Uncategorized
This mixed Jewish-Arab school in Ramle seeks to model a blueprint for Israel’s future
RAMLE, Israel — In the heart of the central Israeli city of Ramle, where Jews and Arabs live side by side, the Yigal Alon Multidisciplinary High School is trying to spearhead a quiet revolution.
The student body reflects the full tapestry of Israeli society, with students who are Jewish, Muslim, and Christian, religious and secular, native-born and immigrant. The school has a particularly large Ethiopian-Israeli population, and students with special needs. In Israel, such diversity is often treated as a problem to be managed. At Yigal Alon, it is treated as an opportunity, one that was especially important during Israel’s two-year war.
When 32-year-old alumnus Moshael Shlomo, a commander in the IDF’s Yamam counterterrorism unit, was killed on October 7, 2023, his death reverberated through the school community. Shlomo, who grew up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged home in Ramle, attended Yigal Alon from 2006 to 2009, and was known for his charisma, athleticism and drive to help others. He served as a paratrooper, then rose to become an IDF team commander and demolitions expert in Yamam.
After Shlomo’s death in combat with Hamas attackers near Kibbutz Be’eri, Yigal Alon students worked with school staff and Shlomo’s family to begin transforming a neglected plot on the school campus into a lawn — the first stage of a memorial project that eventually will include a sports field, outdoor seating and garden of peace. The project seeks to honor Shlomo’s memory by creating a space that reflects his passion for athletics and community, and the area will serve as an after-school haven for teenagers who by and large can’t afford the kind of extra-curricular activities their peers do. Administrators hope teens using it will build stronger peer relationships and practice the values Shlomo embodied, including generosity and service to community and country.
“It isn’t just about Shlomo’s athleticism,” said sports teacher Dotan Rotshtein, who is spearheading the project. “It’s about his character of determination and kindness. This project will educate students in his spirit.”
The project at Yigal Alon is one example of the many ways Israelis are memorializing those killed during the war, trying to make something positive out of the pain, hardship and loss they endured during the longest conflict in Israel’s history. Rather than serving as a flashpoint, Shlomo’s death became a unifying experience for Yigal Alon, bringing Arab and Jewish students together in determination to build something positive.
The school, one of 50 in the Amal educational network, offers a rare and tangible model for how to bolster Arab-Jewish coexistence and build a society rooted in shared humanity, administrators said.
“This school is a home not just for students, but for families,” said principal Barak Friedman, himself a school alumnus and Ramle native. “Everyone belongs. Everyone matters.”
In Israel, only eight out of 250 municipalities are considered mixed Jewish-Arab. Almost all public schools are segregated along ethnic and religious lines. Yigal Alon is one of Israel’s very few mixed Arab-Jewish public schools.
“Once people saw this as a liability,” Friedman said. “I see it as a wonderful opportunity.”
“At a time of growing extremism in Israeli society, the connections between these youths is quite unique and inspiring,” said Barak Friedman, principal of the Yigal Alon school in Ramle, Israel. (Courtesy of Amal)
Staff at the school try to weave the values of shared humanity into academic life. During the war, students met weekly in conversation circles where Jewish and Arab classmates spoke openly about how the conflict was affecting their families. They worked together on projects like murals and performances to express their emotions.
Older students tutor younger ones, often across language and cultural lines, and 11th graders complete community service work in both Jewish and Arab institutions. The school also has a large group of Shinshinim — Israeli volunteers from pre-military academies who work alongside teachers to help give students one-on-one attention and assist those with learning disabilities.
Jewish and Arab students and teachers work side by side.
“Students aren’t interested in the ethnic background or origin stories of fellow students; what matters to them is their relationships with each other,” Friedman said. “At a time of growing extremism in Israeli society, the connections between these youths is quite unique and inspiring.”
These connections flourished even during the war.
Within the Amal network — whose diverse portfolio of schools ranges from vocational schools that serve traditionally marginalized Israeli populations including immigrants, Arabs, and haredim to science & technology schools in Israel’s biggest cities — 45 alumni were killed in the war, many of them siblings or cousins of current students. Schools were struck by missiles, relocated due to being in conflict zones or absorbed evacuees. Some students had relatives taken hostage to Gaza, and many had parents or siblings in combat. Everyone was affected.
“The loss is not only in the fallen,” said Asher Ben Shoshan, Amal’s head of human resources. “Many of our students and staff were living with traumas.”
Amal’s schools responded by expanding trauma-related programming, offering counseling, and creating spaces for students to process emotions through dialogue and creativity.
“We’re not just teaching algebra or English,” Ben Shoshan said. “We’re helping young people hold their lives together. That is the mission now.”
Traditionally a network of vocational schools, Amal has focused in recent years on turning its schools into centers of science and technology while also trying to heal Israel’s societal rifts and strengthen democratic values among its more than 3,000 teachers and 26,000 students.
“We believe that education is not just about knowledge but about citizenship,” said Tamar Peled Amir, Amal’s deputy director general for education, technology and R&D. “Our classrooms are where the future of Israel is being written — not just with math equations or essays, but with empathy, resilience and an unwavering commitment to building a shared society.”
The killing of Yigal Alon alumnus Moshael Shlomo on Oct. 7, 2023, galvanized the school community to come together and build something to honor the memory of the slain IDF commander. (Courtesy of Amal)
Karen Tal, Amal’s director general, said focusing on Israeli society is part of the schools’ educational responsibility.
“We don’t have the luxury of detachment,” Tal said. “Our responsibility is not only academic. It is human. Shared society is not a slogan. It is the essence of democracy. When students learn to listen to one another, to respect differences and to see the humanity in the other, they are learning what it means to live in a democratic society. That is the Israel we are working to build, one classroom at a time.”
Arab students in Rotshtein’s after-school fitness club now wear team shirts bearing Shlomo’s name. “They want to feel part of this country, part of his legacy,” Rotshtein said.
“The space we decided to build in Moshael’s honor reflects who he was: generous, kind, committed to others,” Rotshtein said. “It is also a project that brings people together, Jews and Arabs, in a spirit of unity.”
Friedman, the principal, said, “Whether you are Jewish or Arab, religious or secular, we teach our students to take responsibility for themselves, for each other and for society. Because only that kind of responsibility will allow Israel to heal.”
It’s an ethos Friedman himself embodies: As part of his military reserve duty, he’s a “notifier” —part of the three-person crew that visits parents’ homes when a soldier is killed to inform them of the terrible news. The experience has shaped his worldview, and the school’s focus on service to community.
Much of the implementation for school-specific initiatives like the Shlomo memorial project relies on community partnerships and philanthropy.
“We are reaching out to the global Jewish community and to friends of Israeli democracy everywhere,” said Yael Nathanel, Amal’s resource development director. “Projects like this do not just build walls and gardens. They build empathy, resilience and vision. But we need help to ensure that this becomes a reality.”
—
The post This mixed Jewish-Arab school in Ramle seeks to model a blueprint for Israel’s future appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader
(JTA) — Canada’s main progressive party aims to make a comeback under its new leader Avi Lewis, a Jewish anti-Zionist.
Lewis, a filmmaker and former journalist, was elected to lead the New Democrats on Sunday. He campaigned on principles that have energized the global left, including affordability, the environment and unapologetic anti-Zionism. He repeated his position on Israel in his acceptance speech in Winnipeg.
“When Israel commits a genocide in Gaza, we call it by its name, and we do everything in our power to bring it to an end,” Lewis said in his speech.
Lewis hopes to rebuild a party that suffered its worst losses in history during the 2025 federal election. Center-left voters who were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada flocked to the Liberal Party and elected Mark Carney as prime minister.
Lewis comes from a line of progressive royalty. His grandfather, David Lewis, was one of the founding members of the New Democrats and its leader in the 1970s. His father, Stephen Lewis, led the party in Ontario. He is also the great-grandson of Moishe Lewis, who was an outspoken member of the socialist Jewish Labour Bund in Eastern Europe and immigrated to Canada in 1921.
Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, a prominent author and critic of Israel. Klein was among several writers who declined to participate in PEN America’s annual World Voices festival in 2024, saying the group failed to “stand firmly” with Palestinian writers. She also addressed protesters during a rally outside U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn during Passover that year, called “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel,” and urged Jews against worshipping the “false idol” of Zionism.
Lewis was formerly a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera. In a debate with other candidates in January, he described himself as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, an advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, said it acknowledged Lewis’ victory “with a deep sense of sadness.”
“Avi Lewis is himself Jewish, and we respect his family’s history in this party,” the group said a statement. “But Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability. When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique. He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate.”
On the eve of the New Democratic Party’s leadership convention, CIJA joined dozens of rabbis from across the country in an open letter criticizing the party.
“Too often, the NDP’s response to antisemitism in Canada has been inconsistent, hesitant, or clouded by rhetoric that fails to recognize how hatred manifests in today’s environment,” said the letter.
Perhaps anticipating Lewis’ victory, they added, “Even more troubling is the repeated elevation of fringe or non-representative Jewish voices to deflect, dilute, or dismiss the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of the Canadian Jewish community.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Canadian progressive party picks Jewish anti-Zionist politician as its leader appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the top Catholic clergy in Israel be allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ahead of Easter, in an attempt to calm tensions that flared after police blocked their access.
Police cited wartime restrictions when prohibiting Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and three other Catholic representatives from visiting the church, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Palm Sunday, a holy day for Christians.
Many holy sites in the city, including the Western Wall for Jews and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims, have been closed or tightly restricted since the start of the Iran war last month because they lack bomb shelters for the number of people who typically gather there. Shrapnel from Iranian missiles have landed in the Old City multiple times, including near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the prohibitions on Pizzaballa’s access come at a time when some Christians are expressing concern that Israel is discriminating against them. A statement from the Latin Patriarchate on Sunday accusing Israel of having made a “hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations,” seemed to fuel those sentiments.
“For the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the Latin Patriarchate said. “This incident is a grave precedent and disregards the sensibilities of billions of people around the world who, during this week, look to Jerusalem.”
Christians believe that the church is the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, making prayers at the site on Palm Sunday, which kicks off the week leading up to Easter, particularly significant. Pizzaballa was seeking to pray privately at the site, not lead a major service as is typical.
Criticism over the closure resounded across the globe, including among allies of the Israeli government. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the closure as “an insult” and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “difficult to understand or justify” given that wartime rules prohibit only gatherings of 50 or more.
Soon, Israeli authorities were negotiating a special arrangement that would allow Pizzaballa and a handful of other Christian leaders access to the holy sites without opening them widely. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he called Pizzaballa personally to express his commitment to religious freedom.
“I reiterate the unwavering commitment of the State of Israel to the freedom of worship for people of all faiths and the importance of upholding the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” Herzog said in a statement.
For his part, Pizzaballa downplayed the incident when speaking to a Catholic news channel. “There were no clashes, and we don’t want to force matters, but rather figure out what to do while respecting the right to prayer,” he said. “There were misunderstandings, we didn’t understand each other, and that’s what happened. It’s never happened before; it’s a shame this happened. This morning’s events are important, but we must consider the broader context. There are people who are much worse off than us who cannot celebrate for very different reasons. Once again, we are celebrating a subdued Easter.”
The police said the closure was justified because in addition to the lack of bomb shelters in the Old City, the area’s narrow and winding streets make it hard for emergency vehicles to reach anyone who might be injured in an attack.
Netanyahu said that while he understood the safety considerations involved in turning Pizzaballa back on Sunday, he had called for changes going forward.
“I have instructed the relevant authorities that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch, be granted full and immediate access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,” he said in a statement.
The dustup came as Pope Leo, in his Palm Sunday address in the Vatican, condemned the Iran war and lamented that Christians in the Middle East “are suffering the consequences of a brutal conflict and, in many cases, are unable to observe fully the liturgies of these holy days.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu orders Church of the Holy Sepulchre open after Palm Sunday closure flares tensions appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons
You may not know the name Jimmy Grashow, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work. His psychedelic drawings have been featured in The New York Times, Ms. and Playboy. He illustrated album covers for The Yardbirds and Jethro Tull. His cardboard sculptures of people, animals and buildings have been shown all over the country, including at MoMA, the Library of Congress, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Within the first 30 seconds of Jimmy & the Demons, a documentary about the artist directed by Cindy Meehl, I recognized his cardboard sculptures of a dancing couple; a version lives in the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington in my home state of North Carolina.
The documentary follows Grashow as he works on his latest commission: an eight-foot tall wooden sculpture of Jesus hoisting a cathedral on his back, while demons, each one completely different from the other, reach out of the flames around his feet. The cathedral’s intricate exterior is matched by an equally elaborate interior: A mural of Eden decorates the cathedral wall and a figure resembling the piece’s commissioner Michael Marocco, a Catholic art collector who has several Grashow pieces in his private sculpture garden, kneels in prayer. If you look closely at the mural, you can see God’s name written in Hebrew on a painted banner. The cathedral’s stained glass windows are illuminated by an electric bulb.
Grashow’s work is painstakingly detailed and took years to complete, as the slightest error in measurement or cut could have ruined the whole thing. While the documentary doesn’t last for years the way the project did, it follows a similarly leisurely pace, spending lots of moments in silence with Grashow in his home workshop in Redding, Connecticut. It’s a close look at the mostly solitary work of an artist, although viewers also get a few moments to meet Grashow’s family, including his daughter who is a rabbi.
Meehl has profiled unconventional figures in her past documentaries, such as Buck, about horse whisperer Dan “Buck” Brannaman, and The Dog Doc, about holistic veterinarian Marty Goldstein. Grashow, who passed away in September 2025, three months after the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is no exception.
Despite his artistic talent, Grashow said that as a kid he “felt inadequate in every way.” Dyslexic and bad at math, Grashow struggled in his Brooklyn high school. At home, he felt overshadowed by his athletic brother and brilliant older sister. But he found a place to succeed at the Pratt Institute, where he studied woodworking, and received a Fulbright to study in Florence. There he fell in love with the cathedrals that would appear in many of his projects over the years.
Grashow did not view his sculpture of Christ as conflicting with his Jewish faith, noting the relationship between the word “Israel,” which means one who wrestles with God, and the meaning he saw in the piece.
“The world is full of peril and devils,” Grashow said. “And there you are trying to carry your faith and keep your faith alive. It’s a simple idea of trying to move forward in life with chaos and the possibility of chaos everywhere.”
“I’m wrestling all the time,” Grashow said. “It’s a brutal world.”
Grashow told the filmmakers that, when the idea for Marocco’s sculpture came to him, he “knew it was like a hineini moment,” using the term which means “here I am” and is also the name of a prayer traditionally chanted during the High Holidays, implying that one is showing up as their full self, with all of their flaws.
“It was God saying ‘Here’s this’ and it was up to me to say ‘Here I am. I’ll do it,’” Grashow said.
It was not a simple task. In addition to the years spent building the project, there was an emotional toll. Early in the film, Grashow says that the project feels like “the grand finale.” He asks that the filmmakers not share that information with his wife, Guzzy, although she later tells them herself that she feels Grashow’s time is running out.
Later in the film, the Museum Contemporary Art in Westport, Connecticut offers Grashow a retrospective exhibit of his work, with the new piece at the center. Grashow’s musings about death imbue the project with a sense of urgency and the proposed exhibit title is fittingly Man, Mortality: A Retrospective. However, when the museum refuses to fully fund the show, Grashow and Guzzy are left scrambling for a way to showcase his life’s work.
As Grashow wrestles with his own corporality, his art is both an escape from and an expression of his worries.
“When I’m doing demons, I know that it’s a little boy playing,” he said. “And an old man being terribly afraid.”
Jimmy & the Demons opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on April 3, 2026.
The post While sculpting Jesus, this Jewish artist wrestled with his demons appeared first on The Forward.