by Ohad Ezrahi, translated by Lisa Waldbaum

(published in April 2006 edition of 'Alternative Life' magazine, Israel)

The Tamera community in Portugal has been doing experiments on relationships for more than 20 years. The members of the community are both the researchers and the participants in this research. The aim: creating ways and tools to establish community life that is committed to truth, peace and free love. Their naivety is very controlled, and their way of thinking challenges the accepted family structure. They recently came here on a long pilgrimage, as a preparation to establish a Peace Village here in the Middle East.

About 27 years ago, an idealistic young man from Germany, an academic and an artist who was involved in Philosophy and Sociology, organized a student rebellion, kicked the institution, and searched for alternative ways of a life of truth. Many people did it in his time, therefore it was not something new, but this young student succeeded in exciting the hearts of other young people, and together they decided to establish a community, a commune, that would investigate and research on themselves, how the human race should live. Yes, others have done this too, but what is really interesting is that this community still exists and prospers. It has become two communities: one is situated in Germany and is a flourishing spiritual community, and the other, holding the point of the sword of an active research project, bought an enormous piece of land in Portugal, ten years ago. This man, who answers to the name of Dieter Duhm, together with his partner, or rather together with his partners (as will be clarified later), and other loyal friends, bought the large piece of land at a price equal, at that time, to an average apartment in Berlin. Since then, they have been working like ants, or industrious Germans, on building the place ecologically, with their own hands, with all their heart and soul. And the place is indeed beautiful. When they looked for a name for the place, one of the spiritual leaders of the community, Sabine Lichtenfels, opened her heart to the earth and received the name Tamera. The name doesn't have a specific meaning. It was simply right to call the project Tamera Healing Biotope. Today, 27 years after the beginning of the journey, Tamera Community has around 100 men, women, youth, children, and even some older people. Love free from fear Tamera people live as a community with deep inner commitment. They believe that the human race was meant to live in communities, and not as lonely individuals. The structure of the nuclear family father, mother, child and dog - is perceived by them as a structure that is difficult to trust. Rightly so. The number of betrayals in marriage is beyond estimation, the percentage of divorce in the world is growing higher and higher, and also most of the people who remain married do not live in happiness and wealth like they were promised in the fairytales. Something here is wrong. Something is not quite working right. Tamera offers a different social structure. A structure that they are building, examining, and improving on themselves for over twenty years, while they continuously study from literary research (the academic side is very strong with them) and also from direct experience. And when they say direct experience, they mean it. A meaningful part of their lifestyle is the practice of free love. This familiar concept immediately connects, for us, to the hippies of the sixties, but the members of Tamera community have taken it to a much deeper level. If you ask them what it's about, they will tell you that free love is love that is free from the slavery of fear. Much of what we call love in the world is held on patterns of fear. Fear of abandonment, fear of what people will say, fear of what our partner will think, fear of God all kinds of fear that feed what we are used to seeing as love. Therefore, the relationships between men and women in our world aren't really love relationships, but are based on patterns of fear and control.  Actually, an invisible war, a war which crosses lines and countries, exists between men and women here on earth. According to reports by the United Nations, tens of millions of women have been murdered, in the last decade, by men, in different types of violence: rape and murder in wars Bosnia, Rwanda, murder of babies by their parents, especially in the Far East, because of being born female; and also murder for “romantic“ reasons. It is an actual holocaust, according to the numbers, a holocaust that puts to death half of humanity. Therefore in Tamera, they view the issue of love and the relationship between the sexes as a subject connected closely to peace action. It is impossible to make real peace in the world until there is peace between men and women. In their opinion, this is the issue that needs to be presented on the agenda of peace making, and to examine with courage and depth, the different paradigms of human life. To stand in the heart of the forum In Tamera they take the beautiful ideas of free love, peace between the genders, and community life, and they try to check how people, flesh and blood, can actualize them in action, for a long period of time. The creative research of the people of the community has brought, throughout the years, the construction of community tools that are supposed to help the realization of the ideals. For example, it's impossible to understand what happens in Tamera, and the structure of the relationships between the members of the community, without knowing something about the Forum. Every day (yes, every day!) the permanent community members of Tamera gather for the 90 minute group process. In the Forum, there are a few separate circles, of course, because of the size of the community, but in all of them, the same thing happens: the circle opens, and the leader of the forum invites whoever is interested, to bring himself in front of the group. But the forum is not only a listening circle. The person talking is asked to enter the centre of the circle, and to truly bring himself not only to talk about it, but to talk it. It is permitted, and even desired to give voice to all the different voices within us, and sometimes to even act them out theatrically.  If I have jealousy towards one of the members of the community, I won't hold it inside me, and allow it to gnaw on the relationship between us. I will bring it into the circle, because I am committed to a relationship of honesty in the community, and to love of truth and peace. But I won't just sit and tell the friends that I have jealousy within me I will enter the centre of the circle and let the jealous man in me speak. I may start and say something like Lately I have realized that I have jealousy towards X, and I have an inner voice that says to me this, and then I will allow my body to contract a little, my face to screw up, so that I can give the jealous person in me his character, and from that character I will sound out to myself and everyone else, the thoughts I have about X.  But I will never speak to him directly in the framework of the forum. The common understanding in the community is the fact that I have jealousy towards him, and it doesn't mean that he has to be sucked into my drama. It is clear to me and to every one else, that the jealousy is my experience, and therefore I will speak about X totally openly. I can talk badly of him, and even curse him but always in the 3rd person.  I personally, saw wonders in the forums that I participated in.  I saw subjects with explosive potential coming up in the forum, and then going through transformation.  There is something in that circle, especially when it is guided by experienced leaders with high human sensitivity, like Sabine, for example, who delves into the very human truth of the heart, with much compassion and healing ability. After the speaker has had his say, for example after I have brought up my jealousy of X to the surface, I return to the circle, and people are invited to give me mirrors. What is a mirror? A mirror is my reflection, how it is perceived in the eyes of my close friends in the community that love me and are committed, like I am, to truth and love. A mirror is a gift that someone from the circle has to give me, in order to awaken my attention to something I may not be aware of. The mirrors are short in their nature, and are focused on the person who previously spoke. They can magnify a certain quality that brought the speaker to the centre of the circle, or point to something that was lacking in what was said. The willingness to bring yourself and your inner world to the community, and still to receive all the mirrors and reflections, isn't easy at all and demands a great trust. But in the time that I was in Tamera I saw that this process succeeds in being built, slowly, also within a new group. When someone dares to bring his authentic feelings into the circle, it creates trust, and this trust builds more trust, and deepens the connection in the group itself. There is no subject that doesn't come up in the forum of Tamera, whether the subject is about economics, to which there are differing view points within the community, or whether it is a very personal subject, such as love relationships. Without the forum and the enormous group discipline that brings the whole community to arrive exactly on time for a process of an hour and a quarter every single day, Tamera wouldn't exist. The strong emotions would have shattered it to bits a long time ago, because in Tamera a person is allowed to be in sexual intimacy with a few people within the community, and everything is done with full transparency, without secrets or betrayals. Everything is open on the table. The Love Temple In a magical place far from where the eye can see, close to a little spring coming from the rock, between the olives and the grape vines, is the Love Temple.  If you liked someone, and you're really turned on by him, you could send him a Postillion de lâ amour , or a love messenger in French. You ask someone to go to him and check if he feels to meet you in the Love Temple. If the answer is positive, the messenger will check when it is free there, and will let you know that you have a meeting tomorrow, say at four in the afternoon. And then you will go to the temple. There is something ceremonious about the walk: you walk in nature to a place which is quite far away, you pass through a stream, stop, breathe in the trees, and meet your man on the patio of the temple. There, the woman responsible (the one whose job in the community is the maintenance of the Love Temple) will offer you good wine, red or white, or espresso coffee, and you will decide whether to sit outside, under the vines, drinking and chatting, or whether you want to enter one of the beautifully designed rooms. In the room, there will be a double bed with sheets and covers made of silk, and you will close the door, and do what you do for the time you have been designated for your meeting. Afterwards, you will return to the community happy, glowing and calm. It may be that in the next forum you will thank each other for the pleasure you granted each other, or even thank your permanent partners for allowing you the opportunity. But it can also cause a fuse to jump for someone who finds your connection difficult, and that will also come up at the forum, with honesty and self humor. That is the theory on one leg, but the perceptions standing behind this lifestyle are more complex, and once a year, in the winter, Tamera devotes itself to an inner seminar on the subject of Eros. In this seminar, the members of the community have the time for questions, and serious study on sexuality, love and all that's between, with different experiences and re-examining themselves. I suppose that some of the people reading these lines are jumping with excitement and all kinds of hormonal juices are starting to flow from hidden parts of their body, and they say to themselves. Oh, if only we could live like that. how can I join?. And on the other hand, there are some people who are enraged by it, and it seems very bad to them, wrong, and quite threatening. To both kinds I would say, Slowly, slowly. It's not just fun, and not everything is screwing. It's not easy at all to live with such transparency. There is great inner work here that's connected to giving trust in the community, in truly giving trust, with the overcoming of jealousy, the liberation of love from the ropes of attachment, and with true love of friends. And with that, if you have a strong reaction to this, what exactly is it that challenges you? Worth checking, no? Ecology and human rights To experience good sexuality is one of the elementary human rights, but Tamera deals not only with this. Their village is built with their own hands, by ecological and spiritual methods, which they learn very seriously and precisely, and actualize it in their lives. Jurgen Kleinwachter, one of the world's leading scientists in the development of advanced technology for low-cost production of solar energy, was very excited by the happenings in Tamera, and together with them he is now building systems that will provide solar energy to the needs of the whole village, in the very near future.  The project is taking place with the cooperation of the Portuguese government and local research institutions, because the Tamerians want to change the world, not only Tamera, and if it's possible to produce energy from the sun in Portugal, why not share the novelty with the locals? As you must have understood by now, the people of Tamera are ingrained with a will to make the world a better place, and therefore, an inner commitment awakened within them to come to the painful Middle East, and to get to know the local cultures, the conflict in the area, and to try to contribute to the healing process. This is how the connection was made between people of Tamera community and I. The main meeting point was a common dream that was weaved during the years, of creating a multi-cultural, spiritual, vibrant and vital community here, in the space of humus and zaatar, one that will dedicate itself to the study of whole peace.  Imagine a place that invites you to live within it for a period of two to three years, where you can study theoretically and practically ways of creating peace between people men and women, Arabs and Jews, secular and religious. All this within communal living and dealing with problems that arise in real time within the communal living. A Peace Academy, a researching community that is ready to learn, not just from books, but from their hearts, and the beating texture of life. The people of Tamera came here this year to walk the land and to get to know it's people. Around twenty of them came last November on a Pilgrimage, not only to holy places, but to places of conflict, pain and difficulty (places which will become sacred when peace will be found there). They walked with the guidance of Tamir Yaari, from the Banias to Bethlehem, through towns and villages, within Israel and through the West Bank. They held a ceremony by the Separation Wall that now tears our land, and projected images of hope and vision with a big projector on the concrete wall.  In the North, at the big stone circle at Rojum El Hiri in the Golan Heights, which is an ancient temple, thousands of years old, Shmuel Shaul joined them and showed them the mysteries of the energies of the local land. Throughout the pilgrimage, the Tamerian people presented a theatre play, simple and not sophisticated, but very touching to the heart. It was an outsiders viewpoint of the Arab-Jewish conflict in this split land. During the pilgrimage, more people joined them, Arab and Jewish, who were willing to dream differently, who refused to be enemies, as was printed on the white kafiyas that they wore. It touched me very much to see how deeply this land touched the people from Tamera. The land talked to them, and they listened, and it invoked the will within them, to return here again and again, to learn the local languages and to be involved in what was happening here in order to understand the complex texture of the conflict here, to feel it as it is felt here from inside, and to offer help. There is much more to tell about Tamera, about it's founders, and the spirit within it, about it's special organic vegetable garden in which they made peace through meditation with the snails and rats, who now receive their part with due respect without harming the crops. On the morning attunement, the huge stone circle they built on one of the hills, on raising children in the community, and the people themselves each one with his own story. But the framework of this article is too narrow to contain all there is to tell, so therefore I recommend you to visit, at least virtually, their site at www.tamera.org, or of course to travel to Portugal to visit the place and the people. Monte Cerro Project to live in Tamera Tamera Community is opening it's doors to visitors right now. In May this year, the program Project Monte Cerro is opening in Tamera. People from all over the world are invited to join the community for a period of study and training, from a few months to two to three years, to live there, work and study, through the heart, the body, the mind and the spirit. They very much hope that Jews and Arabs will join, acquire tools, and will have a taste of real communal life, so that they will be able to contribute their skills when the time comes, in the Middle East, to realize the vision of creating a Peace Research Village. Tamera Community Identity Card: Location:  South Portugal, 30 km from the Atlantic Ocean, between Lisbon and Faro. Area: 1320 dunam Number of citizens: 110 - 90 adults and 20 children Founded in: 1995, after 17 years of research and preparation in Germany Management method:  A council responsible for taking decisions, in a way that is based on trust and solidarity between the members of the community. Sources of Income: Workshops, courses, Summer University and donations. When the income is not enough, the members are required to work outside of the community. Nutrition: Everyone is free to choose his nutrition, but in the kitchen only vegetarian food is served. Animals: 7 horses in a project of humane riding and developing relationship with animals that is non-violent, cats, dogs, and many others (mice, frogs, tortoises, snakes¦) Vehicles: 20 Cost: Guests pay 15 Euro a day for accommodation and food, and are expected to take part in work within the community. For courses there is additional cost. Special events: Summer University, for people interested in studying for the project. Additional information: www.tamera.org, www.igf-online.org (Ohad Ezrahi is a researcher, creator and teacher of New Chassidic Kabbalah. He founded the Hamakom Community and the School "Love and Kabbalah".)