Blog | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Palestinian Kosher Cooking and Tolerance Week, on the Times of Israel Blog

One of our events during Tolerance Week was a workshop on Palestinian cooking. It was hosted by our good friend, Dr. Diana Lipton, and was fully Kosher, to enable those who often aren’t able to enjoy this type of cooking because they observe Jewish dietary laws. Afterward Diana wrote about her experience in her blog in the Times of Israel. Here’s where she described her experience, and described Tolerance Week:

Food bridging cultures

Feeling Hungry in Jerusalem

Last week was the fourth annual Jerusalem Tolerance Week, timed to coincide with International Tolerance Day. Not surprisingly, many of the events organized by institutions and individuals in partnership with the Jerusalem Inter-Cultural Center (JICC) revolved around food.

Most of the food-related activities involved participating restaurants, but one of them took place in our apartment. Our event was called Kosher Palestinian Home Cooking. We invited Magda, a wonderful cook who also cleans for our friends Naomi and Jonathan, to prepare a range of traditional Palestinian dishes that kosher-keeping Jews could eat. Magda bought all the products at Rami Levy, a supermarket where all the products are kosher, and prepared the food in Naomi and Jonathan’s kosher kitchen in pots that belonged to them or were purchased specially.

Displaying the wonderful tastes of Palestinian cooking

Through the JICC’s Tolerance Week advertising, mainly on social media, we invited anyone who, because of dietary restrictions or mere lack of opportunity, could not enjoy Palestinian home cooking, to come to our apartment and make up for lost time. We promised wonderful food, an opportunity to meet the cook and to hear about her life and the role of food within it, and live music!

Ahead of the event, a few people asked me if I was worried that people would simply come to eat free food and leave. I wasn’t worried, and as it turned out, I didn’t need to be. As these photos attest, the 60 plus people who came to our apartment last Thursday night, most of whom we didn’t know and didn’t know each other, certainly had an appetite for Magda’s amazing food, but they were hungry for a lot more.

You can read her entire column here.

Accompanied by a little music as well

Thank you Diana, and thank you for a wonderful event!

And, of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund and the Schusterman Family Foundation for helping us to advance tolerance in Jerusalem through Tolerance Week.

Naomi Roff2019-12-20T18:39:58+00:00December 10th, 2019|Blog, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem|

MiniActive – Acting on Cleaning Up East Jerusalem, on Problems Big and Small

This is much more than a picture of a wall. It is the picture of a huge success for MiniActive in the A-thory / Abu Tor neighborhood.

This is more than just a wall

For years, there was no wall. It was an open space, which looked like this.

Makeshift garbage dump in A-Thory / Abu-Tor

Since February 2019, MiniActive has been working to clean up a garbage dump in the neighborhood. It was filled with household waste, which is a huge problem in East Jerusalem.

For lack of a better place, residents threw their garbage here

Another problem was that, technically, the land on which the garbage was dumped was private property, not public land, so the Municipality was technically not responsible to clean it up. However, only the Municipality had the tools and equipment to clean it up properly, and it is their responsibility to provide sanitation services to residents. MiniActive held a number of meetings with those responsible to work out a solution. Residents also wrote three letters, demonstrating their own commitment to help keep the area clean in the future. These letters included:

A commitment to make sure the area remains clean, and ensuring that residents won’t throw their garbage there.
A commitment to put garbage receptacles beside every building.
A commitment not to burn garbage or garbage receptacles (which is sometimes done in East Jerusalem as a last-ditch effort to get rid of garbage) and that they’ll report to the Municipality every time garbage is not collected regularly.

After two weeks of cleaning up, better but still not completed

The process of cleaning up the area began in mid-September, and lasted until the end of October. Here’s a Facebook post from the beginning of work in mid-September:

Here’s a later Facebook post, from the middle of work in early October.

In November, the owner added the wall, to prevent further dumping.

Ensuring a clean area

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and to Natan for their support of MiniActive!

Naomi Roff2019-12-27T08:51:22+00:00December 3rd, 2019|Blog, MiniActive|

Tolerance Week 2019 – Continuing a Tradition

There are some things you don’t learn in school – backgammon, capoeira, Debka glue dances and rap. – and certainly not with neighboring schools, [especially between Jewish and Arab schools]. This week we [Kulna] held a special event at the Natural History Museum, Tolerant Double Jerusalem, attended by 100 students, 10th graders from the Comprehensive High School in Beit Safafa and Keshet High School. We hope and believe that this activity will lead to more joint activities during the year between the two schools and other schools in east and west Jerusalem….The event took place as part of Jerusalem Tolerance Week 2019, proving yet again that Jerusalem is the world capital of tolerance.

This is how the Kulna organization summed up one of their events – their Jerusalem Double backgammon tournament – during the 4th annual Tolerance Week in Jerusalem. The week included 50 events in the week surrounding International Tolerance Day (November 16). Events took place between November 14 – 24. Click here for a full list of events. You can find the full list in three languages on the Jerusalem Tolerance Website.

This year, 50 events took place throughout Jerusalem as part of the Tolerance Week, and each one was attended by 20 to 40 people. The events were as diverse as Jerusalemites – tours, lectures, community bonfires, home hospitality that included Kosher Palestinian food, the first conference of Jerusalem’s Tolerance Coalition, and more.

Palestinian Kosher cooking

Community centers also participated widely, and, with assistance from the Municipal Mediation Center, 12 events were held in different neighborhoods. In addition, there was a “What a Dish Tells” festival, in which restaurants throughout the city served a “tolerance dish”, and took part in raising awareness of the issue in the public discourse. This festival was even featured on the Jerusalem Municipality’s Facebook page:

A number of tours took residents to behind the scenes in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa

And a tour about Haredi – non-Haredi relations in Rehavia and Sha’are Hesed:

Holding events in the public space, and recruiting restaurants and businesses in Jerusalem, helped us to reach audiences outside our ‘usual suspects’ and create more of a presence in the city.

‘Pleased to Meet You’ event at the First Station

Schools also took part in Tolerance Week. Below, for example, the Kulna organization organized a special event that included backgammon, capoeira, Debka dancing and rap for Jewish and Arab students from the Beit Safafa and Keshet high schools.

And in closing:

Want to see more pictures? Here’s the week’s photo album, from the Jerusalem Tolerance Facebook page:

And on the Jerusalem Tolerance Website you may find the Photo Gallery of the week!

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund and the Schusterman Family Foundation for helping us to advance tolerance in Jerusalem.

talalafi2019-12-20T18:32:17+00:00December 1st, 2019|Blog, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem|

The Little Prince – Building Long-term Partnerships

In the “Little Prince” program, when we began two years ago with a host of residents’ initiatives, our goal was to make Jerusalem clean. But an equally important goal was to establish a genuine, mutual and active partnership with the Jerusalem Municipality and its various departments. And today, it’s actually happening!

After much work by members of the Little Prince, and slowly weaving ongoing and long-lasting relationships with municipal officials and professionals, we, along with city representatives, built a number of forums in which residents and municipal officials meet to discuss issues, advance common agendas, and solve problems, as well as collaborate in thinking, planning and carrying out additional plans. We’re talking about partnerships with senior-level officials, with residents from many neighborhoods …. a truly exciting moment.

Forums of residents and professionals, building long-term partnerships

During the summer vacation, a broad forum of ultra-Orthodox residents, representatives from all neighborhoods throughout the city, met with the senior level officials from the Operations Administration that included the regional manager, the coordinator of the citywide objective, division managers and their staff, district managers, the manager of the 106 hotline, director of public participation from the municipality, senior managers from the Community Administration, and more.

After the summer vacation, a similar forum was held by residents of the ‘general’ Jewish sector (religious and secular Jews) with senior representatives from every division: Operations Administration, the Culture Society, and Sport Administration, the Community Administration, and the for Service Quality Authority.

Numerous forums, targeting different problems

For those who say that there is nothing to be excited about from two meetings, we can say that in light of these two meetings, there have already been two work meetings in each of the forums, one with the Sanitation Division and one with the Policing and Enforcement Division. All the meetings had a nice atmosphere, were held in a professional manner, and discussions stayed on point. Both ‘sides’ asked questions and received information, raised ideas to advance solutions, thoughts and discussions were shared, needs were raised and initiatives were proposed. Admittedly, this is not a common perception of meetings between residents and municipal officials.

We are currently setting up a Forum for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, which must be built with the utmost sensitivity to regarding both residents and municipal officials.

Building a partnership of this kind is a fascinating process that requires both sides to change their perceptions of the other, which have taken root and now it is time to change: Replacing perception of waste, inefficiency, annoyances and complaining to one of trust, giving each other credit, mutuality respect and responsibility, and professionalism.

The residents of Jerusalem and the municipal officials are gaining experience in a long-term partnership process on “difficult” issues of sanitation, supervision and gardening, which has never taken place before in the city.

Thanks to the Director of the Operations Administration, who opened the door, and to Mayor Lion who is fully supportive.

Here’s a post (in Hebrew) that originally appeared in the Little Prince – Cleaning Up Jerusalem Together Facebook group in July about the forum for Haredi residents. Today the processes in the Haredi, ‘general’ Jewish and Palestinian sectors are continuing to develop and gain momentum…

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince!!!

Naomi Roff2019-11-22T13:17:06+00:00November 20th, 2019|Blog, Effective Activism, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

An Evening of Cultural Competence for Health Care Rights Volunteers from the Jerusalem Municipality

On Tuesday, November 5, we held a special evening for Health Care Rights Volunteers, which was organized by the Community Services Department of the Jerusalem Municipality, with an emphasis on cultural Competency.

The volunteers come from various organizations, such as Santé Israël‘s Bikur Olim project, Kivunim from Hadassah Hospital, the Segula unit at Sha’are Zedek Medical Center, and more, listened to a lecture from our own Aliza Shabo-Hayut, who described the experience of a fictitious immigrant who encounters cultural barriers everywhere – in the education system, on public transport, at the National Insurance Institute and in the hospital. She also described the tools for cultural competence among volunteers are extremely important in helping immigrants and those from different cultures obtain their health rights and navigate the Israeli health system. The lecture received excellent responses and the volunteers noted the importance of the topic and the contribution of the lecture to their work.

Aliza speaking to volunteers

After the lecture specific complex inter-cultural situations were demonstrated through playback theater.

Volunteers night – show time

The choice of cultural competency as the main theme of a special evening recognizing volunteers is part of the process of assimilating cultural competence in the municipal Community Services Department that we’ve been leading in recent years.

Volunteers night – playback time

Many thanks to Sarit Lipkin Wolf from the Community Services Department, for organizing the evening, and to Marie Avigad, coordinator of Sante Israel, who was part of the steering committee for the evening and who brought the subject to the fore. And of course, many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, for its continued support of Cultural Competency over the past decade.

Here’s the post from the Sante Israel Facebook page (in Hebrew and French):

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for its continued support of Santé Israël over the years, and to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support to the JICC cultural competence program.

orna2019-11-16T10:24:20+00:00November 15th, 2019|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Jerusalem Municipality|

Advancing Tolerance through Mental Health Week 2019

World Mental Health Day is commemorated every year on October 10. The Nefashot (souls) team has been working for the past 3 years in Jerusalem to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of mental health issues, and has created a whole week of events in Jerusalem. The week of 27.10-2.11.2019 included many diverse events, all of which were initiated by Jerusalem activists, organizations, and cultural institutions, all who have a common goal: to raise public awareness of mental health issues in the city, and to reduce stigmas. Events included lectures, performances, tours and more.

We’ve been working with the Nefashot team since the beginning, and are so proud of their accomplishments, and so proud to watch – and be a part of – their development. Here’s a summary of that fascinating and important week.

Making Souls: Events to raise awareness about mental health issues

Here are what team members wrote, introducing the events:

So why do we make this big a deal of this? And are we calling it a festival, if we’re talking about people’s struggles? And what are we so excited about? After all, are there many art and publicity events that raise awareness of the issues we are talking about? It’s true, we’re not making huge breakthroughs. We’re just inviting everyone to make ‘positive noise’ together, in a big, loud voice that proves once again that the whole is greater than its parts.

Because we believe. Believe that the more our society gets to know people who are dealing with mental health issues, the more we’ll be able to look around and identify when someone close to us is suffering and in need of help, and we will know that when we’re suffering, we should seek help and treatment, just as we do with physical suffering. And we’ll know we’re not alone in this story – it’s just normal. And we won’t be ashamed – because there is no reason, and we will not hide it – that we will then lose the support that our community can give us. And we believe that art and culture are our means because art in its expression is a language. A language of the soul, a language of the heart. That is why we can all connect with her through ideas, inner experiences, and meet with ourselves, and with each other, precisely.

Among the events: a card workshop for acquiring tools and improving the communication and relationships between family members, lectures by parents, community karaoke, tour of the Israel Museum and the Old Yishuv Court Museum, playback theater, evening reading of poets and therapists and memorial evening for friends who committed suicide.

Memorial evening for those who committed suicide at the Van Leer Institute

There were very emotional reactions from the participants and the organizers. Here are a few:

When you see so many people talking and sharing their point of view about dealing with mental health issues with others … It’s hard to be stigmatized about it. The more we talk about it, the more we’ll understand that we can’t be stigmatized about something that affects one third of the population personally and directlry. It’s not a matter of mental illness but mental health, something every person should strive for.

Poets reading their material at the Tmol Shilshom coffee house

And from Michal Miriam Waldiger, who led one of the activities:

How can one not join a project so correct and so precise, that its purpose hits the bullseye – reducing the stigma, raising the issue and normalizing it. Last night I led a discussion in an Ulpana in Israel and one of my two subjects was mental health and the girls. Listen well and it seems that we’re on the right track, the ground is fertile for change.

Workshops at the Jerusalem Clubhouse

Towards the end of the week of the “Making Souls” festival, and as Shabbat was coming in, the Nefashot team called the general public’s attention to the link between the upcoming Torah portion, about Noah and the Ark, to mental health issues:

Shabbat Parshat Noah, Shabbat ‘Making Souls’

What is more appropriate than this parsha to describe the collective and personal sense of “after the flood”. We had a week full of events – emotional, funny, painful and especially, connecting. A fantastic spectrum of people who listened, hugged, cried, laughed and were simply part of the experience. So on Shabbat we rest, and each of goes back home to say something about the soul. You can chat with the children, or with friends at a meal. You can share experiences from the events of the past week that you attended. There are those who wrote a column in a weekly newsletter published for Shabbat, some who will come to share a personal story, lecture at the end of the synagogue services, or give a sermon. Whatever you choose – it’s appropriate.

Here’s the Facebook post in Hebrew:

Ruti Levi: Parents dealing with mental health issues tell their stories

Ruthie Levi: Parents dealing with mental health issues tell their stories

Ruthie Levy, who focused on the families of those dealing with mental health issues, wrote the following moving words:

“On maternal loneliness. As a mother, I respond to Nefashot’s request, as Saturday’s Torah portion of Noah and the Ark nears, in order to increase awareness of the circles of loneliness circles in areas of mental health. Mothers of those with mental health issues often feel lonely. My experience has been that loneliness is felt in the questions in which the answers are very personal and no one can offer me the answer. In this writing I want to describe to you one facet of maternal loneliness – when you are alone in the search for the answer, how much to support and how much … not to support.

Faced with the struggling son who is fighting for his balance, I, as a mother, seek my balance. My maternal movement for my coping son is characterized by a step forward, a step back. Step forward looking for closeness, connection, giving and contribution to advancing his recovery. A step back that seeks to differentiate, respect for the son’s freedom of choice, his different preferences, his independence, his subjective recovery journey. I’m careful not to go too far forward, I’m careful not to go too far back. Like a daredevil on a tightrope holding a balancing pole, trying to identify the balance point at any moment according to the situation

Here’s an overview of the entire week in Hebrew, from Nefashot’s Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation, the Natan Fund and the Schusterman Family Foundation for helping us to advance tolerance in Jerusalem.

talalafi2019-11-16T10:27:20+00:00November 13th, 2019|Blog, Promoting Tolerance in Jerusalem|

The Little Prince – Cleaning Up Jerusalem at a Top Priority in Jerusalem

It started as the dream of one – and now many – activists, and now it’s a top Jerusalem priority.

As Mayor Moshe Lion rounds up his first year in office and plans his second, we see that making Jerusalem clean covers 3 of his top 5 priorities. More importantly, it also means that a significant amount of municipal resources – hundreds of millions of shekels, will be invested toward this goal. According to this article, published in Jerusalem’s Kol Ha’ir local newspaper, top priorities include:

Increasing garbage collection on Saturday nights, both to be in-line with heightened usage on Saturdays, and to have 100 fewer garbage trucks on the roads on Sunday mornings, causing traffic congestion.
Addition of 600 more sanitation workers
Addition of 1,000 underground garbage receptacles, which are cleaner, take up less space, and hold more than the traditional above-ground kind.

Kol Ha’Ir article on the mayor’s 2019 – 2020 work plan

Kol Hakavod – congratulations to all the neighborhood activists throughout Jerusalem who helped this come about! Kol Hakavod to Municipal officials, professionals and city council members, who are our full partners in helping make Jerusalem a clean city.

Many thanks to the Rayne Foundation and the Jerusalem Foundation for their support for this program.

Naomi Roff2019-11-22T13:31:31+00:00November 12th, 2019|Blog, Effective Activism, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

Sometimes Dreams of a Clean Jerusalem Come True

One of the key issues Little Prince deals with is problematic urban areas, which are used by all residents of the city and are not cleaned, ever.

The reason: Its zoning is such that it’s unclear who’s responsible for the area, the municipality or residents, so nobody cleans. True, the ultimate responsibility for cleaning the entire city is that of the municipality – and it is this perspective that members of the Little Prince are working to advance – but it has still yet to be adopted by all municipal departments.

Little by little, members of the Little Prince choose a different area and tour with municipal professionals and officials and meet with them. They connect between professionals in the different departments: sanitation, horticulture and ticketing and enforcement, regional manager for urban planning and more, to make the municipality take responsibility for cleaning the particular area and not only once, but as part of its regular routine.

Nayot grove, finally clean

One of the many examples of the complexity of this process is a grove in the Nayot neighborhood. Residents have been trying for years to get the municipality to clean up the neglected area, but the municipality did not take responsibility. The area is large, and residents from all parts of the city use it often, so it’s not logical that local residents be held responsible for the entire area.

As a result of the methods developed by the Little Prince and the networking and connections developed by its members with municipal officials from the gardening, sanitation, and local enforcement departments, and the Municipality is now cleaning the area on an ongoing basis, each week.

Not only along the street, but among the trees as well

Here is an example of a message written by one of the residencies after the first cleaning of the municipality in late September 2019:

Sometimes dreams come true … Today they cleaned the grove on Yehoshua Yavin St. Zoned as a ‘brown’ area that the Municipality leased from the Israel Lands Authority that leased it from the Greek Patriarch. For years no department agreed to clean it. Today the sanitation department has made a historic and hysterical move. Wishing us a happy and clean year in the capital city!

Whatsapp message, with author’s permission

And the next day …..

Guess what? They cleaned an additional grove on Yehoshua Yavin St. Now we can wish a happy and clean year for everyone. Well done to the caring residents and the sanitation workers who are showing more and more partnership and dedication. Thank you, and may this only continue and only the best!.

Let’s hope that it’ll be like this all the time!

This was reported in the Little Prince’s Hebrew-language Facebook group:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince!

Naomi Roff2019-11-25T07:53:55+00:00November 8th, 2019|Blog, Effective Activism, The Little Prince - Cleaning Jerusalem Together|

Arabic Courses Open the Year

How can you open communication with the ‘other’ if you don’t know his or her language?

That’s why we opened our Arabic for Communications classes over 15 (!) years ago. Our classes were among the first Arabic for Communication classes, and today continue to be among the most popular and well-respected. Indeed, many of our students have been with us for several years.

Students from levels 1,2,3 listening to a lecture by Ms. Rima Abu Katish, from the Salamtakum organization that helps children with cancer in May 2019

We opened our latest round of classes on Sunday, October 27. This year’s cadre includes 240 people over 5 levels – a new high!

In addition to in-class learning our students enjoy tours of Arabic-speaking Jerusalem, lectures by renowned Arab authors, poets and other professionals, and open discussions with our veteran teachers, Anwar, Suha and Hiba.

Students in levels 4 & 5 listening to poet Marwan Makhoul in May 2019

Here’s a little taste of the classes. The video below was inspired by one of our students and one of our teachers, Dr. Anwar Ben-Badis. It is ‘art in the public sphere,’ where Anwar discusses historic Jerusalem houses, in the neighborhood itself, in Arabic. Enjoy!

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continuing support of our Arabic Instruction Center!

Naomi Roff2019-11-09T10:56:14+00:00November 5th, 2019|Blog, Courses, Language Center|

Oneg Shabbat Blog Mentions ‘Window to Mount Zion’

The Oneg Shabbat blog is a private very popular weekly blog that’s been published since 2007. Authored by Prof. David Assaf, Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, each week he focuses on different subjects pertaining to Judaism, Israel, humanity.

Oneg Shabbat

In his October 28 edition Prof. Assaf focused on the Window to Mount Zion project, and its new interactive web site.

Jerusalem enthusiasts will be delighted to become acquainted with the Window to Mount Zion web site, which seeks to promote Mount Zion as a common, tolerant and accepting place for the three monotheistic religions. The site is a ‘social tourist guide’ and incorporates texts and videos from the perspective of those who live and work there. For example, Father Corion tells about the Armenian monastery and the cemetery next to it, Rabbi Yitzchak Goldstein tells about the Chamber of the Holocaust and Abdullah Dajani tells about his family’s cemetery next to the David’s Tomb complex. The site also has an illustrated, detailed and interactive map that shows all the sites on Mount Zion in a friendly way.

The post on Oneg Shabbat

Oneg Shabbat is hugely popular, and is distributed throughout the world. Many thanks for the mention!

Naomi Roff2019-11-25T07:44:24+00:00November 2nd, 2019|Blog, Mount Zion|

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