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I watched a young, tan Israeli woman in a tank top walk out of a recording studio to be replaced by two girls wearing matching hijabs walk in.
Her show was about music in English, Hebrew and Arabic. The Palestinian girls come once a week for training how to have their own talk show. They talked about love and boyfriends.
A place without borders: All for Peace Radio.
Read MoreI am pleased to present to you, Humans of Hand in Hand: Jerusalem Edition!
Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel brings together thousands of Jews and Arabs in five schools and communities throughout Israel. They are proving on a daily basis the viability of inclusion and equality for citizens of Israel.
Like their Facebook page and for the next few weeks your news feed will be graced with beautiful photos (taken by yours truly!) and interviews with the teachers, students, and people who work at Hand and Hand and make it what it is.
Support Hand in Hand! It's a wonderful place and they are doing good good work in the face of so much cynicism and violence. Thanks to @humansofny for the inspiration.
Who are the people behind Hand in Hand? Who are the students, the teachers, the security guards, the handymen, the administration, the parents, the communities?
We're proud to announce HUMANS OF HAND IN HAND: an inside look at the people that make this place what it is. We're focusing on the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem school, and will be posting photos and interviews daily.
Stay tuned for the next few weeks!
We can't wait to share their stories with you.
"I want to become a journalist because I really like hearing people’s stories; I really like hearing about their side and not just talking about mine all the time. And I really want to travel the world with my job. I don’t want to be in an office, just waking up and going to work and coming home - that’s not fun. YOLO. "
-Tala: 10th Grade
"When I was young, school was really boring. I cut class, I wasn't a good student, I was a bit of a troublemaker, and I felt invisible to most of the teachers. But there was one teacher who saw me, he told me that my questions were smart. That left a mark on me, it changed my life. I want to do that for my students."
-Guy: Civics Teacher
“He’s a troublemaker.”
“No I’m not!”
"I want to be a teacher when I grow up. I always get good grades."
-Shukrallah: 1st Grade
"The message that I want to transfer to my students is the importance of the Arabic language. In the same way that you take care of yourself, you have to take care of Arabic. I want my students to talk like dolphins not like sharks; that is, for them to speak clearly and not aggressively so that others will listen to them."
-Angie: Arabic Teacher
"I want to be a dolphin because they jump high."
-Amit: 1st Grade
Seen today in Microfashion.
"What is important to you that your students learn from you?"
"To be human. To respect one another. To listen to each other."
-Keren: 1st Grade Teacher
"I have a friend called Omar. I like him because we run together. When we don't get along, we grab each other’s little fingers and promise: "Peace Peace for the world, fight fight never again.""
-Gabi: Kindergarten
"My father grew up in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and we grew up with Hebrew and Arabic at home. It’s because of my bilingual upbringing that I wanted to work in this school. It’s not like a regular kindergarten where the kids leave when they finish and I don’t see them. In our school I get to meet them every morning and afternoon every year until they graduate - it’s special and moving for me to see them grow up."
-Vida: Kindergarten Teacher
"I have always been an easy-going person. I always say that every man is free: free with his religion and free with his thoughts. In addition to working at school, I work as a guard at the Dome of the Rock. The same issues here are also over there. Some of the people who pray there are tough-minded, but you need to learn to communicate with them. As the prophet Muhammad said, “Address people in a language they can understand.”
-Assem: Groundskeeper
"Why do you go to this school?"
"People always ask me that, it's hard to answer because I don't know anything else - I've been here since preschool. My parents sent me here because they believe in the idea of the school, of Arabs and Jews being together. It's just normal life for me... and when I got older, I was the one who chose to stay."
-Aya: 10th Grade
"My job is to protect the children here. Knowing the people at this school has softened me and made me more open to new things, more loving, more accepting, and more curious."
-Guy: Security Guard
"I also take care of the cats. We have to honor all the creatures in this world from the smallest to the largest. You don’t have the right to hurt them because you are stronger or smarter than them. With animals you can communicate without words. It is freer and more direct. It’s on a softer wavelength, and when you discover it, you can reach deeper communication."
-Guy: Security Guard
“I want to be an engineer or a lawyer. Or maybe a professional hip hop dancer."
“I play the clarinet. Music is freeing for me. When I play everything that annoys me just goes away. After 6th grade I thought about switching to the music academy to focus on my playing, but I decided to stay. Arabic is my favorite class. If I would have switched schools, I would have had to start Arabic from the beginning, and that would be a bummer. I want to continue to work on and improve my Arabic, it’s important to me."
-Samira and Michal: 7th grade
"My favorite class is civics."
"Really?"
"Oh I love it! OMG I’m in love with civics. You just learn how everything works and where you live and how things are supposed to be and then how they actually work. Last year we learned about what the opposition and coalition are and it was exactly right when the elections ended and you just understand everything and you know how a democracy works and how you can’t actually do everything in a democracy. And when you look at a country it is not really democratic or undemocratic - it’s in between. Every country has its democratic side and its not democratic side."
-Tala: 10th Grade
"I want to teach boys that they can be what they want to be, that they can cry when they are sad, that they can express their emotions. And when we talk about love, it shouldn’t be in terms of “acquisition”. Because love is not an object, it is about growing together."
-Guy: Civics Teacher
Behind the Camera!
Who was taking all these photos and asking the hard questions?
Adan, Amal and Emily attended the Max Rayne school in Jerusalem from Pre-school all the way through graduating in 2014. They breathed life into this project; they switched seamlessly from Arabic to Hebrew to English while interviewing, photographing, editing, and joking around.
Before we finish up, we're going to flip the camera around and hear what they have to say.
“Photography is more than love, it’s a part of me. When I’m sad, it makes me happy, when I’m annoyed, it calms me down. People see a camera as a collection of parts, but I see it as another person, as something that does more than just take pictures. It captures feelings too.
It was moving to take pictures in the school of the people who taught me how to be a successful person, who taught me to always smile. Like taking pictures of Guy...”
“Which Guy?”
“The security guard, Guy. In 10th grade I had a hard year. I felt bad about myself and I thought that nobody liked me. Guy helped me through that. He said, ‘You need to be true to yourself, or else life will pass by and you will stay in one place. It’s OK, you might cry and things are sad, but you will be OK.’ He changed my life; I learned to be true to myself, I understood that I can love myself for who I am, and everything that I am, and that I can give to the world. When I do that, people will love me. It starts from inside, it starts from what you think. Love brings love, and hate brings hate. I’ve never told him that but I think he knows.”
Amal: 2014 graduate and photographer
"When I saw the page of Humans of New York, I thought, why don’t we do that at our school? Our school is interesting, our school let's us each glow and gives us the chance to be special and unique. Each student is different from the other. And there are so many people there; not just the students, there are all the teachers and the workers. I thought it would be fun to see where they come from and what their ideas are."
"On a whole, what do you think about your time at the school?"
"I can’t imagine myself at any other school. It’s nice growing up there, you learn stuff there that you won’t learn at other schools. It allowed me to be different and no one put me in a uniform and told me how a young lady should think, act and look. We are ready to face whatever comes at us after we graduate. I think it makes us stronger.You learn how to deal with difficult times; especially at the war. You can’t ignore the war, but a lot of places do. But our school doesn’t. We talk about it, we do exercises to understand it, and we support each other. And the love between the teachers and the students, it’s real. It’s not just school, it’s community. It’s fun. I graduated, I’m doing other things, but I’m here working on this project, I love my school."
-Emily: 2014 graduate
“During the war last summer, we were all glued to the tv, and I saw how the different stations portrayed two totally different stories, even when they were talking about the same thing. I would sit and watch and just get so annoyed and frustrated. I felt powerless. But then I said to myself– ‘one second, maybe I could change that.’ So I decided I want to study communications next year, and work in the news – so that I can show what actually happens, not just one side of the story.
“That’s also why I loved this project. The people at the school are really different from one another, not just because they are Jews and Arabs, but because they are individuals with hopes and pasts and they each hold so much. It let me discover a new world. It’s the first time I really entered the lives of the people that surrounded me for 12 years. I guess I had just never thought to ask.”
-Adan: 2014 graduate
March 23,2015
I spent the day in a utopia. The best part about all of this? It’s real.
I’m volunteering with a mixed school in Jerusalem that is called Hand in Hand. It’s both Arabs and Jews, K-12. The school has been around since 1998 and now has over 600 students.
It’s a public school, and in order to understand just how special that is, you need to understand the Israeli school system. Within Israeli education, there are separate tracks for Arab and Jewish schools. That means different curriculum, different language, separate worlds. This type of school however, is rare. Classes are taught in Arabic and Hebrew, often with 2 teachers in every classroom. They have redesigned their history curriculum to include both narratives and they celebrate and learn about Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holidays. The first class to graduate high school was in 2011.
I spent the day with 3 graduates taking photos and interviewing students, teachers and people who work at the school. We are creating a project similar to Humans of New York, but about the school instead. It will be up on the Facebook page of the school in the next few weeks.
We asked kids questions like, “If you were any kind of food what would you be?” We asked older kids about what it was like for them to come back to school after this summer. Teachers shared what inspired them and the security guard told us he loves cats. Conversation flowed between Hebrew and Arabic without pause.
My favorite moment was when we talked with two 1st graders who’s classroom had been burned in November by extremists (for news coverage of the event see here). We asked if the boys were friends and one said about the other, “He’s annoying in class.” That moment captured for me the beauty of this place. It wasn’t about who was a Jew and who was an Arab. They were just normal 1st graders. But it was also normal to be asked a question in Hebrew and respond in Arabic or vice versa. It was normal to grow up with friends who are different than you. It was normal to have friends who live across the invisible lines that zigzag and cut through this city.
The school is idealistic and may be a bubble, but it is a beautiful bubble and a great place to start. For more info look up Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education.
March 15th, 2015
I spent the weekend at a conference with Palestinians and Israelis in Beit Jala, a place only 15 minutes from Jerusalem that sits at the confluence of roads that lies in the space where Israelis and Palestinians both have permission to be. We stayed at a hotel called the Everest, and as we climbed the hill to the very top, it was clear why it was named such.
It was an incredible weekend; there were Palestinians from all over the West Bank near Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron. Israelis from Jerusalem, Hadera, Sderot and the north. We began the weekend by sharing the thing that is most important to us: family, freedom, silence, music, learning, an end to occupation, peace.
I befriended a young Palestinian from Jericho who plays classical guitar with fingers plucking notes like water. He shared how he can't meet his friends in Haifa because he doesn't have a permit to travel and the frustration he feels being 21 and not able to go 45 minutes away from home. I listened as a young Israeli described how she couldn't return to her work for 2 weeks after a rocket had fallen near it this summer. An older Palestinian from Bethlehem described his experience as a 15 year old when the army would not let him return to his home during a curfew and after making him take the long way around, arrested him. I listened as another Israeli described a moment meeting a Gazan and acting as his legal companion to satisfy permit requirements to reach Jordan. The Israeli shared how it was the Gazan's first time out of Gaza in his entire life—he hadn't seen an orange orchard since he was little. The Israeli took the long way to the Jordanian border with a stop in Jerusalem so that this Gazan could visit al-Aqsa. I sat at breakfast with a Palestinian whose family is originally from Gaza. He described how 15 members of his family died this summer. 11 of them died at the same time when their house was flattened. Yet he continues to come to these meetings. His eyes sparkle when he laughs.
Brought together to share these heavy personal stories, I was surrounded by a lightness. Here we were, a strange mixture of Arabic, English, Hebrew, and patient translations, coming together to talk, to listen, and to be heard.
The second day was devoted to brainstorming sessions: what projects could we create together, what ideas did we want to put into action? Ideas ranged from language exchange, to fundraising for a center for disabled children, to starting a running group and organizing a marathon from Tel Aviv to Ramallah, to trying to humanize the news and remove media bias. Past groups had created Tiyul Rihla, an organization that takes Israelis and Palestinians on tours of historical sites and shares both narratives and Two Neighbors, a fashion line that incorporates Palestinian embroidery in high fashion and is sold in the States. Our ideas were big, yet we broke them down into small steps such as exchanging each other's email addresses. The main goal was to commit to meet again.
I left the bubble from this weekend and I feel hopeful. I am now faced with so many opportunities and new beginnings, new friends and new experiences to come. The weekend was invigorating and inspiring. Good things can begin with something small.
Elections are in 3 days. Hold your breath, knock on wood, and do whatever superstitious ritual you have for good luck. We need it here.
To learn more about the organization that hosts Global Village Square Conferences, click here.