Naomi Roff | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

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So far Naomi Roff has created 501 blog entries.

Haredi Society – A Democratic Society?

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) society is often thought of as a closed, hierarchical society. One in which each community asks questions of its Rabbis, and acts only after gaining approval from them. Definitely not the model of a democratic society.

And yet, we’ve found it’s possible to utilize democratic principles to build community in the Haredi neighborhood of Romema. We’ve worked with other neighborhoods on deep democratic processes, we’ve worked before with Romema and we’ve worked on Haredi issues. But we believe this is the first time that deep deliberative democratic principles for community building have been used in a Haredi community!

Last week we kick-started a process of deliberative democracy in Romema with two town meetings using the open space methodology – one for men, and, a week later, one for women. (This was the major way we adapted our ‘standard’ methodology to Haredi cultural morés.)

Some 250 women and 100 men attended the meetings. They discussed issues such as: traffic infrastructures and public safety, planning and public infrastructures (in different complexes, on different streets), sanitation, playgrounds and sports fields, curbing break-ins, and more. Residents divided into dozens of task teams, each with its own leader, which will work on each of the issues that is close to their hearts. You could feel in the air the passion and responsibility of the people who came. Open Space Technology is many times believed to be relevant to open societies with open communication, flat hierarchy and democratic tradition. In these evenings we found out that it suited very well the Haredi residents of Romema.

Romema isn’t a stranger to community-building activities. The community center has been partnering with the Jerusalem Foundation and the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – Israel, but in areas concentrating on children, youth and education. In previous processes, deep democracy was not utilized. This is the first time that issues raised affected all areas of everyday life, and all ages. The first time that such a broad spectrum of problems was tackled, that such a broad spectrum of residents participated. We wish them luck, and we’ll continue to post updates. We thank the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jerusalem Foundation for enabling us to guide this process. It is just the beginning – community work will require now to shadow the many teams that were born in the two events, helping them to reach their goals.

Naomi Roff2017-03-21T10:57:44+00:00July 20th, 2013|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Inter-Cultural Community Dialogue, Romema, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

Cultural Competency in the Health Care System – for the Haredi sector

Enabling all of Jerusalem’s populations – Palestinians, immigrants (Ethiopian, from Former Soviet Union), Ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews – to receive the best health care possible is at the top of our priorities, and our Cultural Competency in the Health Care System project is designed to address the sensitivities of caring for all these populations. Thus, beginning April, we began holding seminars for the staff of a number of primary clinics of Clalit Health Services to help them better communicate with the Haredi populations in their areas.

The location of these seminars was important. They were held in what are considered ‘mixed’ neighborhoods – Neveh Ya’akov, Ramat Eshkol, and Ramot (A and B). These neighborhoods have quickly growing Haredi populations, but they are definitely not the ‘hard core’ (as in Meah Shearim, Geula, Romema, Sanhedria, etc.). Moreover, much of the staff of the Clalit primary clinics in these neighborhoods remains non-Haredi and unequipped to best communicate with their new contingency. Part of the problem, which we will touch on below, is that there is little or no connection between the clinics and the community – and especially the changing community – around them.

In these seminars we dealt with 3 areas:

1) Tools for practical action. Often in this type of work with the ‘other’ we think of the checklist of tips of what to do or not to do when treating the Haredi community – not closing doors, men not offering to shake women’s hands, etc. However, our workshop went beyond the checklist, and sought to change the approach that clinic staff take in treating their Haredi patients. We discussed with them how to bridge major cultural gaps. One example was raised of a Haredi man, whose wife was terminally ill, who came to the clinic to ask for a certain medicine. From the man’s point of view, this medicine, which would stop his wife’s menstrual period and therefore keep her from being ritually impure, would finally enable him to touch her, or even give her a glass of water. The doctor, from her point of view, was appalled. She could not give him the medicine he requested because it reacted with the other medications she was taking. She saw a man who was antipathetic toward his wife – here his wife was very sick and all he could think about was stopping her menstruation? It was a classic case of a cultural gap that needed to be bridged. It was then explained to her the reason behind his request; arrangements are now being made to work around the problem.

2) Community Dialogue. One of the many roles of the community clinic is to raise awareness of preventative health programs and to have an ongoing dialogue with the community to draw the community to take advantage of its services and feel comfortable doing so. Since these clinics had little contact with the community as a whole, it made their work supremely difficult. One of the goals of our seminars was to help the clinic staff first gain acceptance with the community leadership, which will significantly boost neighborhood involvement and patronage. When we surveyed the clinic staffs, we found that they either didn’t know that this fieldwork needed to be done, or did not know how to go about engaging the community. Attempts to call patients directly – without getting the leaders’ OK – led to low turnouts at events. In general, low turnouts leads to lower patronage, which is bad for constituents’ health, and also bad for the health services’ business. With our facilitation, we’re helping the clinic staffs make slow but steady inroads into the community.

For example, in Neveh Ya’akov we facilitated a meeting between the clinic’s staff and the Community Center’s lay leadership (9 out of 10 of whom are Haredi), which we anticipate will lead afterward to inroads into the community’s various spiritual leaders. After this type of connection, we expect a much higher rate of participation in Clalit’s activities in the future. We are using similar means to reach community leadership in the other neighborhoods as well.

3) A Safe Place to Vent. In each neighborhood, because the staff – themselves secular and religious, some, with no religious background – had started out in a religious / secular neighborhood that saw a rapid growth in the Haredi population, there was a general feeling of frustration and despair. They felt they were witnessing the great struggle for control in Jerusalem between Haredi and non-Haredi Jews, and the Haredim seemed to be winning easily, engulfing entire neighborhoods and forcing their beliefs and belief systems on everything around them. On the other hand, clinic staffs must draw patients in; otherwise they’ll go elsewhere and Clalit will lose money. And these workers are measured also according to their economic efficacy in the clinic.

We couldn’t really offer solutions to all the fears the staffs raised, but just the act of venting was important to them. For some, this was the first time that they’d heard other people venting the same fears, and that it’s OK to talk about it, and maybe even find solutions to some of the problems. Interestingly, these issues were raised in all 3 of the neighborhoods, independently.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:27:36+00:00July 12th, 2013|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

MiniActive On the Road Again

In previous posts we spoke about the work of the East Jerusalem Palestinian MiniActive volunteers helping to deal with unwanted waterfalls and streams, that developed as a result of the major winter storm in January 2013.

Winter damage in A-Tur

Now, we’re here to show pictures of streams and waterfalls that are supposed to be there…

Banias stream

And its famous waterfall

Earlier this week, a select group of MiniActive volunteers traveled north to the Golan Heights to enjoy the Hermon Stream Nature Reserve (known as the Banias). They left Jerusalem at the crack of dawn, drove all the way up to the Banias, had the full tour, ate lunch, and came back home.

Resting beside the stream

This trip is another thank-you to the hard work these women put in every week in improving everyday life in East Jerusalem, one phone call at a time. For example, recent issues include:

Getting a bench installed at a bus stop outside the Old City:

Bus stop bench

And reporting health hazards, including areas prone to rat infestation:

In Silwan

Naomi Roff2016-08-27T16:56:13+00:00July 5th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

The JICC Presents: East Jerusalem

Over the past few years we’ve become one of the leading experts of community development work, especially in East Jerusalem. Last week we got to show this off in a number of forums:

First, on Monday, June 24 we presented the overall work of our East Jerusalem Desk, led by Ezadeen, to a group of researchers at the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies. These included (with links to relevant blog posts): working with neighborhood coalitions, the mental health forum, emergency response networks, paramedical professionals, MiniActive. Below is a response from Dr. Maya Choshen, researcher at the JIIS:

Dear Hagai,
The meeting with the JICC…was educational, encouraging and impressive…It is clear that a lot of heart and thought went into these projects; that is a wonderful combination…
I thought that nothing could top Cultural Competency (link) but the MiniActive program is no less impressive.
You contribute significantly to the quality of life [in Jerusalem], and all the words above can’t describe the joy and esteem I have for your work.

And if it couldn’t get better than that, on Thursday (June 27), Liana presented the MiniActive (click here for a more detailed description) project to the Jerusalem Municipality’s General Director. She, together with several other MiniActive volunteers, toured with him the streets of Wadi Joz. They showed him what each one had fixed on the street as part of the MiniActive project. This complete local ownership of the project, and pride in all its accomplishments, is one of the secrets to its success.

MiniActive and the Municipality General Director

Later on that day, Liana, Ezadeen and Hagai presented MiniActive achievements to a course of Department Heads at the Municipality, in an 8-hour tour.

In the afternoon, there was a celebration of social change projects in East Jerusalem. Out of the 120 women there, at least 80 were participants in the MiniActive project. There, too, Liana presented MiniActive to a forum that included quite a few senior officials.

Municipal officials and MiniActive

On Sunday (June 30) the MiniActive MVPs are out and about again – this time to the north – up to the Banias in the Golan Heights and back. Hopefully we’ll have some pictures to share soon.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:24:23+00:00June 30th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Arabic Courses – Building a Bridge through Language – 2012-2013 year

We’re just now winding up the 2012 – 2013 year of Arabic classes or Hebrew speakers at the JICC. After 10 years of offering the courses, this year we had a bumper crop – 100 students in 7 classes over 5 levels!

These courses are not something we take for granted. When we started, we offered a pilot Arabic course in the Morasha Community Center, where we were based at the time, in parallel to a Hebrew course that was taking place at the Beit Hanina Community Center. The two groups met from time to time, which is no small feat, since it was then the height of the second Intifada. The peak event was a joint meeting at the old Beit Hanina Community Center, which was just a stone’s throw from the Qalandia military checkpoint, on May 15, Naqba Day (Day of the Catastrophe, the day after Israel declared its independence). Our students received the warmest of receptions, while just a kilometer north of there were violent outbursts at the checkpoint.

After the pilot years, with our growing partnership with the Jerusalem Foundation, we held courses at the Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education, who let us utilize their facilities. There was a beginner’s course and a (very small) intermediate course.

We’ve been hosting the courses at our current facility on Mt. Zion since we moved here at the end of 2006 (this is as far back as we’ve been documenting them on our blog). Since then, we’ve been growing from year to year, adding classes and levels, until we finally reached the 100 mark.

This year, too, we went back to the Hand in Hand School, this time on their new campus. They were looking for a group with Arabic advanced enough to engage in conversation with participants in their Hebrew class for Arabic speakers during the class breaks. (We tried it before with beginners; it wasn’t too successful) We were happy to expand the physical outreach of our classes. Thus, this year the 10 students in our most advanced class (level 5) studied at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education, which is now located in the southern neighborhood of Pat, just a few hundred meters from Beit Safafa. In parallel, at the JICC building, the other 6 groups in levels 1-4, continued learning.

What makes our classes so special? First, the teachers. They’re the ones who make the classes so enjoyable and effective for the students. They don’t just teach from the book (although there is a book, and students do learn to read and write), they bring their whole selves into the classroom and teach Arabic as their own – teaching their culture, bringing their stories from home and from their families, learning through songs (on CD’s), making it fun. They go on tours of the Old City. When the Old City is blocked off and classes can’t be held at the JICC, classes meet in students’ homes.

Second the students – all use (or are exposed to) Arabic on an almost daily basis. They’re students, teachers, volunteers, activists, workers in the field, and more. Maybe one could be you? But act fast, places are filling up. We already have at least 25 already signed up for next year.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:21:07+00:00June 25th, 2013|Blog, Courses, Language Center|

MiniActive – On the Move

The MiniActive women are on the move again. With their ranks growing quickly reaching 1,000 (only a few months ago we counted 180) we’ve been looking for ways to reward our volunteers for their dedication and hard work. Below are just a few examples.

We then teamed up with a program that was seeking to teach residents of East Jerusalem about the environment. Some 50 of the MiniActive participants were more than happy to participate. As part of the program, in February the women had a special trip to the Ariel Sharon Park, Jaffa and an ecological farm outside Modi’in. The Ariel Sharon Park is built on the Hiriya garbage dump that received all the garbage from the Tel Aviv metropolitan area for nearly 50 years. Today the Ariel Sharon Park is not only where Israel’s central region’s garbage is sorted for recycling, it aims to be the ‘green lung’ of the central region, the largest in a planned chain of parks in the Tel Aviv area. After lunch and a stop at a historical mosque in Jaffa, the women visited an ecological farm outside of Modi’in. There they learned about the lifestyle of living as close as possible to nature, from growing their own herbs and vegetables to recycling grey water, composting, producing medicinal herbs, and more.

At the Ariel Sharon Park

These women continue to be active, meeting with school principals and raising awareness among the general population.

Raising awareness

Starting at the beginning of May, we’ve been holding a series of tours inside the walls of the Old City. These 3-hour tours each cover a separate section of the Old City, and utilize stories from Arab history and traditions to enrich the subject matter. These tours are not only fun, they also teach the women about parts of the city they may never have seen before. There are 10 – 15 women on each tour. Each time, different women participate. Thanks to Dr. Anwar for his dedicated service.

Inside the Old City

The women also recently took a trip to Haifa and Acre. In Haifa they visited the beautiful Bahai Gardens. In Acre they toured the ancient city, and enjoyed a boat ride.

At the Bahai Gardens in Haifa

Next week, a trip to the Banias.

The hundreds of participants in the different programs had a wonderful time. We hope to have many more of these kinds of opportunities to thank each and every one of our volunteers. They deserve it.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:18:50+00:00June 14th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Paramedical Professional Training Program – Now Physical Therapy

How sweet it is to see the fruits of your labors pay off, and to see a program expanding to fill critical needs. Thanks to assistance from the Hadassah Foundation and the Jerusalem Foundation (More recently the Leichtag Foundation has also joined us as a partner in this amazing program), this year we’ve expanded our training program for Palestinian graduates of paramedical professions to include students of physical therapy. One by one, we hope to develop courses for all paramedical professions, to enable graduates to pass the Israeli certification examinations, which are required to work legally in East Jerusalem.

We began the project last year, with seed funding from the Jerusalem Foundation (click here for links to posts one and two on the courses), and the results were fantastic – 26 of 39 nursing students passed the exam, and 8 of the 14 occupational therapy students passed the exam.

Nurses in the new course

Given the dearth of paramedical professions across the board in East Jerusalem, our main goal was to develop courses in as many disciplines as possible. Our next discipline – physical therapy. Developing a course for physical therapy was more challenging than for nursing or occupational therapy, especially since there aren’t schools for physical therapy (like there are for occupational therapy and nursing) in Jerusalem. Working with an outside consultant and the Ministry of Health, we planned the curriculum. We gathered 16 participants for our pilot course. Weekly classes began at the beginning of June and will prepare participants for the exam that will be held in November 2013.

Another meeting of the nursing course

These 18 joined another group of 30 who began studying in March for the nursing exam that will take place in September. As for Occupational Therapy, we’ve just finished helping 4 people prepare independently for the June exam, and we’ll start a proper course in September, leading up to the December exam.
We wish all graduates and students the best of luck in their studies and exams.

Naomi Roff2016-04-28T15:40:40+00:00June 10th, 2013|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Education, Employment, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs, Supporting employment in East Jerusalem|

Neighbors as Your Safety Net: Community Empowerment toward Emergency Readiness

Neighbors can be problematic (click here for a recent post about such neighbors), but they can also save your life, especially in an emergency. In the Emergency Response Networks program in east Jerusalem, we are helping bottom-up grassroots initiatives of residents to build the skills and capacity for emergency preparedness.

Imagine an earthquake. Especially in an area such as east Jerusalem, where infrastructure is poor – roads are narrow and poorly kept on good days, many buildings and additions did not take into consideration building codes and safety standards.

There is no time. Buildings have crumbled. Pipes and gas lines might have burst, power lines might be down. People might be trapped, and time is not on your side. All around the world, experts say that for the first few days – the community cannot hope for rescue teams to come from somewhere else. The formal rescue teams are going to be busy, very busy.

The best solution for these first few days is a team of local volunteers, who are responsible for the Emergency Response Network of the neighborhood. This team is trained in advance. As a part of their preparation, they create a detailed plan to have in place. All relevant infrastructure and equipment in the neighborhood will have been mapped – the schools and other public buildings, the health clinics, ambulances and other medical equipment, bulldozers, trucks and other heavy machinery, everything possible in the neighborhood that might help in an emergency. All relevant professionals in the neighborhood will also have been mapped and coordinated – from nurses and doctors to social workers to construction workers and engineers. They will have been organized into clusters by a number of resident-cluster heads. The Israeli police and other rescue workers will also have been notified, so that they know who from the neighborhood is in charge and so that rescue efforts can be streamlined.

We’ve been working to develop such Emergency Response Networks for the past 3 years, and currently there are trained teams in the neighborhoods of Jabel El-Mukaber and Silwan, Abu-Tor and Sur Baher, covering tens of thousands of east Jerusalem residents (out of 300,000 residents in East Jerusalem). Today they undergo practice simulation exercises like those described above. An earthquake is just one example of such an emergency to be prepared for. The concept of local team based on residents is novel. Usually in Israel these “local teams” are based on professionals who work in the community. But many of them reside outside the community, and it might be that in an emergency such as an earthquake, they will find it hard to come. The intensive mapping of resources is also unique to East Jerusalem – in neighborhoods that were originally villages of a few large families, where most people knew each other anyway, mapping and recruitment of community members that have expertise and tools (As bulldozers) is easier.

But we were frustrated…. The current training model enabled us to cover just 10% of East Jerusalem over 3 years. So now, based on what we’ve learnt so far, we are improving our pace. Utilizing a ‘Train the Trainers’ methodology, we are on the brink of training teams in all east Jerusalem neighborhoods over the next 2 years. Starting next week, on May 20, we are supervising the training of 12 Emergency Response Network trainers. These leaders had been trained before to be in their own local emergency team; now we are training them to train others. When these trainers complete the 40 hour course by the middle of July, they will then be able to organize and train volunteers in each of the neighborhoods, and survey the physical and human infrastructure in the neighborhoods. That work will take time (albeit, much less than in our previous model), but the results will be well worth the wait.

What is fascinating about this project is that neighborhoods do not only learn to save lives and save their neighborhoods in the case of an emergency. They also get to know one another and pool local resources. They are been empowered to help their community, whether they are doctors, social workers, teachers or construction workers. They are their own safety net. In the week of flood this winter (that ended with a full-blown snowstorm), these teams helped a lot in solving local problems of closed roads etc., whenever the citywide limited resources could not get in. This week showed the importance of these networks, even without major emergency situation.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T16:06:59+00:00May 15th, 2013|Blog, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Palestinians/Arabs, Silwan Community Dialogue, Tsur Baher Community Dialogue|

MiniActive – Becoming Part of the Solution

MiniActive started ‘small’ (here’s its genesis story), with tens, hundreds, and now nearly 1,000 women monitoring and fixing everyday problems – street lights, potholes, garbage collection. We’re super proud of the magnificent growth this program has shown over the past few months, and of the dozens of sanitation and infrastructure problems the project has taken care of over the past few months in East Jerusalem (and the hundreds more that are in the pipeline). But the 3 first aid courses that finished last week is a slightly different example of how this grassroots initiative is quickly organizing solutions to critical problems.

The problem: a severe dearth of people qualified to accompany school trips as medics (which is required for school groups). That’s not to mention a general lack of knowledge about general first-aid procedures in the general public.

Learning CPR

Some 50 women participated in the 20-hour courses from all over East Jerusalem. Of these, 20 were chosen to study in a 60-hour course that will qualify them to accompany school trips. The course was taught, voluntarily, by professionals from the Emergency – Welfare, Assistance, First Aid and Response organization, which is associated with the United Hatzalah organization.

Thank you, teachers, for the donated hours. Thank you, women, for your willingness to step up and be a part of the solution. We’re sure this is just the beginning.

Instructor teaching first aid

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T16:05:25+00:00April 15th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Turning the Tables on the Project Management Training for Multicultural Project Leaders: Participants Lead a Tour of the Multicultural Nature of Jerusalem

Yesterday we turned the tables on the Project Management Training for Multicultural Project Leaders, which is supported generously by the Rosenzweig-Coopersmith Foundation. This training is intended for Change Agents and Project Leaders in Jerusalem that are doing Inter-cultural work. It is an 18-week course that covers the principles of project management, effective activism, challenges of multi-cultural groups, and the special case of Jerusalem for all its residents.

On February 19, we took the entire course out on a tour of Jerusalem. But instead of us teaching participants, they themselves taught us. They were the tour guides, they were the experts. We, and everyone else in the course, sat back and learned.

This was part of the section of the course that dealt with Jerusalem. Other meetings on Jerusalem featured 3 different panels from Jerusalem’s 3 major population groups – one on the Ultra-Orthodox population, one on the Palestinian population and one on the non-Haredi Jewish population.

We went to all different areas in the city. We went to A-Tur, Beit Safafa, Jebel el-Mukaber and Silwan in East Jerusalem. Participants were shocked at the state of infrastructures there – the lack of sidewalks, the garbage, roads and signs in disrepair – all of the lacking infrastructure that they must deal with on a daily basis. In A-Tur we learned about special education in East Jerusalem. In Beit Safafa / Pat we learned about the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education, and its unique activities, bringing together Jewish and Arab children to study in the same classroom, in Hebrew and Arabic.

A participant from the Katamonim neighborhood told us about her community, a Jewish and economically disadvantaged neighborhood that is undergoing some urban renewal processes. She also spoke about the Ethiopian community there, of which she is a part. We also went to the German and Greek colonies, where we heard about those neighborhoods from a local artist, another participant. She showed us a street exhibition of several artists that her works were displayed in.

The Haredi (Ultra-orthodox Jewish) neighborhoods also left a strong impression. For many of the non-Haredi participants, Arab and Jewish alike, this was the first time they had ever ventured into these areas and taken a close look. We went to Sanhedria, to Romema, and other adjacent neighborhoods. We went past the Belz ‘castle’; we learned what a ‘Talmud Torah’ is, what a gmach is, what a mikveh is. Even the Jewish non-Haredi participants, who had heard of the terms, learned their meaning through the eyes of their fellow Haredi participants in the course.

Naomi Roff2014-04-04T12:57:51+00:00February 20th, 2013|Blog, Courses, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Inter-Cultural Community Dialogue, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

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