East Meets West Jerusalem

One of the classes I'm taking this semester can be seen as a microcosm of the Kesher Hadash experience. "Diversity and Difference in Israeli Society" is a course at the David Yellin School of Education made up of American-Jews, Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Arabs/Palestinians. This class is intended to bring us into dialogue with different populations of Israeli society. For our final project, our class was divided into mixed groups of four representing the different backgrounds of our class. Our task was to introduce each other to our significant places in Jerusalem.

We started out in West Jerusalem at a restaurant near Shuk Machane Yehuda to have a lunch full of delicious hummus at "Hahummus Shel Techinah". We then made our way to Marzipan to experience their sweet rugelach. We rounded out our culinary tour by enjoying tea at "Café Nadi". Finally, we took the light rail to East Jerusalem to walk around Salahadin Street, which was described to our group as West Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda.

Our conversations between each location was what I found most interesting about our afternoon together. At the hummus restaurant, we discussed which culture had the best hummus- Israeli or Arab (American was obviously not a contender). Arab hummus was unanimously voted the best by our group. The culinary connections between Arabs and Israelis is quite significant, although often underplayed and denied. Most Jews think that hummus and falafel are Israeli foods when they are really Arab foods.

I asked our friend from East Jerusalem how she felt walking around West Jerusalem, and I did the same for our friend from West Jerusalem walking around East Jerusalem. They both expressed fear of the other neighborhood. They had never been in each others neighborhoods before today, yet they both lived in the same city just two train stops away. Jerusalem is really a microcosm of Israel. East and West Jerusalem residents rarely interact with each other in a meaningful way, much of which is rooted in fear. I don't know how this conflict will ever be resolved if we aren't taught to see each other as humans. And yet, our discussion over hummus felt like friends coming together to break bread.