The March Hare: Fall 2007 Issue 54

Cover Page • Gaining Perspective • Liat Silverman's Bio • Status Report • Nature Corner • A Poem • Hopper's Index

Liat's Autobiography

When I heard that Dancing Rabbit had been in existence for ten years I thought, "Wow, we are such a young community." It was not until just a few days ago that I realized that ten years is actually a good chunk of time when compared to our own lives. Ten years ago I was twelve years old and spent my days in school. That was the year that I noticed my transition from "I want to be like everyone else" to "I can be whomever I want to be, even if it is outside the norm." At the time, I had never heard the word "ecovillage" and the only connection I had with intentional communities was the kibbutz movement in Israel.

Now let me start from the beginning… My name is Liat Batshira Silverman and I moved to Dancing Rabbit in July of 2007. Most of my life has been spent in the hot humidity of Florida. My mother's family moved to Florida because of a job opening at the University of South Florida, and my father had plans to start an air-conditioning company; what better place to sell cold air than Florida? After falling in love and making a home together, my parents gave birth to my older brother, Avi, and me. Much of my childhood was spent doing art projects, singing, and learning about Judaism.

Now that I think about it, I guess I started to split away from mainstream society before the age of twelve. When I was eight years old I became a vegetarian, which was not only "weird" but practically unheard of in elementary school in the 90's. It had been imbedded in my brain from a young age to take care of animals, plants, and the environment. I remember as a child singing to the plants I grew in the windowsill behind the toilet, and every year when my birthday came around asking for a hamster, cat, dog, mouse, and of course the inevitable pony (I never did get that pony).

When I was in middle school, I realized that I did not fit in with my peers and began my search for something different. I switched from a private school in the country to an Arts school in the ghetto. When I reached high school I bounced around from another Arts school, to a study abroad program in Israel, to boarding school in North Carolina, and then back into the below-average public schools of Florida. I enjoyed many of my experiences and learned a good deal about myself and others, but I still never felt content. While in Israel I had visited a handful of Kibbutzim and for many years thought that I was going to move to Kibbutz Lotan, which is an ecovillage in the desert. I actually was very tempted to move there at age sixteen, but my parents convinced me to graduate first. After graduating from high school I still had dreams of Lotan, but I was faced with the conflict of missing out on a seventy-five percent scholarship to college. I made the decision that it might be in my best interest to get a college education then, instead of deciding a few years later that I wanted to get a degree and having to pay for it all out of pocket.

I attended the University of South Florida for three and a half years; my diploma says that I have a degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. My main focuses were anthropology, religious studies, and women's studies. When friends, classmates, and professors would ask me what I was going to do with my degree, I would tell them that I intended on living on a commune. Many thought I was kidding, but I knew that some day soon I would live in community.

While still in college I found that I had a passion for menstrual issues. I spent a good amount of time doing research on how menstrual taboos contribute to the way women view their bodies. I found not only that many women feel ashamed about their natural cycles, but that these feelings cause them to have a negative impact on the environment and their own health. At the age of twenty-one, I began making money from my webpage, www.theCUNTshop.com. The purpose for this webpage was both to pay my bills and inform readers of the dangers of menstrual taboos and to provide them with alternative options.

I began my search for a community before graduating college. I spent a good amount of time searching the Intentional Communities Directory and looking at many community web pages. After graduating I planned a five month journey for myself where I intended on visiting more than a handful of communities. At the time I was convinced that I wanted to live in an income sharing community with somewhere between fifty and a hundred members. Dancing Rabbit was not somewhere that I was considering living, but sounded interesting enough to visit. Funny thing is, out of all the places I have been in my life, Dancing Rabbit is the first one where I felt at home on the day of my arrival.

Not even three full months after my visitor period at DR I packed my life into two suitcases (plus my sewing machine as a carryon) and moved to Missouri. In my short time being here I have already helped out with multiple building projects, made many friends, sewn curtains for three of my neighbors, had several play dates with youngsters, biked more than forty-five miles in one day, learned how to can vegetables, been on DR-TV, and done three humey shifts. What more could I ask for from my new home?

Cover Page • Gaining Perspective • Liat Silverman's Bio • Status Report • Nature Corner • A Poem • Hopper's Index

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