So there was this street cat and he was hungry. Man, was he hungry. He hadn't eaten in weeks. Suddenly, what does he see? A mouse! So he starts chasing the mouse, but the hunger makes him slow, and the nimble mouse disappears into a hole in the wall. So the cat says to himself, "I'm not going to wait here for hours until the mouse comes out." So what does he do? He starts barking. The mouse hears the barking and thinks, "There's a dog here. The cat must have left." He comes out and bam! The cat catches him. Just before the cat swallows him, the mouse yells: "Where's the dog that was just here?" and the cat says "Haven't you learned by now? In the Middle East, you have to speak at least two languages."
This rather brutal story is being told to a rapt audience of some 20 youngsters by musician George Youssef Samaan, in the Arab town of Deir al-Assad in the Galilee. Samaan is from the Arab village of Jish, also in the Galilee. Each member of the audience has come from a different place: the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi; the settlement of Alon Shvut in the Judean hills; Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev; the central Israeli city of Even Yehuda; Mevaseret Zion near Jerusalem; the cooperative Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom; the community of Ein Yahav in the Arava region; the northern city of Haifa; Jerusalem and more. These youngsters gather in Deir al-Assad as part of a unique pre-army program sponsored by BINA – The Jewish Movement for Social Change.
As part of this special program, billed as the Masabacha program (short for "masa bahevrah haisraelit," or "journey through Israeli society"), these youngsters have been traveling across the country from Yeruham in the south to Deir al-Assad all the way in the north. They've gone olive picking in Kibbutz Ravid, navigated the terrain in Kibbutz Revivim, worked at a hotel in Tel Aviv and lived in an ultra-Orthodox community in Safed. They spend two or three weeks in one place before moving on to the next, with the aim of getting to know the local population for "long enough for them to feel comfortable with us washing their dishes," as they describe it.
So despite being a well-known, veteran musician who has performed at the most coveted venues around the world, the encounter with these high-school graduates appears to have a profound effect on Samaan. He takes out his oud, hands out a few darboukas (goblet drums) and everyone begins playing music, in a mix of Hebrew and Arabic. Samaan translates some canonic Hebrew songs into Arabic, and the words "there is a limit to despair but no limit to hope; there is a limit to hate but no limit love; there is a limit to reality but no limit to a dream" are just as inspirational in Arabic as they are in the original Hebrew, and they infuse the auditorium in this small community center with an almost cosmic air.
"The oud is an instrument that is equally capable of playing Mozart, Indian music, Ladino music or Middle Eastern music," Samaan tells his audience, wearing a giant grin. "Don't buy into arbitrary division into genres like 'Eastern' and Western' music. Music is part of nature, of the universe. It connects everyone."
"Even though I am one of the most active musicians on the issue of co-existence, I don't even believe in co-existence," he says. "I just believe in existence. Existence through music."
"Here, look at us," he continues. "Hardly without any talking, only eye contact, we're already playing together, getting familiar with one another and making progress."
Leaving the bubble
Samaan's edifying lesson ends and the group sits down to talk. The long weeks they have spent living among wildly different populations around the country have left their faces creased with wild laughter as well as frowns. Their need to unload is openly visible.
"What is Masabacha?" I ask them and they all yell back in unison: "A journey through Israeli society!" but then, in a calmer tone they say: "And a journey within ourselves, too."
"It's also named after hummus masabacha – an Arab dish that tops the list of dishes beloved by Israelis," one of them adds.
I ask them why they joined the program. "We felt that our environment was too homogenous," says Yonatan from Mevaseret Zion. "We don't like to use the word 'bubble,' but we felt that we were living our lives in a plane that runs parallel to many other societies and populations – all living within the borders of the State of Israel but never intersecting. We wanted to meet and get to know Israeli society."
"I come from a Reform Jewish home and for me, Safed was a very challenging," he recalls. "When we were there, we studied a lot with a man named Rabbi Laser – he always said the most controversial things to encourage conversation. For example, he said that Reform Judaism is not really a form of Judaism but rather a social movement. Or, he said that Israel can't be a Jewish state because it doesn't adhere to Halachah [Jewish law], and that we should be living under Jordanian rule.
"When you are a guest at the home of a man like that, sitting in his house hearing things that are not only difficult to digest but also run contrary to everything you've been taught and know, you can storm out in anger and turn your back on him or you can try to contain and understand his position and then voice your own position. You don't have to agree, but that's how dialogue forms. If you listen to him there's a greater chance that he will listen to you."
Amit from Tel Mond recounts that the group's time in Yeruham was particularly meaningful for him. "We landed in one of the town's neighborhoods, and all of our activities there were in a place where there were a lot of children. There were children of all ethnicities there. We saw a 14-year-old girl taking care of her two brothers, aged 6 and 1. The kids craved attention and we struck an amazing friendship with them.
"When we left, they wrote us an emotional letter and handed out flowers. The bond that we forged was very special to me because it was a way to get to know the community in the simplest, most genuine way," he says. "Whenever we get to a new place, there is a defined 'aimless wandering' time, when we walk around and find interesting people. In Yeruham, these children were sent from above."
Yarden, from Haifa, shares an experience from the Shapira neighborhood in Gedera, home to a large Ethiopian community. "I was walking down the street one day and suddenly one of the girls called out to me and said, 'Hey, what's your name? What are you doing here?' and she really reminded me of my younger sister. When I told her that, she asked, 'Is your sister black, too?'
"Her remark really opened my eyes," Yarden continues. "They say that children don't care about things like skin color, and I suddenly realized that they do understand that there are people who care about it and they realize that they are treated differently because of it.
"When we were there, we were in contact with an organization called Friends by Nature, which works to strengthen the Ethiopian community through its own strengths. In essence, they try to improve what is already good rather than focusing on the weak spots. They started a communal garden in the Shapira neighborhood because they understood that older Ethiopians who worked in agriculture in their home country miss it when they immigrate to Israel. This garden forged a connection between the older and younger members of the community – the younger people realized that they could learn a lot from the previous generation and that is something that had kind of gotten lost in the Ethiopian community. This garden bridged the generations."
Everyone in the group wants a turn to share their thoughts, but time is limited and the itinerary beckons. Gal, from Neve Shalom, sums up the experience and says that "when you leave home and go to study about a place while actually living in it, it intensifies the experience by a lot. In Safed, for example, we observed Shabbat with an ultra-Orthodox family, and I had never observed Shabbat before.
"Participating in something rather than just learning about it from outside is much more powerful. Whenever we encountered a new population, we saw something that was very different from us, and it was fascinating to learn that they weren't putting on a show for us. They really live like that. This way you learn a lot about them but also a great deal about yourself. There are so many lifestyles that we aren't even aware of. When you taste a little of so many lifestyles you get to take an external journey alongside an internal one inside yourself."
Our next stop on this busy day in Deir al-Assad is a meeting with a local man – Salah Assadi, a descendant of the large family that founded the village. Their name literally means lions.
Salah guides us through the village alleyways toward the mosque, where worshippers are preparing for afternoon prayers. On the way, he tells us about the history of the place as well as his own personal history, and how the two intertwine.
The group shows a great interest in his stories, and, along the way, they take the time to engage in short conversations with passersby, pet a passing dog and smile at a group of schoolchildren that eye these strangers with curiosity and wonder.
The visit at the mosque concludes and the group makes its way back to the community center, where they will be sleeping. The center is at the top of a hill and the way there involves some steep, challenging terrain. As we stop to catch our breath, I grab Tal from Zikhron Yaakov for a one-on-one conversation.
Tal, who immigrated to Israel from the U.S. when he was 12 years old, says, "When we hear different narratives about the State of Israel in the media – like how the Ethiopian immigrants see the state or how the ultra-Orthodox see it – it's very easy to say, 'Okay, they might think that but they're wrong.' But when you meet the actual person, you have nowhere to run and you have to respond to what they're saying.
"When you're in a situation with a person when both sides think they are right and the other one is wrong, you can try to find something that is common to both of you. You can take a step in their direction and they can take a step in your direction, and maybe you'll arrive at a point where both of you understand each other a little better. At that point you can begin to build a genuine, deeper relationship," he says. "Because in this country, your ethnic background doesn't matter. Neither does your religious background, or how much you live in a bubble. There is always something that connects you to others. That's what I love about this program – we don't just learn about a community but we also meet the people in it."
Don't disparage 'today's youth'
At the community center, Yuval Linden, 32, is already waiting. Linder oversees the BINA pre-army programs, and today is his weekly meeting with the Masabacha group. "The Masabacha program is our newest endeavor. This is only the second group to participate in it," he notes. "We are looking for young people who are open to venturing outside their bubble and learning about Israeli society, and themselves in the process."
"We are opening a window to something that is ostensibly very close, but we never actually touch it in our daily lives," he adds. "This is not a volunteer mission that comes around to 'rescue' anyone. We are coming to learn and along the way we also incorporate social initiatives."
"People always disparage 'today's youth.' But here, the kids are doing things that you wouldn't expect from 'today's youth' – they are traveling from place to place by bus, sleeping in sleeping bags, relocating every two or three weeks, without being able to run away or hole up in their rooms. We tell the group: We're investing in you, but don't invest back in us. Invest it forward. We see our graduates going everywhere, be it in the army or in other places, as ambassadors of Israel and as people who have the power to bring communities together.
"Take for example a young woman who was in the first group and is now a company commander in the army. When one of her soldiers, a member of the Ethiopian community, asks for time off to celebrate the Sigd holiday, she has the tools and the knowledge to understand the significance of his request.
"If every Masabacha participant passes on what they receive here, we can really enter the bloodstream of Israeli society. We can personally reach maybe a few hundred youngsters. But if those hundreds take what they learned and apply it in the army or their workplace or their home communities, they'll pass it on, and we're talking about something that has the potential to actually make a change in Israeli society. We see ourselves as a part of the response to President Reuven Rivlin's "tribes speech." He urged the members of the different tribes in Israeli society to remember and honor the agreement between us all that actually defines what we are doing in this country.
Another visitor who arrives to get a little taste of Masabacha is Eran Baruch, the CEO of BINA. "It seemed very logical to us to embark on a journey of identity within Israeli society," he explains. "Often, when you build an identity, you do it through recognizing and revealing other identities. At age 18, individuals are still curious and inquisitive, both outward and inward. During this time before the military service, they are still rebelling and asking themselves deep questions about their identity and what they want to do in life. At that point, this process becomes much more feasible. This journey forces you to ask yourself, 'What kind of person do I want to be?' and 'How do I want to raise my children?'"
At lunchtime, in comes Anisa, the neighbor. Anisa, a mother of seven, helps the group with her delicious cooking, offering up a variety of local dishes. As the youngsters roll grape leaves that they themselves picked a day prior, I bid them farewell and think how, just like in the story of the cat and the mouse, I learned another language from them. Or at least a few new words.
