The Activist Who Came to Protest a Wall and Stayed to Find Himself

Details

Interviewee: Uri Ayalon
Role: Community Member
Community: Tamera
Date: 2026-01-14
Language: en

Summary

Uri shares his transformative journey from being a political activist in Israel-Palestine to becoming a member of the Tamera community, a model for peaceful coexistence. He initially arrived as part of a direct action group against the apartheid wall in Israel-Palestine, motivated by a hope for change within a community context. Throughout his time at Tamera, he explored various aspects of personal identity, including his sexuality, while also discovering a sense of belonging fostered through transparency and community rituals. His journey highlights the balance between individual desires and communal responsibility, reflecting broader themes of governance and conflict within community life.

Key quotes

In 2005, I was an activist in a group named Anarchists Against the Wall. It was a direct action group aiming to stop the building of the apartheid wall between Israel and Palestine.

The vision of Tamera gave me hope. I came here as a student in order to establish a similar model in Israel and Palestine.

Always I was punished by my friends at home for not being able to keep a secret. When I experienced the Forum, I felt home here.

It took me years to quiet this anger and the need to express disagreement immediately. This changed.

The theory says if we manage to bring a group of people and to create peace information between them, lived, not written, not philosophically, but lived, it will have an effect on the globe.

Once a year we have something that we call positioning time. It’s the time that we come together, the whole community, and we look to what is needed.

Transcript

**Sharon:** Okay, let’s start with your name and where we’re sitting right now.

**Uri:** My name is Uri, and we are at Brown Lake in the Tamera community.

**Sharon:** What inspired you to come here and start your journey with Tamera?

**Uri:** In 2005, I was an activist in a group named Anarchists Against the Wall. It was a direct action group aiming to stop the building of the apartheid wall between Israel and Palestine. My sister invited me to a meeting between Israelis and Palestinians that took place here in Tamera. My motivation was to come and meet Palestinians.
What inspired me to stay, to come for longer, or to move here was the vision of Tamera. As an activist, I saw the wall being built, I saw the occupation continuing, and I started to lose hope. Tamera, and this kind of activism of building the other world, gave me hope.
This was a big motivation to stay and come here as a student in order to establish a similar model in Israel and Palestine. When I came in 2007 to live here, I did not think I would raise my children here and get older here. The aim was to educate and create a core group of Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals. We did it, and in the end we also came back, but maybe we will return to this later.

**Sharon:** What were your first steps into becoming part of Tamera?

**Uri:** I came as a visitor. I came for seminars in the summer again and again. It was inspiring and exciting. As a queer man, I believe that love and sexuality are political issues, and that we need to liberate definitions. In the queer scene in Tel Aviv, we talked about sex, but we did not know how to live it. We did not dare to touch or express. Often people drank alcohol to allow things to happen. Here I found tools, language, and the ability to explore my sexuality.
My first steps here also came after seven years of being mainly gay, while knowing it was not my only truth. Here I could explore contact with women and different ways of sexuality.
In 2007 I moved. After being a student here, exploring and getting inspired, two years later I came to live here. It was with Aida and Tamir. We told each other, if you are doing it, I am doing it as well. Each of us did not have the courage to do this big step alone. I left a career as a journalist, I left my family, my friends, the language. It was a big thing.
I already had a contract to work in a school where I had been studying in Tel Meilim. I was excited about it. I was here in July, and a few weeks later, in August, just before September and the start of the school year, I wrote an email to the principal that I would not join. I decided to change my life.
It was an amazing experience because at that time being a student here meant being part of the community. Tamera opened the gates in a radical way for many people coming to live here. We enjoyed the radicality and the research that happened in those years.

**Sharon:** Do you remember a moment when you felt at home here?

**Uri:** My friends at home used to punish me for not being able to keep a secret. It is something I am not good at. When I experienced the Forum, I felt at home. There is something in the culture that allows letting go of secrets, that does not include secrets as part of the culture. It is respected and legitimate. The Forum was home for me, the allowance to be truthful with each other, in the performance and in the feedback. That was a moment of home.
Another moment: one night after a love meeting with a guy, he invited me to the Stone Circle. I was not at home in the Stone Circle. Spirituality is not so much my background. He invited me at night, the moon came, and he showed me a stone. He told me, you can hug it, you can feel motherly energy from it. I hugged it. It was warm from the day, and I felt home.

**Sharon:** Is there anything that needed to change in you, or grow internally, for you to flourish or fit in the community?

**Uri:** In one Forum, someone said something I disagreed with, and my whole being wanted to stand up and say, this is not true. It took me years to quiet this anger and the need to express disagreement immediately. In Israeli culture, we often stop each other mid-sentence. This changed.
Another thing is time. I come from a culture where we say we meet at four, and now it is four forty-six and we start. Time is liquid. In German culture, and maybe in communitarian culture, when you create a meeting of one hundred people, missing five minutes means five minutes times one hundred. I needed to work on being punctual, to be on time.
On another level, I came as gay and explored women. Many years later, I wonder how much of it was my queer wish to queer myself, or to fit, because this was what was possible here. I put aside an important part. I kept expressing my love and attraction to men, but only a small part was lived in that time.

**Sharon:** Did your sense of self shift since you joined the community?

**Uri:** Of course. It has been almost twenty years. I came as a young man. I became a father, which is very important to who I am. I became part of a community, part of a vision and philosophy. I moved away from my home country. Things changed. The answer is yes.

**Sharon:** From being an individual to being part of a group, did that affect your identity?

**Uri:** As you said earlier, I am more Tamarian than Israeli. I am not sure. Before Tamera I was part of groups. My high school theater department was a group. The army was a group. My best friends are still from that time. We had a commune in Tel Aviv, discovering radicality, anti-Zionism. It was identity.
I did not move from individual to communitarian in one leap. It is a big part of my research here, how to shift my consciousness from private to communitarian. I am still an individual living in community. I cannot say that if Tamera does not exist, I will not exist, or that most of me would change if Tamera did not exist.

**Sharon:** Did arriving from your culture help you integrate better in a group environment?

**Uri:** Yes. I could bring flexibility, creativity, and joy, which are important for the challenge of living together. Maybe also political perspective. It is not only culture. I hold a political task. I am here to stop the occupation. I am here to make the world better. This helps with the smaller challenges of daily life: lakes, dishes, lateness, decisions. It gives perspective.

**Sharon:** How does living in Tamera help stop wars or end occupation?

**Uri:** First, I feel uncomfortable to claim a truth. It is an option that helps me. Tamera’s political theory says the world is one organism. Gaia. We influence through life. The world changes through information. You take a pill, it gives different information, and the body changes.
The theory says if we manage to bring a group of people to create lived peace information between them, not written or philosophical but lived — the way they talk, make love, raise children, eat — it will have an effect on the globe. It can send peace information to an organism that is connected.
When I came, this was science. We tried to learn it as if it was science. If you did not agree, you did not understand. Now it changed. It is a theory, an option, a way to look at life. I love it. Many do not like it because it puts us in the place of saving the world. I still see the benefit for my life. It pushes me to be a better human being. My way of talking, expressing, behaving has an effect. It makes my life better.
That is why I choose to believe this village can be a model. People can come, get inspiration, and change their life. It also has the possibility of creating energetic change beyond direct contact.

**Sharon:** How is the community organized day to day? Food, sessions, money. What does a day look like?

**Uri:** It used to be very different. In my first years, and for many years before, a day started with morning attunement. Early morning, the whole community came together. Three dances, three songs of dancing, then someone gave a speech or read an inspiration, and we sang together. We attuned our souls and minds every morning.
We ate breakfast together. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were served. We worked, had lunch together, and siesta, which was important because it was time to make love and take a break. Every day at four o’clock we met for Forum work and geistic hours. For many years, this was the structure of Tamera, which I miss. I also know it will probably not come back.
It reflected the level of investment and commitment. We built community. We woke up together, met every afternoon for three hours, saw each other, reflected, learned, studied. From time to time, we took a week or a month together.
Today we still have some memories of it. This reflects not only lower energy, but also diversity. Some people would still come every day. Many others have children, other interests, other sources of inspiration.
A day in Tamera can include early morning God Point, similar to morning attunement, but with a text and a conversation. For me it is too verbal for early morning. I was a farmer for five years. My day started with harvesting zucchini. That is my way to connect. Many still like God Point. Another option is yoga, three times a week.
People work in different places, and all people in Tamera work in the community. We have lunch, some go back to work, some take siesta. At least once a week, we meet for a Forum. Now we have more sub-communities: the platform, the test field, the place of children. They have their own Forums. The whole community does not always come together, more the neighborhood. It is not easy to say what the schedule is. It became diverse.