Jerusalem of the past year has been a “red city,” due to the widespread COVID-19 cases throughout the ultra-Orthodox and Arab neighborhoods, in a way that actually highlighted what they have in common. Culture and religion allegedly create built-in tension and hatred, but also produce a characteristic similarity between these two societies in the way they celebrate, mourn, and create family and community life.
The common saying holds that life is stronger than anything, yet despite the human spirit, genuine coexistence takes place only in neutral areas that are not yet “zones of influence.” On both sides of the city, exciting joint projects are flourishing, enterprises in spheres of culture, welfare, education and employment, but they have no power to be seen and heard in such a way that would change the polarized status quo.
I have seen one example of this in Studio of Her Own, a women’s art center active in Jerusalem, with the support of the Genesis Prize Foundation. For the past three and a half years, religious women artists from the studio have met together with embroiderers from east Jerusalem and other Arab neighborhoods, coming together to embroider and make art, meetings that culminated in a joint exhibition. Although there was no single common language, there was a great desire to get to know one another and together to experience points of connection as women, mothers, and creative artists.
This year, during the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a group from the embroiderers’ project arrived at the studio and participated in an international project of personal and collective remembrance initiated by the artist Yael Serlin who is engaged in preserving the memory of vanished communities. Images from the communities’ remaining gravestones are being embroidered by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women from all over the world.
The most outstanding element from the experience of working together was the capacity to assimilate personal memory within collective memory in a sincere and genuine connection. As I observed the interactions pensively, the thought arose that this was facilitated solely due to the existence of two central axes. The first is the medium of art, which allows individual subjective expression about everything. The second is gender – because it is a group of women, they are able to connect in a way that is much more difficult to engender in a group of men or a mixed group of men and women.
Based on my experience of working with Jewish and Arab women artists in numerous projects over more than a decade since Studio of Her Own was established, and in honor of Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), I would like to give several tips to Israeli society and to Jerusalem, as well:
The model of coexistence in the city of Jerusalem can be the model for coexistence between Arabs and Jews living together throughout the country. It is precisely Jerusalem, which is so highly volatile, the city in which expressions of religion, culture, and the geopolitical conflict are so evident on the surface, that can serve as a model for the life force prevailing over everything, an example of pragmatism and tolerance. And yet, if we want genuine coexistence, we should begin to use the tools of culture on a platform of art. Furthermore, the best and most efficient way is for women to lead the process. Let women be the leaders, to be the bridgehead for connectivity and joint discourse.
During this year full of turning points in which far-reaching changes were evident in the Arab society, seeking to be players and be recognized as full citizens, a year in which for the first time in Israel’s history an Islamist Arab party will determine the formation of the government, it seems that the time has arrived to try new directions. Even Jerusalem, with its millennia of rich history, can meet this challenge. How much more so are we, the Israeli society, capable of accomplishing this goal.
The writer is the founder of Studio of Her Own, a space and community of women artists in Jerusalem, an organization active in the public space, partnerships with organizations promoting a non-extreme Judaism, and a city open to all.