I had a terrific meeting recently with Avital, the director of youth and young adult programs at the ICCI. I want to share a few aspects of that meeting.
She is currently running a dialogue group for young adult Jerusalemites--Christian Arabs, Jewish Israelis, Muslim Arabs, Arab Palestinians and Arab Israelis. Pretty clear how complex these groups can get. While the program I'm creating is simply about bringing two different religious groups together, Avital told me in Israel people simply cannot separate their religious identities from their national identities. These identities are wrapped up in one another here.
I wonder how complex our identities are in comparison. For myself, I am aware of my identities as a Jew, as an American and as a Zionist, and while these come with their own intricacies, it seems enormously different from the identity struggles of Jerusalemites. In a city that has changed hands so many times and is so religiously and politically polarized, in a city in which not all of the citizens feel at home or at all identified (or identified as anti), it's very different from political/social/religious identities in American cities.
The Jerusalem dialogue group takes tours in Jerusalem of problematic areas like East Jerusalem, the group talks about troubling political and religious issues they face in their communities, and designs a program together as a group to do for their communities. For example, groups in the past have run film festivals or cultural events that incorporate common themes of Jerusalem or bring to light all of their identities. Avital says it's important for the group to see most of all that by working together they can accomplish something. Initially this sounded pretty cheesy to me. But then I remembered where I was. This isn't Palo Alto, CA. It is actually extraordinarily difficult to get groups to work together in Jerusalem. Participants walk away with new understandings of the other groups in Jerusalem and might even continue some of their new friendships. The ICCI selects people to participate in the group who plan to work in dialogue, peace, religion, politics or social work. The experience of really facing the city in which they live is an important step on their way to whatever professional goals they have. It surprised me, but Avital said that for many of the group's participants, when they take tours of Jerusalem, it's the first time visiting many of the sites. It just really shows how segregated the city is.
I love the idea of participant voice and choice, and especially in the context of this dialogue group. These young adults need to be empowered or nothing will ever change here.
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Rachel! I wonder if you and Prof Dollinger talked about complex layers of identity when he was in town. He recently gave the key note address at the CCAR (http://ccarnet.org/index.cfm?) conference in San Francisco and riffed off of the idea of being an American Jew allows him to be a Jewish American and visa versa. In our global world where so much is moving beyond nationalism this raises an important question for communities in which nationalism is still an incredibly important driving force of identity.
ReplyDeleteI love that your conversation with Avital made you question the ease through which cross cultural dialog can occur. I wonder, though, if your sense that it's easy to do in Palo Alto is really true. Living in the Bay Area I often find that people are so liberal in their beliefs that they have become quite closed minded. I wonder what a cross cultural film festival celebrating themes of the Bay Area would look like. In all honesty, I can't think of something like that. We have oodles of film festivals - sponsored by all sorts of ethnic and cultural communities but none that unites us all, to my knowledge.
Your conclusion that youth empowerment is central to the success of collaborative work is spot on. It makes me wonder if you'll change anything in your capstone project to deepen the youth voice and choice component...
I've loved reading all your blogs! Thank you for sharing them! Jenni