Announcements
Over the last two months the Jerusalem Season of Culture (JSOC), in partnership with the Jerusalem municipality, has left an indelible mark on the Jerusalem cultural scene with a number of highly successful pilots. The pilots, particularly the most recent ones, received prolific press coverage which culminated in an amazing ten-minute piece on prime time Channel 2 Friday night news (the most popular news hour of the week). The cultural reporter described Mahane Yehuda Market as the "hottest place to go out in Israel," and a significant proportion of the piece was devoted to the JSOC pilot, which takes place in the market, Balabasta. The last lines of the report underscored everything JSOC, in collaboration with the city's leading cultural institutions and figures, is trying to achieve:
"Between the Balabasta Festival, the Mahane Yehuda restaurant, and the crowds streaming to the renewed Israel Museum Campus, a new trend is becoming apparent. The city that has been becoming Haredi, and lost its status as a cultural center and with it many of its secular and educated young people, suddenly, at the very last moment, made a sharp u-turn on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. This is the summer in Jerusalem. Ladies and gentlemen, a revolution!"
July/August
- JSOC's latest summer pilots began with what was hailed in the newspapers as, the highlight of the Israel Musuem's week long celebration to mark their re-opening after three years of intensive renovations. The evening, which was attended by over 8,000 people, began with a packed performance by Yehudit Ravitz and was followed by on-site interactions by over 40 artists with works of art in the museum. The evening was topped off with a Wi silent disco, attended by hundreds of people of all ages dancing and singing to music played by a DJ that only they can hear.
- JSOC followed this success with a magical Kabbalat Shabbat program in collaboration with Beit Avichai, at Jerusalem's Tower of David Museum. The musical program, which was sold out with a waiting list, comprised of five female vocalists in a set that was perfectly calibrated for dusk in Jerusalem. The music, the setting and the special Shabbat eve light spread a magical aura over the venue and the event.
- Most recently, however, JSOC's collaborative project with the Jerusalem Municipality, the City Center Community Association, the Machane Yehuda Merchants Committee, and local musicians and artists, has reached new and unprecedented levels of public excitement and recognition. Over 15,000 attended the latest in a series of five evening celebrations in the market. The evenings featured local delicacies, live music and site specific exhibitions and performances; drew participants from all over the country, traffic jams and a buzz that spread through all sectors of the city's diverse populace.
Haruv
- As part of its broad reach program aimed at the full spectrum of professionals who work with children and are in a position to identify cases of child abuse or neglect, 16 social workers from the Ministry of Absorption recently completed a program consisting of 9 meetings on this subject. For their final project they were required to prepare learning programs targeting field workers who are working with new immigrants. The presented works included the production of an intake form for absorption advisors with "red flag" checks that could indicate the possibility of abuse in immigrant families; workshops on the identification of severe neglect, methods for detecting abuse and an outline of the law regarding the necessity of reporting incidences of abuse.
- Following the publication of the Haruv's first journal, the feedback has been extremely positive and there is definitive feeling that it answers a real need among professionals. A by- product of the journal has been a surge in the number of people registered on the Haruv website which now numbers 2,220 (this number refers to people who submitted registration forms asking to be included in Haruv mailings, invited to conferences and more).