Project Presentation
“Kibbutz HaOlam, One Step Ahead”

1. Vision and Philosophy of the Project

The project “Kibbutz HaOlam, One Step Ahead” is a solidarity-based initiative aimed at creating human, real estate, and social bridges between Jews in France and Israeli citizens, in order to respond to situations of vulnerability, emergency, or life transition, while fostering lasting, intergenerational, and intercultural ties.

“Kibbutz HaOlam, One Step Ahead” is rooted in a logic of concrete solidarity, inspired by the spirit of the original kibbutz: mutual aid, pooling of resources, collective responsibility, and individual dignity.

Kibbutz HaOlam, it should be recalled, is a prototype project. As such, it is primarily intended to meet the needs of its haverim.

That said, the project may also serve as a source of inspiration for other initiatives, both:
– within the diaspora: for women and men confronted with the resurgence of antisemitism, who choose in turn to unite their collective intelligence, data, resources, and capacity for action in order to support one another in a concrete, solidarity-based, and structured manner;
– in Israel: for women and men facing war, who feel the need to place women and children in a familiar and protected environment in the face of vital danger, or simply to offer them time for respite—space to “breathe” after prolonged periods of conflict.

2. Origin and Operating Model

The project emerges from a structured group composed of:

• Haverim of Kibbutz HaOlam living in the diaspora and in Israel, who—given the current context—are convinced of the need to organize, as of now, their potential emergency expatriation in the event of a vital threat, or alternatively to create opportunities for respite and recovery after particularly trying periods;

• Volunteers and professionals—haverim or friends of the project—engaged in the initiative, including at minimum: a lawyer, a real estate professional, a communications professional, a social worker and/or psychologist, a technology and data professional (if a centralized digital platform adapted to small-group projects is used), and several volunteers in France and in Israel.

The objective is to structure this collective intelligence to enable connections, needs assessment, and the creation of personalized and optimized solutions through innovative forms of sharing.

3. Types of Projects and Proposed Categories

“Kibbutz HaOlam, One Step Ahead” envisions several flexible categories, allowing responses to a wide variety of situations:

• Free provision of housing in emergency situations
• Home exchange (rotation during holidays and emergency hosting in exchange for points, rent, or free of charge)
• Partial purchase of real estate
• Temporary emergency rental housing
• Solutions tailored to specific needs (e.g., sharing living spaces between two countries)
• “Solidarity life annuity” sales
• Etc.

Example 1: Solidarity Life Annuity

An elderly Israeli haver enters into a life annuity agreement with a haver living in France.

The contract includes regular stays by the French haver in the Israeli haver’s home:
• Creation of human and emotional bonds
• Practice of Hebrew for the French haver
• Presence and companionship for the Israeli haver
• Additional income and financial security for the Israeli haver

It also includes emergency hosting if needed, or recovery stays, for both the French and Israeli haver.

Example 2: Home Exchange

Project partners:
• A haver owning an apartment in France operated as an Airbnb
• An Israeli haver living in a moshav and owning a basement converted into an independent apartment

Both autonomous, furnished properties are integrated into a legally supervised exchange system.

Contractual Framework

A solidarity commitment contract binds the French haver and the Israeli haver.

It provides for:
• Hosting during holiday periods, under conditions defined in advance
• Non-reciprocal hosting in exchange for accumulable points
• Priority hosting in the event of war or emergency situations
• Practical conditions of holiday or emergency accommodation: duration, responsibilities, and mutual respect

This contractual framework guarantees clarity, legal security, and peace of mind for both parties.

Human and Cultural Dimension

Beyond housing, the Home Exchange project is above all a project of encounter and fraternity:
• Both parties get to know one another and become familiar with each other’s living environments before any crisis situation
• They may share moments of life—meals, celebrations, holidays, etc.
• The haverim practice Hebrew and French in a natural setting
• Emotional bonds are created, strengthened, and sustained over time

When a situation of war, danger, or a need for rest and recovery arises:
• The displaced haver does not flee into the unknown
• They go to a place that is already familiar
• They are welcomed by a known, caring, and committed person
• The sense of uprooting is eased by continuity of human connection

This system significantly reduces the material, psychological, and emotional distress associated with forced exile or any major disruptive situation.

4. Social and Human Impact

The project “Kibbutz HaOlam, One Step Ahead” aims to:
• Prevent situations of material, psychological, and emotional distress
• Offer dignified and stable solutions in times of crisis
• Prevent people from ending up without housing, on the streets, or in temporary camps
• Strengthen ties between the diaspora and Israel
• Combat social and emotional isolation, especially in times of strain
• Encourage motivated Hebrew learning through real-life experience

GENERAL HUMANITARIAN PROJECT:

“A Haven of Peace”

Paris Kibbutz offers refugees temporary host families belonging to its network of accommodation spaces. Stays may range from 8 days to 1 month. This provides a haven of peace for children and adults confronted in their daily lives with precarity, rejection, violence, or war. During the stay, informal and/or formal post-traumatic therapy is facilitated.

Since the creation of KDP, this form of hosting has been offered to young Israelis facing psycho-social-economic difficulties and/or trauma due to living in areas exposed to rocket fire and/or experiencing challenging integration following migration.

Paris Kibbutz also works to establish links with kibbutzim in Israel and intentional communities worldwide. In the event of a humanitarian crisis (war, persecution, genocide, climate catastrophe, etc.), this fraternal network would be capable of welcoming its threatened members.

As a prototype initiative, LKDP has launched the first network of kibbutzim—or the first international kibbutz (with hubs in Sèvres, Yaoundé, and Israel). If expanded globally through the emergence of similar kibbutzim and intentional communities, this model would offer a response to the challenges of refugee reception and reintegration. There would then be no more refugees. Semi-nomadic kibbutz members would live and share life wherever conditions are favorable.

Refugee reception would no longer be managed by states, relayed by organizations that sometimes turn humanitarian aid into a business, but instead by kibbutz citizens or members of intentional communities. Between those who work remotely, those who live in non-threatened communities, and those who must relearn a profession; between the kibbutz in a haven of peace and the kibbutz rendered uninhabitable, sharing would always guarantee a dignified life for all, at all times.

Moreover, welcoming a small number of people at the scale of a community is feasible while preserving the humanitarian spirit. This spirit is lost when initiatives reach national dimensions, assisted by an overabundance of laws that undermine what they are meant to enable, and by new technologies and bureaucracies that tragically create Kafkaesque and sadistic relays to the suffering endured by victims—victims who are then returned, confined, in so-called “host countries,” to their condition and suffering as victims.

In times of stability, this network offers a semi-nomadic way of life, conducive to exchange and intercultural enrichment in all fields.

Since October 2024, and the resurgence of threatening anti-Judaism in most Western countries, this possibility championed by the KDP has become the priority action to be pursued within the organization, primarily for the benefit of its members, who are mainly Jewish.