Description of Living Areas
Six small residential buildings, housing around 20 residents each, are interspersed with majestic trees, blossoming flowers and large expansive green areas. Male and female residents sleep in separate wings, on different sides of the building. Each house has a central, open-space living area where meals are prepared and taken together around small tables, each with a vase of flowers, with walls adorned with handicrafts created in the village, and curtained windows sewn by the in-house seamstress. Instead of televisions and computers there is either a piano or an aquarium and leisure time is used for playing, cooking and craft activities.
Each house has a staff of 5 and a night nurse, working 8-hour shifts. The on-site clinic is staffed by 5 nurses 24/7 with two doctors on call. Ha’emek is the nearest hospital and has an excellent relationship with Beit Uri.
A psychologist, psychiatrist and social worker together with a large group of physical, occupational, animal, speech and eurythmy (movement) therapists, are part of Beit Uri’s dedicated 130-person staff.
In 2010 an independent apartment was purchased opposite the village and opened for four higher- functioning residents to live in and at the end of 2016 a satellite hostel adjacent to Beit Uri opened for 10 residents to move into the neighbourhood together with a full-time carer.
Playing a Role in Everyday Life
According to their skills, residents in each house are given responsibilities -throwing out the compost, collecting meal trays and food products on large trolleys from the central kitchen, picking up debris around the home, pruning trees, planting herbs and flowers, collecting the mail, buying stamps and distributing clean laundry to the residential houses.
Self-development is key to anthroposphic thinking as expressed by founder Rudolf Steiner, who said:" Nowhere is the need for such awareness greater than in relations to our fellow human beings, and to the life and work we share with them.“
Festivals & Celebrations
Celebration of special seasonal ritual events and the Jewish holidays is an intrinsic part of community life. Each day starts with the residents assembled in the main hall ushering in the day through song, poetry and movement. Festivals are fully celebrated, studied in the school setting and enacted on the stage and at the end of each year a performance involving most of the residents and staff fills the auditorium for two consecutive days.