Dorms in the hills: A new settlement movement

About three years ago, Tirael Cohen posted a flimsy, 8-by-10 inch flyer in the Ariel University halls seeking students to create a student village in Samaria. Within a few days, more than 150 students called expressing interest — and it was all she and her friends needed to get started.

Today, Cohen is the director of Kedma, a growing organization that runs student villages in Judea and Samaria. On May 19 in Jerusalem, she will accept the “Spirit of Zion” Moskowitz Prize for making her Zionist idea a reality. 

At the tender age of 22, Cohen, a journalism student at Tel Aviv University, has developed a new model for Jewish settlement, although she doesn’t see her organization as a “settlement movement,” which has the reputation of being led by religious Zionist families.

Cohen shuns labels. Wearing jeans and boots, she does not appear visibly Orthodox, although she observes Shabbat and kosher dietary laws. She grew up in the community of Nof Ayalon near Modi’in, beyond the Green (1949 armistice) Line, to a family of French immigrants — although her long, curly dark hair gives her the sabra touch. 

“We’re a very social project at its core,” Cohen explained, speaking in the lounge at the student village in Ma’ale Efraim in the Jordan Valley, with her dog Nikki swirling around her. “Students got together not to create new settlements, but to reach the periphery where they have needs.”

Ma’ale Efraim, for example, was founded with a vision of becoming the capital of the Jordan Valley, much in the same way Ariel has become the capital of Samaria — the hub of an area considered vital to Israel’s security. But after a wave of violence consumed Israel during the second intifada in the early 2000s, the largely secular residents of Ma’ale Efraim started moving out, and educational and industrial facilities were left empty.  

One such deserted facility was the Jordan Valley Field School, where Cohen and about 25 other students each live in a studio cottage.