Walking behind the giant Yes-Planet center in Talpiot, one can see from far a large signboard announcing “FeelBeit” – a subtle word game meaning “Feel at Home” using Hebrew, Arabic and English.
A few steps inside the “FeelBeit” house and visitors feel at once transported into another world, albeit still in a familiar vicinity, as the breath-taking view, the refreshing stone pavements and the structure of the “beit” invites anyone to come and forget anything he or she knew about Jerusalem. This is the perfect extra-territorial location one can imagine, conceived and brought to life by the Mekudeshet team, close to ending another successful season of activities.
“Mekudeshet is an award-winning, cultural organization that creates original art and music to reimagine Jerusalem from a center of conflict into a laboratory for connection between people of all kinds,” says the vision and mission of this institution already present in the city for about 11 years. Born amid the awful days of the Second Intifada, when hope and coexistence became almost dirty words, it emerged as a bold project to enable arts to establish impossible links. A team of dedicated persons from the arts community gathered to think and create something nobody dared to do until then: create a shared space dedicated to dialogue, friendship, understanding and more – all based and through the language of arts and music above all other expressions, for all Jerusalemites.
Originally called The Jerusalem Season of Culture, this is a multi-disciplined program that systematically makes room for every side: Arabs from the east side of the city, haredim from all streams and religious, secular and a large and rather amorphous public that stands in between have their place in this project. At the level of the management there are referents for each group, who work on both sides – to reach out to their own community, sometimes surfing between lots of obstacles and prejudices, and at the other end – make their public accessible for the rest of the attendees, something far from being an easy task.
Over the years, Mekudeshet became the largest event of the summer in the city, as it wore form and took another shape, but remained faithful to its prime vision: to reveal, through varied artistic expressions and experiences the other face of the city – a city in which real people live, work, suffer and rejoice, whether they are Jews, Muslims, Christians, believers, secular, old or young as long as they share one common vision: the love of and for Jerusalem.
Last Wednesday, the weekly program “Tzomet Lev” (literally the junction of the heart) that ran through all summer provided a mixture of arts, entertainment, privileged space for families from all sides of the city. The evening ended the evening with a concert featuring Neta Elkayam – an Israeli singer who has promoted for years the reconnection to the music of her childhood, as she grew up in a family that originated from Morocco. Being firstly an international language, the music included Elkayam’s interpretation of liturgical Jewish songs to Moroccan traditional songs – all raising enthusiasm from the audience.
Asked if that music was familiar to him, a middle-aged man who attended said that “Neta takes me, through her Jewish and Arabic songs to my childhood, as a unique son of Holocaust survivor parents from Poland. It’s a riddle to me why, but it works.”
“After the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus last year, this year Mekudeshet was back with another meeting point,” says Karen Brunwasser, the chief strategy officer of the Jerusalem Season of Culture (JSOC), “and the spot chosen was right on the seam between the parts of the city, overlooking one of the most beautiful and inspiring views.” Tzomet Lev, this year’s major project has already won a large faithful audience for music, playing with children and accessible artifacts on display along the Sherover Promenade, below the FeelBeit house.
As wished and expected by the CEO of the JSOC, Noemi Bloch Fortis, who is the living spirit behind the project, the attendees represent – despite the coronavirus, the heat waves and the always ongoing local concerns – the city’s residents in all their shades: haredim, Arabs, secular and religious, young and old. They all melt together, after a tour of the promenade, lay on the mats displayed there, or take a small stool and listen to another typical local mix that seemingly only Jerusalem can deliver – music, Jewish, Arabic, a mixture of modern and adapted liturgy, in Hebrew and in Arabic, and something close to a miracle takes place every week – creating a sort of bubble of sanity and openness.
Juman Daraghmeh, 25, lives with her family on the east side of the city and graduated from the Bilingual School, hence is fluent in Hebrew. Juman is documenting the events for social media, and said that while more young people from the Arab side attend the Mekudeshet events, there is still some apprehension that it might look like accepting the “normalization” between Palestinians and Israelis. However, she believes that through her social media campaign, where she spreads the existence of the festival and the events, she can reach people who will ultimately take the step to attend.
Riman Barakat runs the Palestinian community inside Mekudeshet, establishing the link within the parties, while being aware and cautious of the obstacles in trying to achieve the objective. “We work with different tools, social media, to reach the community. I would say there is more of a curiosity, more than anything regarding the events that Mekudeshet creates. There are obviously people who are against, but we have built our own team, our community and it makes a difference – people meet someone who speaks their language upon arriving at FeelBeit, at the bar, in all the events taking place here.” The same approach goes for the haredi community; it also has its own team inside the Mekudeshet staff and opens the way for them to attend – something that can be seen a lot at FeelBeit and at the Tzomet Lev events.
Mekudeshet has now become a culture place with its own home – which draws about 30% of its residents from east Jerusalem – both artists and audience, and 15% haredim, who, altogether, stand here to create a place where all feel at home despite and within the differences, explains Brunwasser. “It’s not that we aim for all the pieces of this mosaic, this kind of puzzle will certainly meet, but they are there and they are part of us, part of Mekudeshet. We have started to enter places that we never reached before, and FeelBeit will go on all year long, because it is a public space but it has also become home for all of us.”
Asked what she could pinpoint as the primary result of this project, Brunwasser says that “this is a place where we can feel the wounds, the suffering, the poverty even, but this place has become the place where we enable a meeting between all.”
Mekudeshet is not running only during the summer, and will continue with other programs during the year. There will be lots of events and parties with different communities hosting various groups, who hopefully, so the organizers believe, will all find a place that fits them. However, added Brunwasser, due to the coronavirus they cannot plan too much ahead, yet the plan is to go ahead nevertheless, despite the uncertain times, regarding what can be done and promoted. “Some artists have found that this difficult period, that puts limits, has become a blessing, like musician Itamar Douari, who usually performs abroad, and this year, because of the corona and because we can offer him a place like FeelBeit, he, like many others, feel that he prefers to remain on the ground (instead of flying so much) and perform here.”