Throughout Israel and around the world Jews have been building this week the traditional sukkah hut, honoring the Feast of Tabernacles. But in Tel Aviv there are still some families and individuals who live in huts and tents for several months on end and even up to three years, ever since the 2011 social justice protests. Those people have become almost transparent to the public around them.

Over the past few weeks, it seems as if the protest has been standing again at our doorstep. The campaign over the price of chocolate pudding snacks has stirred up a public debate over the legitimacy of leaving the country — for the sake of life in places where the cost of living is lower. In a special festive interview on the eve of the Jewish Sukkot holiday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said, ''We have failed in whatever concerns housing prices and cost of living, and we, the government, must deal with that.'' Nevertheless, Ya'alon called on young people not to give up: ''I don't believe that because of this people should leave the country. Those who care [about Israel] must stay here and help change things, lead the change.''

“A Sad Anniversary,” wrote journalist and activist Noam Sheizaf on the site Sicha Mekomit (Local Conversation) in July 2014, but in the same column he made sure to note that not everything is bad. “It [the protest] helped some of the most interesting developments in Israel today,” he tempers his sobering analysis of the socioeconomic situation in Israel. And that’s right. Alongside fascinating initiatives such as cooperative supermarkets and community banks, the social protest has empowered groups of citizens who sought to create change and gave them backing to realize dreams that in the past, before the summer of 2011, they would have abandoned in despair or lack of faith in themselves. Some of them chose to move to Berlin or to other European capitals to fulfill their dreams. Others chose a different, creative and local route.

When I arrive at Sheizaf, a tiny secular-religious community of 15 families in the Negev Desert, residents quickly explain that this is exactly the spirit that moved them to establish the community. “In the social protest we asked ourselves what to do,” said Ron Segal, 34, the oldest member of the community, originally from the southern community of Netiv Ha-asarah, “and establishing this community is the answer. The protest was marked by the notion of 'instead of complaining, get up and do something.' So we got up and did it. I look at the 15 trailers here in the village, and I say to you that this is our Rothschild.”