December 2002

Yehezkel Landau interviewed on Boston’s public radio station WBUR

On December 23, WBUR in Boston broadcast an 8 1/2-minute interview with Yehezkel Landau, International Relations Director for OPEN HOUSE in Ramle. You can listen to it at

When Yehezkel Landau, International Relations Director for OPEN HOUSE, returned to Israel in mid-November for a 3-week visit, he found this letter waiting for him:

Royal Palace

Amman, Jordan

21st October, 2002

Mr. Yehezkel Landau

Co-Director

Open House

Ramle, Israel

Dear Mr. Landau,

Many thanks for your recent article entitled ”

At the annual Abraham Fund dinner, two of OPEN HOUSE’s teenagers, Ruba Hamdan and Michal Ben Oved, spoke about OPEN HOUSE, their personal involvement in OPEN HOUSE’s activities and how it has affected their outlook and attitudes.

September 2002

FRIENDS OF OPEN HOUSE, has flown a peace group of Jewish-Arab teenagers (16 to 19-year-olds) from Israel to the United States for three weeks of respite from the ongoing violence.

FRIENDS groups in Cincinnati (Aug. 1-9), Boston (Aug. 9-19), and New York/New Jersey (Aug. 19-24) will be the hosts and facilitators for this multi-faceted educational adventure. (

June 2002

International Relations Director to attend WCC Conference on “Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking.”

Yehezkel Landau will participate in a conference on “Religion, Violence, and Peacemaking” to be held near Geneva, Switzerland, from June 18 to 25. The conference has been organized by the World Council of Churches and will draw some 30 participants from around the world. Yehezkel has been asked to deliver a presentation on “Shabbat Spirituality and Peacemaking.” In the coming issue of the magazine CONNECTIONS issued by the Corymeela community in Northern Ireland, Yehezkel has an article entitled

March 2002

OPEN HOUSE and waging peace in the Holy Land: WHAT WE CAN DO HERE MATTERS THERE

Please join us at 7:30 p.m.on Monday March 11th in the Lutheran Church of the Newtons, [in the parish hall entered by the Cypress St. door –also home of the Jewish Reconstructionist Chavurah, Shir Hadash, 1310 Centre St., Newton, just south of Beacon St. Parking is available in the municipal lot across the street and on side streets.] to hear a report from Yehezkel Landau, International Relations Director of OPEN HOUSE, an amazing model of grass-roots peacemaking in Israel, about the struggles of co-existence work in this escalating violence.

For those who have been to our other events: we will also spend half of the evening talking about forming a locally-based Friends of Open House group modeled on the Cincinnati group, that brings Jews, Christians, Muslims and others who care about peacemaking in the Holy Land together to be a resource in our own communities and offer support to peacemaking efforts there.

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 we here can do to strengthen the efforts of Jewish-Arab peacemaking in this dark time.
March 2002

HOLY LAND, HOLY PEACEMAKING: Yehezkel Landau will be one of four presenters in a peacemaking forum, convened and moderated by he Religious Society of Friends (QUAKERS), and co-sponsored by local religious organizations, featuring two Muslims, two Jews and two Christians engaging in a dialogue of reconciliation and the opening of hearts.

Sunday March 17, 2002, from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church of Chatham Twp., 240 Southern Boulevard, Chatham, NJ.

Presenters include: Yehezkel Landau, OPEN HOUSE co-founder; Richard Deats, National Co-Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the oldest and largest interdenominational peacemaking organization in American.

Aref Assaf, a Palestinian Muslim and member of the Steering Committee of the Arab-American Anti-discrimination Committee, presenting a Muslim perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Refreshments will be served: Middle Eastern snacks.

Pre-registration would be helpful but not required.

March 2002

“The Story of a Courageous Jewish-Arab Co-existence Center: A Woman’s Vision of Waging Peace in the Holy Land,” will be told by Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, director of Friends of Open House at 7:30 pm at the Women’s Club, 42 Wendell Ave., Pittsfield, sponsored by the Women’s Interfaith Institute of the Berkshires. Refreshments will be served.

February 2002

An Interfaith Dialogue focusing on peacemaking in Palestine & Israel

Come, join us! Open House Cincinnati Interfaith Dialogue Event

Sunday, February 24, 2:00-5:00p.m at the Cintas Center of Xavier Univeristy

Our local group, Open House Cincinnati, is hosting an afternoon of learning, engagement and interaction related to the concepts of neighborhood in the context of Israel and Palestine. The event is from 2-5 pm, Sunday 2/24 at the Cintas Center, Xavier University, 1624 Herald Avenue and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will follow!

This interfaith presentation and dialogue/workshop event will provide insight on the neighborhood of Palestine and Israel and make parallel connections to our experience of neighbor as understood locally in Cincinnati and as understood globally.

Join us in a motivating, thought filled, and reflective gathering of presentation and dialogue which offers the occasion to consider a personal response for positive action.

This promises to be a growth experience for all.

Open House Cincinnati, is a small group of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Bahai people (although anyone is welcome to join us regardless of religious faith or no religious faith) who’ve met together for about 2 years to support the Open House Ramle project in Israel and to reflect its ethos locally.

Our speakers will be Forsan Hussein of the Abraham Fund (keynote speaker) and Carolyn Toll Oppenheim of Friends of Open House. Small group interaction and a time of questions for the speakers will fill out the afternoon. The format will allow significant interaction but is not for debate or political rhetoric. The talks and small group dialogue will be aimed at understanding, learning and personal exploration of tangible actions the participants can take both locally and globally.

Forsan Hussein, a Palestinian Israeli, is a Communications Associate for the Abraham Fund. Due to his demonstrated commitment to the goal of peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews, he earned the Slifka Coexistence Scholarship, a scholarship awarded to one Palestinian-Israeli and one Jewish-Israeli. Forsan concentrated on Peace Building, Sociology, Economics, Near East and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He has conducted research at the Washington D.C. Institute for Near East Policy, led Arab and Jewish dialogue gatherings, co-hosted the Boston WBRS-FM radio show Just Like You, and has lectured extensively promoting understanding between Arabs and Jews. His work has been covered by NPR, WBUR, the Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The Jerusalem Post, Hope Magazine, and New England Cable News.

The Abraham Fund supports projects furthering Jewish/Arab co-existence in Israel. One of the projects the Abraham Fund sponsors is Open House in Ramle, Israel (near Tel Aviv). Open House is a community center where a redemptive future is being lived out on the site of the painful history of the Al-Khayri and Ashkenazi families who have lived in the house which the center now occupies. Open House in Ramle is a focus and inspiration for our Open House Cincinnati group.

For more information on the discussion and to register for the event, e-mail Tom Ferrell or call

REPORT FROM OPEN HOUSE: Programs operating as 2002 gets under way

(1) The NURSERY SCHOOL for 35 Arab toddlers aged 2 and 3, the first such facility in the history of Ramle. Around the holidays of Tu B’Shvat and ‘Id al-Shajarah, the two tree festivals for Jews and Palestinians during January, the children have been learning about all kinds of trees, especially fruit-bearing ones. There are pictures of trees and fruit adorning the walls and a real lemon hanging from one of the light fixtures. The four women on the nursery school staff, Nura, Margo, Mahfouza, and Lamis, are busy teaching the children about nature and conducting various educational activities in small groups. Each day the children are fed a nourishing meal, prepared by the staff.

(2) A course in NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR JEWISH AND ARAB TEACHERS, a new program offered with the professional assistance of an organization called Education for Life, which is recognized by the Israeli Ministry of Education for the purpose of conducting in-service training programs for educators. In our program, supported by a grant from the THE ABRAHAM FUND, six Arab teachers and eight Jewish teachers are learning how to listen empathically to others, and to communicate feelings, needs, and requests in ways that pre-empt the conditioned aggressiveness so prevalent in Israeli society. The level of verbal and even physical violence in the schools is alarming, a product of the wider conflict everyone endures and the anxieties generated by it. The teachers wanted this kind of practical help in coping with the violence around them, and as a means of preparing their students to deal with conflict situations constructively.

(3) Our six-year-old PARENTS’ NETWORK involving some 40 adults continues to meet, with recent sessions devoted to a consideration of the group dynamics that have evolved within the group. The tensions of the last year and a half have impacted on this group, also. A mediator from the Education for Life organization has been engaged to help the Jews and Arabs in the group honor each other’s grievances and hopes. This process has deepened the level of honest communication of the group members. At the beginning of February the women in this group will be meeting among themselves to discuss where they want the whole group to go, and whether they should continue to meet as a separate women’s group.

(4) The second phase of a YOUNG LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM for Jewish and Arab adolescents, also supported by THE ABRAHAM FUND. Building on the successful first phase conducted last spring (with Dr. Shafiq Masalha and Rachel Zini as co-faciliators), 14 teenagers will be learning how to conduct mixed groups and foster communication and cooperating among group members. Rachel Zini will be directing this training program together with an Arab facilitator, Omar ‘Aghbariya. Weekly meetings will be supplemented by two weekend marathon sessions. By the end, participants will be experienced enough to work as counselors’ aides in our summer PEACE CAMP programs.

(5) A new ENCOUNTER PROGRAM FOR JEWISH AND ARAB FIFTH GRADERS, pairing two classes from the Ofek (Jewish) School and the Jowarish (Arab) Elementary School. The two school principals requested this program, as a way of overcoming the division between Jews and Arabs in our society. The program, which runs once a week through the second half of this school year, has three components: (a) an enrichment course in ecological science focusing on water resources and conservation; (b) an arts project, in which the students work together to express themselves through different artistic media; and (c) activities which develop self-awareness, cross-cultural understanding, and social-interaction skills. OPEN HOUSE is responsible for providing the educators for the third aspect, and we have chosen two of our veteran Peace Camp counselors, Manal Hadad and Sarah David, to work with the fifth graders in this program. Hopefully some of the 70 children involved will be motivated to continue building friendships across the ethnic barrier as OPEN HOUSE Peace Campers next July. **This program is being cosponsored and co-funded by the RAMLE MUNICIPALITY and the CRB FOUNDATION.** This is a pilot program which may be expanded to more fifth-grade classes in Ramle if it proves successful.

(6) FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES FOR LAST SUMMER’S PEACE CAMPERS, featuring a Tu B’Shvat party at OPEN HOUSE on January 28.

Yehezkel Landau explained the symbolic significance of the different kinds of fruits blessed and eaten at the traditional Tu B’Shvat “seder,’ initiated by the kabbalists in Safed during the 16th century. The youngsters, aged 9 to 12, were told the background story of OPEN HOUSE by Rachel Zini and Vivian Albina. (Vivian is one of the Arab counselors in our Peace Camp). After that they spent time in the yard learning how each of the trees they saw got to be there: the lemon tree planted in the 1930’s by Ahmed al-Khayri; the jacaranda tree planted by Moshe Askenazi in the 1950’s; the Washingtonian pine tree, now towering over the house, planted by Dalia Ashkenazi (now Dalia Landau) in the 1950’s; and the olive tree planted as a sapling on Tu B’Shvat/’Id al-Shajara in January,1995, by Dalia and Yehezkel Landau and their son Raphael; by Nuha and Chanoum al-Khayri, two of Achmed’s children; and by Michail Fanous, [former co-Director of OPEN HOUSE].

The symbolic micro-ecology of OPEN HOUSE is celebrated in a song composed by singer-songwriter Garth Hewitt, who lives in London. The song, “Three Trees and an Open House,” is found on his CD entitled GOSPEL SINGER.

(7) In addition to these ongoing programs, OPEN HOUSE continues to welcome visitors from near and far. On January 15 we somehow managed to squeeze 57 Jewish high school students and two teachers into our meeting room (formerly the living room of the house). They were students of Arabic and Middle East history from Be’er Tuvia, near the town of Kiryat Malachi.

Among our foreign guests were Jean and Reed Holmes, directors of VIEWPAX MONDIALE, an international nonprofit organization “dedicated to helping the world grow closer in peace”. Jean and Reed participated in the Tu B’Shvat party and handed out big pin-on buttons to all the children: the buttons featured a drawing of a butterfly resting on a human hand, with the words “Be Kind” in either Hebrew or Arabic. Each of the children at the party went home with two buttons, one in each language.

513-683-5539.

Our partners include:

March 2002

YEHEZKEL LANDAU speaks about OPEN HOUSE in Northampton, MA

Yehezkel Landau will speak on Waging Peace in a Culture of Violence March 14th at 7:30 p.m. at Edwards Church, 297 Main St., Amherst, MA 01060.

April 2002

OPEN HOUSE co-founders Dalia Landau and Michail Fanous appeared on Italy’s most popular late-night television talk show, “Maurizio Costanza,” on April 9th. OPEN HOUSE was awarded the “Premio Internazionale Montessori, Educazione E Pace,” Prima Edizione in 1998.

“A Holistic Peace Process for the Middle East.”

May 2002

Yehezkel Landau will take part in a public encounter with senior Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, in Boston, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. May 6, St. Paul’s Cathedral, 138 Tremont St., Boston, MA.

Landau’s public discussion with the Bishop is the third in a series of public dialogues with Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE, the senior bishop for the Eastern Massachusetts Episcopal diocese. All three events in the series, entitled “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem: Reflecting with Your Bishop,” will be held at St. Paul’s Cathedral, 138 Tremont St., Boston, on April 1, April 21, and May 6, from 6:30 to 8:30.

Featured speakers at the events are: Charles Sennott, former Boston Globe Middle East correspondent and author of The Body and the Blood: The Holy Land at the Beginning of a New Millennium, who will speak about Christian Arabs on April 1; Hanan Ashrawi, former spokeswoman for the Palestine Liberation Organization and a Christian, who will speak on political dimensions of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, on April 26; and Yehezkel Landau, a founder of Open House, a Jewish/Arab peace education and coexistence center in Ramle, Israel.

Bishop Shaw will reflect on each speaker’s presentation from the perspective of theology and social justice. The goal of the events is to educate, and raise the consciousness of, Episcopalians and others interested in contributing to the peace process in Israel. A briefing book on the conflict will be available for parishes to use in local continuing education programs.

April 2002

“The story of a courageous Jewish-Arab Co-existence Center: A Woman’s Vision of Waging Peace in the Holy Land,” will be told by by Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, director of Friends of Open House, at 7:00 p.m. at the the Housatonic Congregational Church, 1089 Main St., Housatonic, MA, sponsored by the Women’s Interfaith Institute of the Berkshires.

April 2002

Tuesday, April 30, 7:30-9:00 PM

“Grass Roots Peace Making in the Middle East: Finding Grounds for Hope and a Role for Christians, Jews and Muslims” A Conversation with Yehezkel Landau International Relations Director of OPEN HOUSE, a Jewish/Arab peace education center.

BOSTON COLLEGE, Higgins Hall Lecture Room 310

April 2002

From April 22 to 28 OPEN HOUSE founder Dalia Landau will speak in Helsinki, Finland participating in a YWCA Women’s Interfaith Conference on Religion and Peacemaking, called “Crossing Borders: A Women’s Journey of Faith.” She will share a panel with three other women, two Arab Christians and an Arab Muslim, coming from Palestine and Lebanon. This is a federation of 104 national associations and has special consultative status with the U.N. as an international NGO. Dalia is asked to speak on a panel devoted to the theme, “Jewish-Muslim-Christian Women’s Dialogue: Looking Towards the Future of Israel and Palestine.”

June 2002

OPEN HOUSE Board Chair visits U.S. to promote paperback edition of his last book.

Yossi Klein Halevi, chair of the OPEN HOUSE board in Israel, will be spending a week in the U.S. beginning June 16 to promote the new paperback edition of his book AT THE ENTRANCE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN: A JEW LOOKS FOR HOPE WITH CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS IN THE HOLY LAND. The paperback version includes a new introduction, reflecting on the challenges to interfaith relations in the light of the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine and the post-9/11 situation in the U.S.

This will be the first time OPEN HOUSE sponsors an international delegation this young. In the past, groups of Jewish and Arab parents or young adults have gone to Holland, Switzerland, and Italy. For teenagers, we have organized intensive sleep-away camps, usually in July and based at youth hostels in the Galilee. This year the unpredictable security situation in Israel makes both parents and children anxious about such activities. So we are grateful for the generosity of our friends in Genzano for the opportunity to offer this special program there.

We are currently exploring with the Municipality of Rome the possibility of sending a second group of Jewish and Arab teenagers to Rome and Florence later this summer. In both instances, we are working with our partners at CONFRONTI Magazine in Rome, an interfaith journal linking Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to peacemaking and social justice. We are indebted to our CONFRONTI colleagues for their help in facilitating these Italian contacts.

June 2002

Genzano, Italy, hosts OPEN HOUSE Peace Campers.

From June 19 to 29, eighteen Jewish and Arab youngsters from OPEN HOUSE, along with three adult counselors, will travel to Italy for an international peace camp experience. The children, aged 12 to 15, will be hosted by the Municipality of Genzano, south of Rome. The central event for the peace campers will the annual Genzano Flower Festival in which huge pictures are created on the ground out of thousands of flowers. In addition, the Arab and Jewish youngsters will share recreational activities with Italians their age and spend two full days in Rome visiting historical and religious sites (including the main synagogue, a central mosque, and St. Peter’s Basilica).

June 2002

OPEN HOUSE receives SHALOM 2002 AWARD from the Catholic University in Eichstatt, Germany.

From June 6 to 9, Michail Fanous, [former] OPEN HOUSE Executive Director, participated in ceremonies at the Catholic University of Eichstatt, Germany, which featured the granting of the university’s SHALOM 2002 AWARD to OPEN HOUSE. The city’s mayor and other dignitaries were present as Michail accepted the award, which included a gift of 10,000 Euros. These funds will help sponsor our international summer peace camps. (See below).

Read the profiles of youth who are visiting America.) These eighteen youths are veterans of the OPEN HOUSE Jewish-Arab summer peace camps in Ramle, Israel, and the young leadership training program.

b>Martha’s Vineyard, MA Tuesday August 14^th

A Holistic Peace Process for the Middle East.”

Undoubtedly, a mere political agreement between governments does not necessarily achieve peace between peoples. The focus on high-level diplomacy alone cannot exert enough authority upon two contesting societies to bring about a tangible accord. To this effect, a workshop organized by my office (Majlis El-Hassan) and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation entitled “The Middle East: Alternatives for the Future” indicated the need to integrate the cultural component into the negotiating process. ‘Soft security’ issues, such as religion and culture, are perhaps the hardest to agree upon.

You indicated three variables that keep the Middle East trapped: fear, anger, and grief. I would agree; and wish also to comment that during my twenty-five years of experience in interfaith dialogue, we have passed through three phases of fear: fear of the other; fear of what the folks back home will say about us; and the third fear, of peace itself–of publicly proclaiming our conclusions that peace has to be achieved.

Recognizing the pain of others would be a step towards working out a reconciliation to resolve the Palestine issue. Both peoples have understood all too well the meaning of suffering. Plato’s observation that “you cannot compare any two miserable people and say one is happier than the other” is relevant in considering the universality of suffering and in coming to terms with an ‘anthropology of anguish’ and the suffering of successive generations.

Yours most sincerely,

El Hassan bin Talal