Kibbutz Lotan Virtual Tour and Meeting

Celebrate the Jewish Holidays with Kibbutz Lotan!

You are welcome to support the Center for Creative Ecology of Kibbutz Lotan by :

Kibbutz Lotan invites you to a virtual tour and meeting!

Engage in real time with a kibbutz member from the comfort of your home, classroom, synagogue or religious school class, who will narrate you through an interactive virtual tour and answer all your questions about life in a thriving desert community. As well as the virtual tour, each session will focus on a different holiday, how we celebrate it on Lotan and how it connects to the broader topic of sustainability.

January / February – Tu Bish’vat

On Tu Bish’vat festival we celebrate our connection to the Earth, nature, the seasons and the plants that give us life. During this session we will take a closer look at the fascinating desert ecosystem surrounding Lotan and projects such as the Lotan Bird Reserve which were established to help preserve and enhance local biodiversity.

Special offer for Tu Bish’vat: Receive a special 15% Tu Bish’vat discount on our new Organic Gardening Online Course

March / April – Pesach / Israel Independence day

During Pesach our focus is on social justice and building a just society. During this session we will focus on the inner workings of the Lotan community, the change we underwent from the classic kibbutz cooperative economic model to a more privatized model with individual wages, and also some of the social outreach projects we have been involved in over the years, such as working with Bedouin communities.

May / June / July – Shavuot

Shavuot is a harvest festival, and in this session we will focus on the sustainable agricultural techniques we use to grow some of our own food, as we strive to follow the biblical injunction “To till and to tend”. We will talk about the development of our community garden and how it grows not only healthy food, but a healthy community a well.

August / September / October – Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Succot

Succot is another festival with a strong connection to nature. Just as we build the succa from natural local materials, so on Lotan we have been developing natural and alternative methods of building and construction, particularly using earth. In this session we will focus on these different methods and see some of the projects we have done over the years.

November / December – Hanuka

The Hannukah story connects us to sources of energy and the importance of developing renewable energy systems to moderate the effects of climate change. Hear how our building and construction methods save energy and about how our region is on the way to becoming 100% energy independent through the development of a solar energy infrastructure.

Join us for a virtual tour of Kibbutz Lotan and our ecological projects

Depending on the focus of the tour we can learn about:

Everyday life on a kibbutz and how we celebrate the Jewish festivals together as a community
How Lotan integrates a creative and egalitarian approach to Judaism with ecological and environmental values
How we grow organic vegetables in extreme desert conditions: the story of our “gan bayit” (Home Garden), growing local highly nutritious vegetables with members of the community
How we use garbage to build children’s playgrounds and how we build energy efficient buildings from our local earth and natural, renewable materials
Appropriate technology – working with nature to create ecological restrooms, water purifying systems, solar ovens and truly natural gas for cooking

The 1-hour tour including question and answer session costs US$200 for an unlimited number of participants within the same school or organization.

For more details and to book your tour, please contact – Mark Naveh (mark@klotan.co.il, +972-54-9799033). or fill the form

Register to our new Organic Gardening Online Course and receive a special 15% Tu Bish’vat discount .

Join us for a step-by-step guide to gain all the confidence you need to start growing healthy organic vegetables at home in our new online Organic Gardening Course.

The online course is based on the curriculum of our highly successful Green Apprenticeship Permaculture Design Course, now in its 20th year, and is taught by Mike Kaplin, one of Israel’s pioneers in permaculture and a premier leader in the field.

On Kibbutz Lotan we have created a fertile oasis in one of the most extreme desert environments in the world. If we can grow food here, you can do it anywhere!

Check out a free preview lesson or sign up here for the full course using the coupon code TUBISHVAT for a 15% discount (usual cost is US$120) and gain access to our online community for personalized support from Mike and the team.

Wishing you and yours health and happiness in 2022,

The Center for Creative Ecology team,

Kibbutz Lotan