Co-authored by Darya Watnick, Tour Manager for the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus
Jerusalem is a divided and divisive city. Many different communities--defined by religion, culture, ethnicity, language, history and almost anything else people could use to differentiate themselves from one another--live in close proximity but rarely meet. The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus has become a place where Palestinian and Israeli, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim high school students from East and West Jerusalem come together, twice a week, to sing, engage one another in dialogue and just be friends. Over the past three years, these teens have found common ground amidst the reality of the pervasive conflict around them.
The founder and director, Micah Hendler, started this unique group as a vehicle for individual and collective empowerment for Israeli and Palestinian youth. The model he employs uses musical co-creation and dialogue to build personal relationships, achieve shared goals and create a shared community based on equality, mutual understanding, and love.
The reality of living in Jerusalem does not make creating this kind of community an easy task. Nothing is black or white and everything is political. The chorus itself is a complex place, where both the singing and dialogue require effort and determination. Reflecting on that, Avital, one of our singers from West Jerusalem, tells this story about how hard it is to simply "forgive and forget":
It was a dialogue session we were doing about Holocaust Remembrance Day. Somebody said something that really hurt my feelings. I told myself that I would never be able to forgive them for what they had said. For awhile, I didn't talk to them. But as the year went on and the next year started, things moved on. I care deeply about this person and love them very much but nothing was ever resolved. It wasn't forgotten but I'm exploring how to forgive.
Forgiveness is a huge issue for the chorus. We want to be able to forgive but for what purpose? And how does forgiveness relate to the concept of justice? In the chorus, we hope that by forgiving others, as well as ourselves, for their and our mistakes and misunderstandings, we build trust and understanding of self and other that lay the foundation for collaborative work to address the fundamental issues of injustice, inequality, racism and intolerance that create and perpetuate these grievances. That is one of the most important processes that happens in our dialogue program.
Sofia, one of our singers from East Jerusalem says:
"Sometimes we end up hurting each other without meaning to do so, and I believe that in order to achieve peace with people, first you have to have your inner peace. Therefore, I had to forgive a lot, believing the other person has forgiven me as well."
The dialogue component of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus can be life-changing for our teens but it's also an ongoing process for them, with both really challenging and beautiful moments. It's obviously really difficult, as Shifra, one of our singers from West Jerusalem, describes:
It was a time when we had really intense dialogue. People kept speaking about jihad and talking about things that I love and care about in a really horrible way. At first I was upset but then I realized over time that I appreciated that they had said these things because I was able to see their perspective. I saw them for who they are and I was able to understand their side. They weren't insulting me, it was just how they feel.
Our teenage singers, even though they're from different parts of Jerusalem, with different native languages and different cultural backgrounds, they still develop close friendships. This adds another challenge as Georgette, another singer from East Jerusalem, explains the difficulty of dialoguing with people who are your friends:
Well, mostly we're like people, we're like teenagers, we talk about normal stuff. It's not always about hating each other. But when we do, we talk about anger, because people try to avoid anger, because they think it's the core of all problems, which is true, but we have to speak about it, we have to accept it.
But she continues with an even more profound observation about her dialogue experience: "Acceptance and caring are two different things. I can accept someone but not care about them, so I don't care about what happens to them. And so I feel like caring about someone is a big deal and it's important."
The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus' unique model that combines musical and dialogue processes creates a space that fosters both the acceptance and caring that Georgette talks about. Specifically, the understanding generated in dialogue permeates and informs our musical performances. Recently the group wrote an original composition, complete with lyrics in Hebrew, Arabic and English that reflect their own experiences in the chorus, with lines that, whether through dissonance or harmony, somehow complement one another, even if their messages may conflict. The refrain of the song, though, reveals the essence of what it means to be in the chorus, and ultimately the empowering process of forgiveness that happens in our community, as together, we sing, "Our love is not easy, but we can change the world if you would hold my hand."