More educators helping
Jews, Muslims, Christians learn together
Thursday,
04 January 2007
"People dont get along because they fear each other.
People fear each other
because they dont know each other.
They dont
know each other because they have not properly communicated with each
other."
These three Stories are about a
new quality of communication and education.
Enact, encourage and support these kinds of human endeavors however
you can.
Middle school
Jewish, Muslim and Christian
students in
Middle school youth in
Students from three schools -- Muslim, Jewish and
Christian -- each year are invited to write about their worries,
views of conflicts, closing distances between people, ending war and building a
future together.
A writing competition is sponsored by The Olive
Trees Foundation -- http://olivetreesfoundation.org/
.
These Christians, Muslims and Jews based in
The group has accomplished all this since its birth in
2003, as their response to global violence.
Past years' contests requested essays and
poetry. This year the youth will be asked for short stories.
The papers are read aloud, students affirmed, and
prizes awarded at a closing ceremony.
Request more information from Louise Franklin Sheehy ( LFSheehy@aol.com ).
Read some essays written by students at:
Scholars communicate and learn
between Palestine, Israel, U.S.
LIVING JERUSALEM has brought
together scholars, students, and community leaders from Israel,
They addressed the convergence of international
security and cultural identity in
Educator-participant Galit
Hasan-Rokem described it as "an exciting
cooperation between:
Galit said: "We
co-taught by video-conferencing, blogs and website a
course on the folklore of Jerusalem.
"It was amazing and exciting but also painful
that sometimes due to the Wall of Separation.
"The two kilometers between our two
"On the other hand we also experienced how
modern media, if combined with a lot of good will and some daring, can build
bridges."
The "daring" and much of the vision of
LIVING JERUSALEM came from educator Amy Horowitz of
This project has been Amy's my dream since 1991, when
she championed the idea at the
Cultural Heritage.
That year in the early '90s, an event that captured
her imagination a continent away was the historic 1991 "Building A Common
Future"
conference of Israeli and Palestinian citizen-leaders in the
She was inspired from a distance by the
relationship-building, then creativity, of those Palestinians and Israelis who
that week wrote and
signed the landmark FRAMEWORK FOR A PUBLIC PEACE PROCESS.
It called for citizen engagement, if an authentic
peace process was to succeed.
Horowitz spoke about the basis for her LIVING
JERUSALEM project.
"The principle is this: beyond treaties and
political arguments is something deeper.
"It is learning about the culture -- the people
and daily lives -- of each other.
"This is the forgotten, untapped resource for
dialogue.
"What do we sing, cook with, pray, laugh, cry, and
dream about?
"What are our healing practices?"
This November, 2006, participants convened to discuss sustained
activity -- a cooperative book, as well as the
continuation of this teaching
program.
To learn more, you contact Amy Horowitz
( Horowitz.36@osu.edu ), Faculty of the
University Arab
and Jewish professors
share teaching a class
This story about an innovative
university teaching model is exactly one year old.
Convincing is today's e-mail about its continuity, from
one of the creators and instructors, Shai Feldman (SFeldman@brandeis.edu ) .
"We just completed teaching the course
again this fall (2006) and we expect to teach it for the third time during
the fall of 2007."
Published The
Jewish Week (
A team-taught course at Brandeis
by three scholars Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian
bucks
a trend and offers a lesson in how to discuss the thorny conflict.
Penny Schwartz
http://thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=11877
Excerpts follow:
Farrah Bdour
couldnt have been more skeptical when she stepped
into the Conflict and Peacemaking in the
The 14-week seminar, what may have been the first of
its kind in the country, brought a trio of Middle East scholars one Israeli,
one Palestinian and one Egyptian here to
Bdour, a junior from
We all shared a lot of myths about the different wars,
and for the most part, we came in with different views, Bdour
said of the 23 students in the class. But she said she came away feeling the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be analyzed and resolved. We all came with
certain attachments to the region, but this taught us to think in more depth.
I can honestly say it could not get any more balanced,
Bdour said.
At a time when
Said Aly, who has written
extensively about the Arab world in both English and Arabic, is director of the
Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies
in Cairo, a prestigious think tank, and the largest in the Arab world; (Khalil) Shikaki, director of the
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah,
has conducted more than 100 public opinion polls among Palestinians since 1993.
Steven Bayme, director of
contemporary Jewish life for the American Jewish Committee.
. . praised the goals of the Brandeis course as the most effective antidote to
increased politicization of the subject matter.
(Israeli Amit)
In fact, Shikaki wrote that
his center and
Said Aly wrote in a
follow-up e-mail We developed with the students how an Israeli and an Arab are
capable of developing a better understanding of highly complicated historical,
strategic and geopolitical narratives."