International Peace Day at the Spiritual Center

By PSCC director Einat Betsalel

September 21 is International Peace Day. This year, we observed this special date as an evening event in the Pluralistic Spiritual Community Center’s International Rescuers Garden.

In keeping with the PSCC’s educational goals, we wanted to celebrate the event in a meaningful way. We therefore included an encounter between different communities, in a spirit of cooperation and multiculturalism.

For the occasion, besides WASNS village members and people from the vicinity, we invited the HLA - Holy Local Aliens group, and friends from Ramallah, East Jerusalem

The evening became an opportunity to celebrate cultural diversity and discover new people engaged in various types of peacemaking.

The program began in the Garden of Rescuers, whose purpose is to remember men and women from all over the world who have saved the lives of others, often those from the opposing side of a deadly conflict. The garden, its small stage and half circle of benches, is set in a grove of olive trees. From each tree hangs a marker commemorating group or individual rescuers.

The WASNS site is one of a network of similar gardens scattered around the globe. All were established by, or in cooperation with, Gabriel Nissim, founder of the GARIWO [“Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide”] organization, which is based in Milan. Locally the project’s primary initiator has been WASNS member Prof. Yair Auron.

The first item on our evening agenda was an explanation of the noble meaning and history of the project. This was lovingly presented under the olive trees by Dyana Shaloufi-Rizek, a WASNS member and curator of the Oasis Art Gallery.

Afterwards we ate a tasty meal together and continued with a variety of enjoyable workshops, including Cognitive Thinking, Creative Writing, Martial Arts and Yoga. The facilitators were Jews, Palestinians, Germans, Swedes and members of other cultures or nationalities.

All the evening activities were designed as safe, open spaces that provided maximum opportunity for mingling and cross-cultural acquaintance, at a casual or deeper level.

The final item was facilitated by Gal Zak, a drama student who grew up in the community, together with Reem Nashef, who also grew up here and who is currently working as a teacher at the primary school. The activity was a local version of “You Can’t Ask That” (the Australian TV series that was adapted also for Israeli TV). In our WASNS version, we adopted the theme “everything you want to know about living in a binational village but were afraid to ask.”