Arts and Culture Israel Project #24742

Bridge Made of Music

by Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA)

Project Report | Feb 8, 2023
Interfaith Singing Evening - Celebrating the Med.

By Dr. Yehdua Stolov | Executive Director

The concert for celebrating the diversity and richness of the Mediterranean, took place at the beautiful historical building of the Felm Center in the heart of Jerusalem.

Despite the cold weather – and the Brazil-Switzerland World Cup game that coincided– several dozens of people came in person to the Felm Center. They were joined by some two hundred people, who participated through Facebook Live. The audience comprised Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis, Palestinians and Europeans, and the band was a group of Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

The band was Wasat e-Tariq/Emtza Haderech/Middle of the Road. It started as an Interfaith Encounter group, uniquely led jointly by the Muslim Palestinian oud player Marwan and the Jewish Israeli percussion player Yuval, in which the main means of mutual communication and bridge-building is music, rather than the more usual interfaith exchange. With time it developed repertoire for a full performance and already performed in various events and public spaces.

In the concert they played songs in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Spanish and Finnish (with help of people of the Felm Center). During the concert, the band hosted the singer Hanna, who specializes in lullabies and sang three Jewish and Christian lullabies in English and German.

Besides the Interfaith Encounter Association and the Felm Center, also the Jerusalem Municipality, Anna Lindh Foundation and the European Union were partners to this concert.

Links:

Back to all project reports

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.