The Open House in Ramle - a peace education center in Ramle, Israel
 

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Archive 2008

Dear Friends of OPEN HOUSE,

We feel really hopeful and energized following our annual Summer Peace Camp, which took place from July 6 to 24 at Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam in co-operation with the School for Peace there.  I am attaching four illustrative photos from the Peace Camp.  This year we designed the camp for 80 youngsters. This was a convenient number for the two buses that transported the children (plus the counselors and some helpful parents) on trips to other sites: the caves at Beit Govrin, the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, water and amusement parks, archaeological and historical sites, religious venues, plus snappling and horse-riding areas.

This year we introduced two innovations to the Peace Camp.  Last year the campers felt the day went by too quickly, and they requested that the activities last until 2 o’clock each afternoon rather than 1 o’clock. We honored their request this year and extended the camp program by an hour each day. Another change was in response to parents who asked OPEN HOUSE to accept their younger children to the camp.  For the first time we accepted campers from the age of 5 rather than 8 years of age. The younger children had their own group and counselors (one Jew, one Arab), as did the other age cohorts. They also had their own educational program, which included professional storytelling focusing on acceptance of the Other. For example, at the Biblical Zoo they saw ‘Noah’s Ark’ and discussed the meaning of inclusiveness.

We enjoyed the presence of the younger children tremendously.  On day trips, the parents of the younger children joined to help. As OPEN HOUSE directors and camp counselors, we are still evaluating if it is right for us to open our camp to this age group, which, considering the limitations, is at the expense of older children joining. You can write to me, if you have an opinion on the matter.

You can get a sense from the photos attached that our daily activities were full of fun and creative stimulation.  They included painting linked to the theme of the day, exposure to Arabesque design, ceramics at the Trappist Monastery of Latrun, and the joyous art of cooking.  Cooking together is a multilayered educational experience which includes learning about the foods of the Other, co-operation, creativity, and sharing.  Noam Schuster was responsible for the huge abundant table to which all the goodies from the different groups were brought to be shared together.  Especially popular were the little chocolate sculptures for dessert.

Noam is one of the young leaders in our Peace Camp.  Her home is in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam. She has been a participant in OPEN HOUSE activities for years.  As a teenager, she participated in our summer camps, our leadership training programs, and a Jewish-Arab youth delegation to the United States in 2002.  During that trip, our Friends of OPEN HOUSE/USA volunteers organized a visit to Brandeis University outside Boston, where our participants met with students studying there. This meeting inspired Noam to go to university, focusing on peace studies, at Brandeis.  She will be a sophomore there this coming year.  Coming home for the summer, Noam worked in our Peace Camp for the second consecutive year.

On a wild day devoted to learning Latino dancing, capuera, and juggling, I asked Eden Hirzallaha,a 14-year-old girl brimming with intelligence and radiating inner peace, to introduce herself to a Dutch film crew preparing a documentary on OPEN HOUSE.  “I am an Israeli Palestinian Muslim from Ramle,” she said, “and I was with OPEN HOUSE since the nursery school. Now I am a volunteer at the Peace Camp. I come every day because I want to give what I have received.”

Update on other OPEN HOUSE activities:

* Our nursery school for Arab toddlers resumes in September at considerably more than full capacity with a waiting list until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Besides providing a vital service to the Arab community, including working mothers, it is a proven head-start program for preschool children. This is especially important given the high dropout rate in the Arab school system in Israel.

* Itar, the foundation for promoting music among the Arab population, continues to use OPEN HOUSE for its educational programs. Children and adults come to our center to learn music and voice development. Among them is Samech Zakut, a Muslim Palestinian-Israeli from Ramle, who has been with OPEN HOUSE since he was 11 years old.  He has participated in our summer Peace Camps and youth delegations abroad and is now, at age 25, a popular and influential Rap singer who is gaining international recognition.

* Together with the Spiritual Center at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam, we are preparing a follow up program for “The Journey”{MasaMasar} throughout 2009, involving those high school students who participated in the week-long, intensive, multicultural, sleepaway camps during the last two summers.  The program exposed the participants to the different communities in the land, their heritages, and their historical experiences. This challenging program is financed by the Buddhist Arigatou Foundation in Japan.

* Last May the Arigatou Foundation through its GNRC {Glogal Network of Religions for Children} invited representatives from OPEN HOUSE and the Spiritual Center at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salaam to an international conference in Hiroshima on Ethical Education for Children.  Representing the participants of “The Journey,” Bisan Salman (an Arab Christian, from Ramle, 16) and Gal Berkovitz (a Jew, from Kibbutz Gezer, 17) were invited too, and they traveled to Japan with Vivian Rabia, to be joined by Khader Al Kalak, our administrative director, and me.  Bisan and Gal joined young people from all over the world who were holding their own conference simultaneously with ours. Our presence in Hiroshima has left a deep impression on us, and I feel that we in Israel can learn much from the people of Hiroshima about forgiveness and about focusing on creating a better present and future.

* After the conference we were invited to the University of Osaka to talk about our work, in their Department of International Affairs.  As a result, we established new connections with Japanese intellectuals and students.  It is our understanding, from later conversations, that, through meeting with us, negative stereotypes about Israeli Jews were changed. Following our visit in Japan, a group of Japanese students headed by Peace Studies Prof. Roni Alexander from Kobe, Japan, asked to meet with us here in Jerusalem to share our vision for this land.

* On our way to Japan in May, Khader and I paid a memorable visit to our Italian friends in Padua and Venice. They asked us to address the students of two high schools, one in each city.  In addition, they arranged a meeting at the Venice Municipality with those responsible for intercultural affairs and organized a public event there on behalf of OPEN HOUSE. We are deeply grateful for the initiatives of this growing group of friends and supporters, whose hospitality and dedication give us great encouragement.
*Open House receives interfaith Congregations, Rabbis with their Synagogue congregants and fact finding groups who have read ‘The Lemon Tree’ and wish to meet the people involved.
*Doctoral and College students worldwide write to Dalia and arrange phone interviews with her after having read ‘The Lemon Tree’.
*We always have celebrations at Open House- Ramadan party with the Nursery School children and their parents and now Christmas and Chanuka. These joyous occasions nourish our spirit..

*On the 15th of November, there was a reunion of young adults, both Arabs and Jews, who are now in their twenties, some of them after graduation from university Most of them were with Open House since they were 9, 10 and 11 years old. They had participated in our Summer Camps for younger children, Sleep-Away Camps for teenagers and Delegations abroad, including the reconstruction of the ancient synagogue of Brielle Holland, destroyed during the Holocaust. Some of these young people have been serving as counselors in our activities with younger children later on. What they had to say about how Open House is affecting their adult lives now is an important and significant feedback for us and gives us great encouragement to continue our work.
*Acri {Association Civil Rights Israel} has asked to hold a session at Open House with the young people of ‘The Journey’ about human rights, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary to the Convention of Human Rights signed in Dec. 1948. We held our first session on this important topic on the 20th of November, which is the International Day of the Child. At the end of the session we held prayers for the welfare of the children of the world, focusing on the children of this land.
With blessings, my prayers are for an ever deepening relationship with our Creator and with all created beings,

Dalia

Day of Prayer and Action for Children by the World’s Religions

GNRC youth in the town of Ramle, Israel on November 20 2008

On the afternoon of Thursday, November 20, fifteen Jewish, Christian and Muslim young peoplegathered in the Open House, Ramle to commemorate the Convention of the Rights of the Child andthe First International Day of Prayer and Action for Children.

The young participants came from various villages in the area and from the town of Ramle itself. All had met before in one of the two Journeys of Discovery (Massa~Massar) conducted in the summers of 2007 and 2008. The place where we met – The Open House, Ramle – was a perfect ground to meet in. The Open House, with its special story, is a symbol of peace and reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians in our region. During the 1948 war, the house’s Palestinian owners fled to the West Bank, and the house was given to a Jewish family. Years later, when their daughter learned the story of her home and met the original owners, she decided with them to dedicate it to the the Muslim and Christian community who had remained in Ramle, as well as to peace activities between Jews and Palestinians.

The first item in the program was a prayer reading. Dorit explained that the activity would mark the first international day of prayer and action for children and that the day was being celebrated all around the world.

Hayarkon Park In Jaffa
On the beach

The prayers were read by (right to left) Bissan salman (Christian), Gal Berkowich (Jewish), and Manar Aburiash (Muslim).

After the prayer reading, we continued with our program, which was conducted by a representative of the Israeli Association for civil rights. First he explained the meaning of civil and human rights. Then the participants were invited to share an experience in which they felt that their rights were violated.

They learned that everyone knew from their own experience what a violation of human rights means. They also learned from the various examples that they gave that we can divide rights into different

kinds. Some rights have to do with the individual and some are group rights.

One of the participants described how a teacher was making fun of him – his right to be respected as a student was violated. Another described how she witnessed violation of rights towards Arabs in Israel – with regard to job opportunities, housing security checks and treatment by the police.

In the second activity, the participants broke up into small groups and used photographs as a basis for discussion. The photos were specially selected for their human rights theme. Each participant spoke about what they saw in the photos. The photos helped the them to better grasp the principles of freedom, such as freedom of speech, and equality.

At the end, most of the participants said that they became aware of the possibility to stand up for their rights. They realized that every human being, and every child, has rights, and that in order to stand up for these rights it is necessary to learn about and understand them.

Some pictures from the day of prayer and action for children follow:

On the 23rd of Dec. 2008, there was a joyful Chanuka-Christmas Party at Open House with the children and parents of the Day Care Center. Students who study music with ITAR, a foundation for promoting music among the Arab population, which operates at Open HOuse, gave a performance and invited the chidren to experience the instruments..

Hayarkon Park In Jaffa
On the beach

We are thankful to Lamis Salman, our Nursery Schooll teacher and Bissan Salman,16, a long term Open House participant, for taking all the Christmas Party pictures.