Identity Groups and Conflicts | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Rainbow Stairs in Jerusalem, Thanks to MiniActive

Late this summer, Istanbul’s ‘Rainbow Stairs‘ made international headlines and, almost unintentionally, became a symbol of grassroots resistance, human rights and democracy. The Istanbul municipality painted over the stairs in a drab gray, numerous rainbow-painted staircases popped up all over Turkey in protest.

Inspired by the mass spontaneous outbursts of color that suddenly filled Turkish streets, our own MiniActive decided to take action in East Jerusalem. One of the main goals of MiniActive is to empower women and their families to take responsibility for their lives, especially their physical surroundings.They’ve worked a long time in improving things that needed to be fixed – roads, garbage receptacles, sidewalks, etc. More about that below.

But just as important as fixing the almost insurmountable amount of things that need to be fixed, is also a need to make your physical surroundings pleasant and special. MiniActive has come to teach its participants that, just like they are responsible for making the space inside their homes presentable, collectively they – all 1,000 of them and their families – are also responsible for making the space outside their homes not just presentable, but pretty, too.

The MiniActive participants recruited their families to paint public stairways in four neighborhoods -Silwan, Wadi Joz, Abu Tor, and the Old City. A local merchant donated half the budget for paint. Fortunately, the Jerusalem Municipality is not as zealous about gray stairs as that of Istanbul. Enjoy some pictures of our local Rainbow Stairs.

Left: stairs in the Old City; top: stairs in Silwan; bottom: stairs in Abu Tor

In taking responsibility to care for the collective public space, MiniActive has also made local streets accessible. The Jerusalem Municipality is in the process of planning physical improvements to neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. However, not all of East Jerusalem’s streets are included. The MiniActive women, together with the Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights organization, petitioned the Jerusalem Municipality to make major improvements to 3 roads that were not in the Municipality’s original plan. This will make it much easier for local residents, especially those with physical limitations, to navigate the streets.

Working in Wadi Joz to increase accessibility

A third accomplishment related to garbage. Garbage, or an overabundance of it, is a big problem in East Jerusalem. In a concerted effort to improve the situation, our MiniActive participants took to the phones. They inundated the municipal hotline with requests, and succeeded in obtaining 15 new garbage receptacles – 12 smaller ones as seen in the right-hand corner below, and 3 larger ones. They also coordinated the exact placement of the bins with the neighboring residents, so that everyone would be satisfied. Of course, this was only the tip of the iceberg. They are now waiting for 15 more receptacles.

Naomi Roff2014-07-11T09:24:08+00:00September 15th, 2013|Blog, Effective Activism, Identity Groups and Conflicts, MiniActive, Palestinians/Arabs|

Providing Services for African Political Asylum Seekers

There are tens of thousands of African refugees living in Israel, Muslims and Christians from countries such as South Sudan, Darfur and Eritrea. Most live in the Tel Aviv area, and there are a significant number who live and work in Eilat and other towns in the south of Israel. There are about 2,000 who live in the Jerusalem area.

These people live in the worst conditions, work in the worst conditions, and, outside of Tel Aviv, no one is taking care of them. No municipal authorities, no NGO’s, no human rights organizations. We could not let this situation continue. We contacted the Jerusalem Municipality, and they described an unreal situation – they had the space available for an office to help political asylum seekers, but they had logistical difficulties in hiring personnel. Since helping asylum seekers fits within our mandate of empowering all Jerusalem groups to work with service providers and therefore resolving inter-cultural conflict, we decided to step in, and provided the funds necessary to hire a part-time professional. This is the only worker dedicated to helping African asylum seekers outside the Tel Aviv area. It is something we should be proud of.

Naomi Roff2014-04-04T12:57:49+00:00August 15th, 2013|Asylum Seekers, Blog, Identity Groups and Conflicts|

Publication of First-Ever Manual for Israeli Cultural Competency Coordinators

Two weeks ago, in mid-July, we celebrated the publication of our Cultural Competency Manual in Hebrew. It’s been almost 2 years in the making, and a labor of love for a long list of people, from lecturers and researchers from throughout Israel, to cultural competency coordinators in major health care institutions, to officials in the Ministry of Health. It is the first manual of its kind in Israel, and one of the only significant ‘how-to’ guides in the world.

This is a major accomplishment, but we have no intention of resting on our laurels. This manual is only a part our full-service cultural competency support system (see here for more information), from soup to nuts. We start with introductory workshops for cultural competency coordinators and staff – what is cultural competency? How can we be sensitive to others’ cultures and traditions, without being experts? Our services also include training courses for medical interpreters in a number of languages – Arabic, Russian, Yiddish, Amharic, and more. Medical interpreters and not medical translators? Yes, because they are doing more than translating word for word, they are interpreting the needs of the patients and their families to facilitate full communication with the treatment staff. We just finished a course at Sha’are Zedek Hospital, and not only was the feedback was very positive, participants noted that the issue of translation / interpretation was one of the most important sections in the course. The courses mean little without the day to day mentoring and follow-up with the cultural competency coordinators in the different clinics and institutions – how to increase translations of the different signage and forms to the different languages, helping to assimilate concepts of cultural competency into the different institutions, even with staff who had not yet taken part in a training seminar. Our work does not stop there.

In April, in preparation for publishing the manual, we held a seminar in which one of the original goals was to get feedback for the manual. But a second goal, not less important, was the formation of a peer network of professionals and academicians who work in cultural competency throughout Israel, which is leading to sub-networks according to specific disciplines (mental health, primary clinics, hospitals, etc.), all which have their similarities and whose implementations in the field are slightly different. In addition, we provide supplemental materials to help those involved in cultural competency have a better understanding of major holidays, traditions, and other issues. See the attached explanations on the Jewish commemoration of Tisha b’Av and on the Muslim celebration of Ramadan. Together with the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bar-Ilan University, we are also working on short films, which will further enhance the training process.

We’d like to thank the Jerusalem Foundation for its partnership in this project since the beginning in 2008, and for the assistance from the New Israel Fund, which has enabled us to expand the project throughout Israel.

Naomi Roff2014-04-11T18:35:02+00:00August 5th, 2013|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Ethiopian Jews, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Jewish-Palestinian/Arab, Palestinians/Arabs, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

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|

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…. Haredi and non-Haredi in Kiryat Hayovel and Rehavia

Neighbors. Neighbors can be a problem, even in the best of communities. But what happens when neighbors move in who are very different from you? Or when old-time neighbors’ families grow and grow, and seem to be taking over the very nature of your neighborhood? From the ‘other’ side – you’re just looking to living in a nice neighborhood with your family – what’s all the fuss about?

This has been the dynamic in two Jewish neighborhoods – Rehavia and Kiryat Hayovel – that we’ve been working in recently. Both are traditionally secular / national religious neighborhoods – in fact, they’re considered bastions of these populations in Jerusalem. Recently, Kiryat Hayovel has seen an influx of new Haredi residents. In Rehavia, there has always been a Haredi community, but in recent years more and more Haredi families were getting in the neighborhood, changing the demographics. In a city where the Haredi population is growing quickly and non-Haredi populations are feeling threatened, this can definitely cause tensions.

However, if one of our goals is to work to preserve a diverse Jerusalem, tensions are the last thing we need. So in an effort to assuage building tensions between the Haredi and non-Haredi residents of Rehavia and Kiryat Yovel, and thanks to the support of the Jerusalem Foundation and the UJA-Federation of New York, we’re working with 2 very special neighborhood forums.

In Rehavia, we’re working together with the local community council with a group of 20 Haredi and non-Haredi residents, many of them are the leaders of their communities. This includes a fascinating combination of young and older people, national religious, as well as Haredi and secular, men and women. By the end of the second meeting we’d come up with a Summary of Principles for working together. This of course doesn’t mean that individual – and sometimes far-reaching – issues have been solved. But right now we’re focusing on the ‘how we handle issues’, before we move on to the ‘what is the solution’. This includes sometimes basic statements, such as ‘live and let live’, ‘mutual respect’, ‘love of the neighborhood’ and an ’emphasis that we’re all one people’. But we all know that when tension threatens to boil over we need simple, basic principles to guide us through. This group has met twice, and will continue to meet. It has been decided to significantly expand this forum, so that broader agreements can be made and more people and groups can be represented.

In Kiryat Yovel the situation is a bit different. The entrance of Haredi families, even as a small percentage of the population, has raised numerous battle cries against the ‘Haredization’ of Kiryat Yovel, which arises in various forms from time to time. The group in Kiryat Yovel is still smaller – 8 people, all are main leaders – and thus far the two meetings have consist of ‘getting to know you’ conversations. Yet, because Haredi-non-Haredi relations are much terser than in Rehavia, the very existence of these meetings is of utmost importance. While Kiryat Yovel is a tougher nut to crack, we believe we’re on the right path, creating a safe haven for dialogue and conflict resolution. In the last meeting, two Neighborhood Council members hugged each other at the end. This was an unusual occurrence, since one was Haredi and the other was secular who is very active against the Haredization of the neighborhood. “Finally, here, I can give you a hug,” said the Haredi Council member. Another, a secular woman, requested that Haredi women come as well, so that she wouldn’t feel lonely. Currently there is no other place this could happen.

In both neighborhoods, there is energy to continue the processes, and a feeling of hope that is very important for the future of these communities, as well as for Jerusalem.

jicc2014-04-04T12:57:50+00:00May 30th, 2013|Blog, Deliberative Democracy, Identity Groups and Conflicts, Inter-Cultural Community Dialogue, Jewish Religious Denominations, Kiryat Yovel, Rehavia, Ultra-Orthodox Jews|

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