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Archive 2001
December 2001
Yehezkel Landau, International Relations Director of Open House, a unique Jewish/Arab Coexistence Center In Ramle, Israel Introduces new US support group and discusses strides in Jewish-Arab grass-roots peacemaking methods in the face of the enormous challenges of the past months.
Muslims, Christians, and Jews: Healing Our Past, Building Our Future
An Open-Forum Conversation about Interfaith Dialogue
Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m
Episcopal Divinity School, Washburn Lounge
99 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA
SHARING SACRED TIME, SHARING SACRED SPACE
Co sponsored by the Cambridge Forum and Friends of Open House
December 13th at 7:30 p.m
Cambridge Forum
3 Church St.
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA
Imam Faisasl Abdul Rauf, an interfaith dialogue between the co-founder of Open House Jewish/Arab peace center and co-editor of Voices From Jerusalem: Jews & Christians Reflect on the Holy Land; and the imam of the al-Farah Mosque in Tribeca, in New York City, the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning.
Yehezkel Landau, the Israeli International Relations Director of a peace center in the holy land–based in an Arab house that was donated by its Jewish owner with the cooperation of its original Arab owners –will share the vision and work of Open House’s grass-roots model of interfaith peacemaking. Friends of Open House is developing American local, community based groups of Muslims, Jews and Christians modeling the approach of Open House in Ramle, Israel, that has been successful for 10 years.
Don’t Let the Light Go Out on a Valiant Jewish-Arab Peace Center
Please join us at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 16th, at Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley (105 Hudson Road, Sudbury, MA 01776 tel: 978-443-9622) to hear a report from Yehezkel Landau, International Relations Director of OPEN HOUSE, an amazing model of grass roots peacemaking in Israel, this congregation has been supporting for years. Landau will describe the challenges of maintaining a ten-year-old peace and co-existence center in Ramle in the face of the current violence and hatred swirling all around them. He will talk about what Jews here can do to strengthen the efforts of Jewish-Arab peacemaking in this dark time.
Landau will introduce
Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, director of the newly–formed U.S.-based Friends of Open House, that is developing local, community-based groups of Muslims, Jews and Christians modeling the successful approach of Open House in Ramle, here in the United States . Friends of OPEN HOUSE –a tax exempt U.S. nonprofit organization– has a network that extends to several cities throughout the U.S. and Canada
In recent months, relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs have been characterized by violence, fear mistrust and blame. Bridges of trust and cooperation that took years to build were undermined. The climate of violence also permeates the segregated Arab and Jewish schools. In Israel/Palestine today most Arabs and Jews–who had until recently worked together in the peace movement–have suspended joint activities.
At OPEN HOUSE, programs and relationships between Jewish and Palestinian youth, teachers and parents have continued and even strengthened. Landau, a Jew, and Michail Fanous, a Palestinian Christian whose family has lived in Ramle for nearly 900 years, are co-directors.
Yehezkel will share the vision and work of Open House’s grass-roots model of interfaith peacemaking. OPEN HOUSE began in 1991 with a Jewish, a Muslim and a Christian family around one symbolic home, where Ramle’s Jews and Arabs and neighboring communities–all citizens of Israel– share activities holding the promise of reconciliation in Ramle and far beyond. The grassroots peacemaking work of OPEN HOUSE transcends politics: The Likud mayor of Ramle, Yoel Lavi, is a fervent supporter of OPEN HOUSE.
November 2001
AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN:A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, William Morrow books, 2001, by Yossi Klein Halevi, is now in bookstores. Halevi, who is also the Israel correspondent for the New Republic, and a senior writer for Jerusalem Report, a regular commentator on Middle Eastern and religious affairs for the Los Angeles Times, is also chairman of the board of OPEN HOUSE in Ramle, Israel. Yehezkel Landau and
A Jewish/Arab Peace Education and Coexistence Center in Israel
HOLY LAND, HOLY PEACEMAKING
You are invited to a special interfaith event addressing the role of faith-based communities in peacemaking, both in the Middle East and in America. We urge you to come to be inspired by the story of a Jewish-Muslim-Christian center offering an alternative vision for religion and society in the Holy Land.
The violence that has touched us all in these past months and the ongoing struggles in the Holy Land challenge all who want to find peace. It is easy to give up and feel as if there is nothing that can be done. We would like to invite you to consider a different approach. Now is the time for all people of good will to do something for peace.
In Israel/Palestine there stands a beautiful witness to this hope for peace called Open House — a center for peacemaking between Jews and Arabs, where Christians, Jews and Muslims gather for educational and social events. Located in Ramle, a working class city in Israel with a large Palestinian population not far from Tel Aviv, Open House is a microcosm of Israeli society. It beams a beacon of light in a time of darkness. At a time when many Jewish-Arab coexistence projects have suspended activities, the work of Open House has grown. Grass- roots peacemaking with a faith base is its strength.
Please join us on November 29 at 7:30 PM at Our Lady’s Help of Christians Church, 573 Washington St., Newton, for a presentation on the work and mission of Open House. International Relations Director Yehezkel Landau will share the vision and promise of Open House. Rabbi Moshe Waldoks of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Rev. John Stendahl of the Lutheran Church of the Newtons and Rev. Walter Cuenin, Pastor of Our Lady’s Church will also share in the evening’s discussion. There will be a time for questions and a short video will be shown.
Open House was founded in 1991 by three families– Jewish, Muslim and Christian. Dalia Landau, whose Jewish refugee parents were given the Ramle house after the original Arab family was expelled during the war of 1948, donated her home for the center. Her gesture of reconciliation, in conjunction with the first Arab owners, was a powerful statement for peace in the Holy Land in these difficult times. Working for peace in an interfaith center is a model the world needs today more than ever. We can all do something for peace. Please join us and open your hearts to the vision of Open House.
At the October 4th opening festivities for the OPEN HOUSE Fall season programs, co-founder Dalia Landau memorialized the victims in the World Trade Center and other innocent victims in the world. The gathering of summer peace campers and their parents took place one week to the day after the World Trade Center attack and on the second day of the Jewish Feast of Sukkot. The entire community of Israeli Jews, Muslims and Christians reflected together on its ability to stay together as a mixed group surrounded by growing hatred and violence.
While the younger children, teenagers and parents were gathered together, Open House co-founder Dalia Landau said a few words in a prayerful spirit. Her prayer was received in deep silence and focused attention. At the end she taught them a melody to the words of the ancient Biblical prophet Isaiah. They all sang, in Hebrew, “Lo yisa goy, el goy kherev, lo yilmedu od milchoma,” which is translated as: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more.” Dalia’s remarks follow:
“We are gathered here tonight for the celebration of the feast of Sukkot, yet it is a difficult time for our country and for the world. I would like to express solidarity with the many bereaved families in the U.S.A. and also with all those who continue to suffer terror and catastrophe here and elsewhere.
In the Hebrew language the world panim, meaning face, uses the same letters as the word panim, meaning inwardness. For those who see, the face truly expresses our “inwardness, ” our inner selves, our inner being, and it is there that the face of God lives. When we are in touch with our true face, when we draw on it and know it, then we feel life deeply, and it is then that we can see and honor the unique face within every other individual.
But sometimes this face is covered by layers of repression. Then we feel very much at a loss, we feel alone, we feel that nobody cares for us, nobody understands us. So, out of desperation, we may do terrible things to ourselves and to others.
But as we gradually uncover our own faces, we can also help uncover the Divine Spark in one who has forgotten his or her original source of Being.
How shall we go about uncovering the Face–our own face, our brother’s and sister’s face, the face of God–all of these merging into oneness at the source of Being? ?
It is a challenge: the mask that covers the face can often be threatening or ugly. It can sometimes be a kind of mold formed by the opinions around us and we may repeat and profess ideas and convictions that we have never checked out for ourselves.
Yet, truly seeing the face of another may sometimes evoke the miracle of liberating that which has been long imprisoned.
We are sitting here now together under the spacious jacaranda* tree, on oriental rugs, surrounded by beautiful draperies in the cool air of an Israeli autumn under a cloudless sky bright with stars. May we be blessed to midwife a face that cries out.”
Michail Fanous, OPEN HOUSE’s former Palestinian Christian co- director [NOTE: Fanous served as co-director from 1991-2003] , showed three short videos: one video of the August tour to Holland by the mixed group of Jewish and Arab leaders ; another of the leadership training course for Jewish-Palestinian teenagers, most of whom went on the Holland trip; and a three-year old video of an OPEN HOUSE family outing, parents and children hiking and eating together.
Fanous said, “on the video, the producer is heard telling the group that they are a very special kind of people to be able to hike and make food together, when outside in the larger society, Jews and Palestinians are killing each other.”
“To see this video three years later, after we have lived through one full year of continuous violence in the streets, gives us all the strength to continue together. Most of the families from that video were sitting in our celebration on October 4th. Out of the original 20 families, only two left. And now we have grown so large we have to break into two family groups,” Fanous said.
Fanous noted that one child, wearing her summer camp outfit, brought her parents to the gathering. The mother said she needed to see for herself why her daughter was so happy in the OPEN HOUSE community and now she wanted to join the adult group herself.
Yael, one of the veterans of the Holland trip and a teenager who has been coming to OPEN HOUSE for six years, said: “If my mother had not seen the ad in the newspaper about the summer peace camp six years ago, my life would be totally different today.” According to Fanous, she said she didn’t know any Arab youth before she came for the first camp experience.
Fanous said that Shafiq Masalha, director of the leadership training course for teens, was also inspiring. Masalha told the gathering that their strength as a group came from the personal relationships developed in the group. Masalha, an Israeli Muslim clinical psychologist, noted that many other Jewish-Arab cooperative groups had fallen apart during this last year of the second Intifadah. He said these other groups were based on shared politics and had begun working together around the Israeli-Arab conflict, whereas OPEN HOUSE was about building relationships between people who live together in one community–Ramle–and wanting to feel safe in their friendships with each other.
[*The jacaranda tree planted by Dalia’s father, Moshe Ashkenazi, some 60 years ago, has grown to shelter the entire back garden of OPEN HOUSE. The tree shelters the Arab children who play in the garden daily in the nursery school –a project inspired by the al-Khayri family, the original Arab owners of the house–who blessed the OPEN HOUSE project as the best use for the joint home.]
September 2001
The youths, aged 16 to 18, spent two weeks traveling around Holland as part of a 15-member mixed Jewish-Arab youth leadership delegation from Ramle: 8 Arab Israelis and 7 Jewish Israelis. The Friends of OPEN HOUSE organization in the Netherlands provided logistical and financial support for this extraordinary educational experience. For almost all the youngsters, this was their first trip abroad and certainly the first such excursion as part of a mixed Jewish-Arab group.
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Michal (Jewish girl): We are able to relate to one another as human beings, here in Holland, more easily than in Israel. Here I can deepen my identity as a human being, rather than focusing, as in Israel, on my identification as a member of a particular people. Samach (another member of the group) told me how hard it is to live as an Arab in Ramle, and I was not aware of this part of Israeli reality until I came here with him. I was simply living in my own bubble. Today I can understand better, and I ask so many questions about why this is happening. Up until now I did not know what life is like for our Arab neighbors, or maybe I preferred not to know.
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Shiran (Jewish girl): In our first meeting at OPEN HOUSE I changed my views 180 degrees. I learned to know a person not according to his national or group affiliation but according to his personality. After that first orientation session with the group traveling to Holland, I invited Alice (an Arab girl) to stay with me at home for two days, and she came. Everyone should be proud of who s/he is and not sacrifice his or her identity because of the other.
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Alice (Arab girl): For the two days I spent at Shiran’s home I felt welcome and accepted by her family. During my stay we heard about the suicide attack (in Jerusalem), and I was afraid that they would blame me, as an Arab. But that did not happen. I feel very sad when people are killed.
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Sameh (Arab boy): Many of my Jewish friends left me following the last wave of violence, and the only ones remaining are you Jews in this group. The others simply got up and walked away, continuing to avoid me. Afterwards I felt that, in reality, they had never been true friends.
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Yael (Jewish girl): Aside from this group, I have no Arab friends. This causes many tensions for me with my Jewish friends, and I get into heated arguments with them from time to time. They try to pressure me into giving up my relationships with my Arab friends. I find it difficult to cope with this pressure, since many of my Jewish friends have extreme views regarding Arabs. This group helps me greatly in coping with these Jewish friends.
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Hadil (Arab girl): What is special about our common life in this group is that we all eat, drink, sleep, travel, and talk together. Back home in Israel everyone is in a different group, separate, and here we are together 24 hours a day. This brings us closer together and strengthens our friendship. When I am in a group sponsored by OPEN HOUSE, I feel a sense of belonging that I don’t feel in other groups. For example, I worked this summer both in the OPEN HOUSE peace camp and in another camp where I was the only Arab among all the Jews. I did not feel comfortable there, since the Jews avoided me and did not relate to me or to my culture. |
August 2001
On August 13, OPEN HOUSE will fly 17 teenagers to Holland–9 Israeli Arabs and 8 Israeli Jews–from the environs of Ramle, to travel and live together in rustic scout housing, cooking and living together and experiencing Europe as a group for two weeks. A third of these teenagers has just completed a six-month course in leadership of Arab-Jewish groups led by Muslim Israeli-Arab clinical psychologist Shafiq Masalha.
In Israel this summer of 2001, while Arabs and Jews–even those who had until recently worked together in the peace movement– are distancing themselves from each other, the connections between Jewish and Arab youth and their parents at OPEN HOUSE programs continues. All summer groups, of Jewish and Arab children in the Ramle area from ages 8 through 16 have participated in OPEN HOUSE day camp sessions and locally based sleepover camps. In all sessions the children are guided–by trained educators– in discussions of their individual identities as Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and then together discuss the meanings of these identities in relation to each other.
“There were many anecdotes from Jewish kids who for the first time experienced the problems in a way similar to what Arab kids usually feel,” Michail Fanous [OPEN HOUSE’s co-Director from 1991-2003] said. “On field trips, when they wore their peace shirts with Arab and Hebrew, people made negative remarks to them–and assumed they were Arab youth.”
“For the first time the Jewish kids could fully empathize with the experience of Israeli Arabs,” Fanous said. “That was the first time the majority group felt like a minority and it was rich material for our co-existence work.”
“We salute these young leaders-to-be, who have to withstand strong peer pressure in order to meet their counterparts from the other community at this time, ” said Fanous. “Our aim is to train the teenagers to work as counselors in our summer camp and yearlong coexistence programs. This is yet another example of how OPEN HOUSE is preparing the next generation to shoulder the responsibility of forging a common society based on equality and mutual solidarity.
OPEN HOUSE is still raising funds for the teen tour. The City of Ramle, administered by a Likud Mayor who is a great friend of OPEN HOUSE, is contributing $100 for each of the teenagers’ costs toward the trip. The families are contributing an additional $300 which leaves a shortfall of $350 per student plus the expenses for the two leaders. Each student’s trip costs a minimum of $750 plus there is need for the costs for the two leaders.
The success of this work depends on donations from non-governmental sources, including foundations, synagogues, churches, and a growing international network of supporters.
We have applied for U.S. tax exempt status and within a few months donations small and large can be made to Friends of OPEN HOUSE directly.
You are invited to join our network of FRIENDS and become an active partner in the day-to-day work of building a common future for Arabs and Jews.
July 2001
OPEN HOUSE Young Leaders Training Course Notes from evaluation meeting with Shafiq Masalha, clinical psychologist and lead trainer, 20 July 2001:
Throughout the course there was ambivalence in all the Jewish families about their children’s participation, while there was no comparable doubt or apprehensiveness among the Arab families. The youngsters demonstrated great seriousness and determination, which helped to keep the group together despite the pressures from outside.
Two sessions were devoted to dealing explicitly with the pressures from family and the wider society, and the inner ambivalences they engendered. An emotional high point was reached following the suicide bombing in Netanya, for the grandmother of a Jewish participant (Tal, ninth grader) was injured in that attack. The grandmother is a Holocaust survivor, and after her injury the whole family retreated from the idea of Tal s participation in a joint course with Arabs. Without the group cohesion and internal solidarity, Tal would not have continued.
The previous participation in OPEN HOUSE peace camps, which established friendships (particularly among the girls), was a factor in bringing the youngsters to the course and keeping it going. This summer, after the course is concluded, three Jews and one Arab from the course, who had been campers in the past, will work as counselors aides in this year*s camp. And these same four will then take part (in August) in the international camp experience in Holland.
The group provided safe space to engage one another and the issues of Jewish-Arab relations. Unlike other settings in these youngster’s lives, the atmosphere here was very serious. The discussions developed listening skills, the ability to hear and accept another person without judgmental reactions or the impulse to argue. The experience also heightened self-awareness. Shafiq, a clinical psychologist, believes that some of the youngsters received psychological help through this course.
Three sessions toward the end were devoted to developing the practical skills needed to be group leaders. Shafiq asked the group members to say how they see their own strengths and weaknesses as group facilitators, and how they think others would see them in this regard. Most cited a difficulty in listening as an obstacle or weak trait in themselves.
In stage 2 of the training (next fall), an emphasis will be put on simulations, with pairs of Jews and Arabs co-leading the group.
Notes from session of Young Leaders Training Course, 20 June 2001:
Yael (Jewish): Shafiq and Racheli complemented each other very well, and they modeled listening skills for the group. The group created a safe space in which each person could speak freely without fear of being attacked for his/her views.
Dor (J): The atmosphere was special, tranquil. People could open up and get to know one another. I learned a lot, especially about the other religious traditions. Shafiq and Racheli really listened and were concerned about us. (Even when I did not come, Racheli called to ask about me).
Tal (J): This was my first experience in such a young-leaders course. I opened up without difficulty; the group atmosphere/chemistry gave me the motivation to share things I could share in other settings.
Gil (J): The relatively small size of the group allowed for self-expression and being related to as individuals. Shafiq and Racheli knew when to intervene and guide the discussion and when to hold back and let us argue about serious issues.
Alice (Arab): Unlike other courses, where I can make up a session I miss, here I would not want to miss even a single meeting. I m not a patient person and have difficulty being still and listening to others; here I really learned how to listen.
Shimrit (J): Before I was generally silent in groups; here I shared more of my ideas and feelings. The example of the facilitators helped me to be less nervous or agitated.
Consensus: the learning from this course was mainly experiential, from the encounters, and not very much from the written material.
Shafiq: Each participant brought different subjects to the group for discussion (e.g., Tal brought up the Shoah, Moshiko raised the issue of family life and relationships).
Dor (J): We did not take as our focus Jewish-Arab relations; rather, we related as a mixed group to important issues and built our relationships on that basis.
(Recorder: Yehezkel Landau)
June 2001
Despite challenges created by recent violence, OPEN HOUSE continues its peacemaking work between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, in Ramle and beyond….
October 2001
May 2001
Jewish Peace Fellowship Peacemaker Awards and Abraham Joshua Heschel Awards
On May 6th, 2001 the Jewish Peace Fellowship Peacemaker Awards and the Abraham Joshua Heschel Awards were given out. The Peacemaker Awards were given to:
- Bat Shalom, a feminist peace organization in Israel working toward a just peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Yvonne Deutsch accepted for Bat Shalom.
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Open House, a peace center in Ramle, Israel, for ist commitment to the concept of “one home, two peoples” and Jewish-Palestinian coexistence. Yehezkel Landau accepted for Open House.
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Women in Black, for their resolute refusal to be intimidated as they appear regularly in public in Israel urgine peace and reconciliation. Yvonne Deutsch accepted for Women in Black.
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New Profile, for its courageous defense of the right of young Israelis who reject war and violence to be treated as conscientious objectors. Betty Reardon accepted for New Profile.
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Rabbi Arthur Waskow, for exceptional contributions to peacemaking in the Jewish tradition.
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Rabbis for Human Rights, the only organization in Israel concerned specifically with giving voice to the Jewish tradition of human rights. Rabbi Brian Walt accepted for Rabbis for Human Rights.