to meet a new friend from Be%u2019eri, who was kidnapped to Gaza and held in Hamas captivity? This is just one of hundreds of daily interactions. And when the people of Be%u2019eri would arrive %u2013 how would we welcome them? Do we give them their own space, so they don%u2019t feel that we are overly doting on them, or do they want to feel that warm hug from us when they arrive? It is also really important to think long-term. When the decision to undertake this project was taken, 97% of Kibbutz Chatzerim voted for it. We knew that when the people of Be%u2019eri first arrived, Chatzerim residents would understand and find meaning in small inconveniences, like longer lines at the local grocery store. But we had to consider the long-term impact. If our community doesn%u2019t deeply understand the importance of what we%u2019re doing, tensions and frustrations could arise weeks or months down the line.%u201dOne of the ways the community has come together is through the creation of 25 different volunteer committees, each working on projects to enhance and support the new neighborhood. %u201cThere was one group of three ceramic workers who wanted to make door signs for each of the 300 new homes. They created different formats and options and sent them to the hotels at the Dead Sea so people could choose their preferences. When each family arrived, their custom door sign was given to them so they could put it on their door. Another elderly pensioner on the kibbutz unfortunately lost her daughter to cancer this year %u2013 she decided that in her memory, she was going to make plant pots for each of the Be%u2019eri families. Her entire deck is now full of these %u2013 she has made hundreds of them, and each family who arrives can go to her deck and choose the flower pot they like most. Flowers represent hope and beauty, and that is what she wants to give to those coming from Be%u2019eri.%u201dThe first 75 families moved into Shchunat Be%u2019eri in August, just in time for the start of the school year. The area containing the kindergartens (ganim) is particularly impressive. It%u2019s hard to believe that these buildings and parks were constructed only a month before our visit, with the grass laid just ten days prior.Typically in Israel, developing a new neighborhood %u2013 from initial planning and approval to final construction %u2013 takes 12 to 15 years. In this case, however, all these processes were compressed into just a few months. This rapid development is reminiscent of how quickly the coronavirus vaccine was created. It demonstrates that 18 |