Many Faces to our Society
A Multi-cultural seminar
Background
When people speak of Israel, most of them think about a Jewish state. The term "Israeli" is for most people synonymous to Jew. To an Israeli Jew. When talking about the problems of Israel and the Israeli society, most people think of the Israeli Jewish society's problems. Is it indeed the reality of Israel? To clarify this point we have to ask ourselves some questions:
-Is any unanimous Jewish identity?
-What is the unique feature of western Jews, contra Orientals, Russian immigrants (many of them don't look themselves as Jews, many indeed are not) contra veterans, ultra orthodox religious contra secular.
-When we speak about "Unity" what we really mean? As we speak not of a Jewish community abroad, but of the Israeli society can we limit the demand for "unity" only to Jews?
We state, that the Israeli society is a multi-cultural society. It is composed of several quite well distinguished cultural- social groups: about one million orthodox religious that don't agree with the national, Zionist basis of the state of Israel, about one million immigrants who came to this country during the last decade mostly from Russia and started to develop a cultural social framework, separated from the traditional Israeli one, about one million Arabs that are part of the Palestinian people and are in search for their national cultural identity - and about three million established "veterans" most of them non-religious, that are also composed of several sub-groups. The issue that has to be examined, is the tension between "Jew" that exclude the Arab community, about 30% of the Immigrants from the former Soviet Union and probably no much lesser proportion of the Ethiopian immigrants - and the "Israeli" that may contain all of them, under the dominance of a somewhat vague "Israeli - Jewish" civilization.
The multi-cultural character of our society creates tensions, even hard struggles in the daily life between norms and values of the different groups, with reflections on many fields; in the politics, in the economy, in the culture. Since the Israeli elite gave up its pretension to mix every Israeli in a "melting pot", based on its own values and accepted the multi-cultural character of our society, building peaceful coexistence and cooperation between all its components became a vital factor to its future.
Education is one of the most important means to promote peaceful coexistence and cooperation between all the social cultural groups that live in the same country. We suppose that this coexistence and cooperation must base on mutual respect and real equality. This the only way to build a common ground on which all these groups can live together for the benefit of all.
The "Many Faces to our Society" Project will cope with the multi-cultural face of the Israeli society.
Along a series of weekend workshops and study tours, teenagers of the four above mentioned groups will learn about each other, they will experience the living in a multi-cultural environment - and will search for ways to build a common basis.
Goals;
To build bridges between youngsters from the four main social cultural groups of the Israeli society that are in state of conflict : Secular, religious, new immigrants and Arabs.
Objectives:
Workshops in purpose to bring together youngsters of two social cultural groups are quite common on the Israeli educational scene and abroad. To bring together four such groups is something novel, that as far as we know nobody ever before tried. Indeed in International seminars and work-camps youngsters from different nationalities are brought together, but they come from different countries and don't have to make any attempt to find ways how to live together in a multi-cultural society. In the unique social environment of the Israeli society, the different cultural groups have to meet and to learn about each other, in order to establish some common basis for the society as whole. The "Many Faces of our Society" is really a novel, even an experimental project.
Personnel;
As the project participants has to be recruited from schools and social centers and the workshops will be spread over 10 month, a Project Director will be employed for these 10 month. The team of Project will be composed of 12 counselors, experts on the field of inter cultural dialogue. All of them were or still are working in "Re'ut-Sadaka", Adam Institute or Givat Haviva.
Participants;
The Project's purpose is to find new ways to build common ground for the different components of the messy and troubled Israeli society. To achieve this purpose the project's participants will be composed of 80 youngsters in age of 16, coming from four groups in the Israeli society, 20 from each group: religious, new immigrants, Arabs and established middle class.
They will be recruited in high schools and social centers in Haifa and the Western Galilee.
Implementation;
The youngsters will be brought together in all the compositions, for 3 weekends each group (2 workshops + a study tour). That means that every individual will take part in 6 weekend workshops and a study tour. The workshops will be devoted to personal and cultural acquaintance, stereotypes, self-identification, discussion about the meaning of multi-culturalism and solidarity in the Israeli society. The goal is to bring to consciousness of the young participants the need to legitimate and respect the differences, the same time to find out ways and conditions to build a common basis for the benefit of all. The study tours will be devoted to meetings with the cultural background of the young participants, by meeting their communities and by direct experience and learning about their way of life and problems. The Project will be finished with a final Summing up workshop.
Stages and methodology :
1 - Following the recruiting and selection of the young participants [ 4 groups of 20 teenagers each one: 1) religious, 2) established population, 3) new immigrants, 4) Arabs] the Project will start in the beginning of November. It will include 6 weekend workshops, one study tour for all and a Summing up workshop.
In every weekend activities two pairs of groups will meet, while in the next session they will change. The study tour and the final, Summing up session will be hold for all the groups together.
2 Every pair of groups will meet twice, but as each group will meet twice each one of the other groups, every individual will take part all together in 6 meetings.
The meetings will be devoted for: personal and cultural acquaintance, stereotypes, self identification and some insight to the Israeli society as a whole.
3 The Study Tour will be devoted to meeting with the communities and the social environments that the Projects' participants came from.
4 The Final, Summing up meeting's purpose is: personal and social consequences. We shall look for ways to cooperation, based on mutual respect and ways to act for the benefit of all our society.
All the Project will be organized by Project Director, who are a studied educator and counselor. The workshops will run by professional and experienced counselors who participated already in Jewish-Arab and secular religious inter-cultural meetings.
Schedule of implementation:
1 September October: contact with sources for participants, such as high-schools and Youth Movements' clubs.
2 November June: Program implementation (workshops & study tours)
3 Final Session in the Summer Holidays (July).
Evaluation:
In the Summing up workshop an evaluation questionnaire will be spread among the participants, in which they will tell their opinion about the Project. The most important factor in our evaluation will be a positive change in the participants attitude toward the culture of the others and better understanding of their interests and needs.
Cost: 78,940 $
