Rabbi Bob Kaplan, Director of Cause-NY (of the JCRC-NY) and our New York partner in the New-York Jerusalem Experts Exchange, visited Lod today as part of his visit to Israel. The purpose of the visit was to present the Inter-Identity Crisis Intervention model Bob uses in NYC. In a special meeting of the Lod Multicultural Forum, together with Lod’s Mayor, the NYC model was introduced and compared to the model currently implemented in Lod, with the support of the JICC.
Rabbi Kaplan at the Lod Municipality
Orit Yulzari, Director of the Lod Community Dialogue and Mediation Center, was an intern at Cause-NY a few years ago. Upon her return to Israel she began receiving on-going consultation from the JICC. As aprt of her work she initiated the Lod Multicultural Forum which focuses on ways to make Lod a more culturally competent city and importantly it also serves as the city’s inter-identity crisis intervention team. A few weeks ago when there was an arson of a synagogue in Lod the forum was used for this purpose.
During the presentation, the Mayor and all the participants emphasized the importance of the Crisis Intervention Team. Insights and tips from similar work in NYC were discussed.
Update, Nov 25: just a few days after this visit, Orit Yulzari received a call about an incident at an Arab school. A 10-years old kid threw a stone at a police car and the police officer slapped him and called him “Hammas member”. Orit and the Mayor immediately got to the place and ensured that the incident was appropriately dealt with. The fast intervention assured that no disinformation and incitement took place. Later on that day other members of the Forum met with all the relevant sides.
