Christmas Season Specials from Bethlehem and Ramallah

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Facing the daily challenges of lockdowns and distancing, which forced us all to spend much more time at home than ever before, we wondered how to bring a bit of joy to our audience and to ourselves. One of the things that certainly unite us all is the curiosity to discover and enjoy new dishes. Recipes and cooking traditions are also a wonderful and most pleasant way to teach us about a region and its culture, unknown ingredients and about the people that create these dainty dishes. As we introduces this new project in the middle of the advent season, we decided to feature some local seasonal specials – and what could be a better start than to sneak into a bakery in Bethlehem in Christmas time, and to watch the making of some delicious colorful Christmas cookies.

Young Palestinian pâtissier Francis Abu Akleh was trained in Germany, Turkey, Palestine and Jordan, and opened his own baking studio in Bethlehem just recently. Despite all the obstacles of the Corona pandemic, his spectacular and tasty cake creations have already won a reputation in the region. For Saint Nicholas Day he invited the Willy Brandt Center for a sweet advent season special, and shared his recipe for savoury Christmas cookies.

Christians in the Holy Land traditionally celebrate the legend of Saint Barabara with a special dish. Muna Khleifi, a cultural manager living in Ramallah, invited us and our audience into her cozy kitchen and introduced us to the history of “Burbara”. We were also allowed to watch her produce this delicious vegan dessert.

Both cooking videos can be found on our Facebook page. Good luck and enjoy the wonderful flavours of the season!

 

Café Europe

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‚But in the last resort, every shadow is also the child of light, and only those who have known the light and the dark, have seen war and peace, rise and fall, have truly lived their lives.‘

                                                                                   ― Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday 

 

Through his masterwork The World of Yesterday, Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), a visionary and one of the first to identify as ‚European‘, bequeathed to us the manifesto of a dream of the peaceful unification of different cultures. It was he who inspired us this year to undertake a contemporary literature project, a collection of texts by European, Israeli and Palestinian authors on the subject of ‚A World of Tomorrow‘.

On November 28th, it was time to say: Happy Birthday Mr. Zweig! Stefan Zweig was one of the world’s most famous and introspective writers. We celebrated his birthday in an eight-hour online event with participants from Addis Ababa, Berlin, Jerusalem, Hohenems, London, Paris, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Vienna and Zurich. The event included dramatic readings of his texts,  recitations of selected texts and reflections by writers that were inspired by Zweig, as well as musical performances. .

Where could have been a better place to celebrate Stefan Zweig than in his favorite place – a café? Due to the Corona guidelines, the only chance to open our café was to do it online. We were overwhelmed by the fact that so many guests from different countries and continents joined us, some staying with us for the whole time, from 2pm to 10.30pm. We chose the title “Café Europe” not only because Zweig was considered one of the “first Europeans”: In the early 1960’s there was once a legendary Café Europe in Al Zahra street in East Jerusalem, a cosmopolitan meeting place where people would meet at ‚tea time‘, debate, read the news, hear live music, dance or listen to a storyteller. On the Israeli side too there was once a Café Europa that served in the 1920s and 1930s as a social and cultural meeting place for people of different backgrounds. It was situated on Kikar Zion which, to this today, is a bustling square in the center of West Jerusalem. Hence, this project was an attempt at a new, literary ‚Café Europa‘ – a meeting place, an intellectual point of contact, a place of longing to which the words of our authors lead us.

We would like to thank all our online guests from near and far for their presence and curiosity, and to our wonderful actors, directors, musicians and writers who brought the spirit of Stefan Zweig to our Café Europe: Marwan Abado, Alex Ansky, Terhas Berhe, Guy Bracca, Timna Brauer, Avraham Burg, Joanna Castelli, Anna Goldenberg, Iman Hirbawi, Chris Laurence, Hanno Loewy, Rita Manning, Dimitrina Milenova, Hagar Mizrachi Dudinski, Peter Münch, Christian Manuel Oliveira, Mohammad Qutati, Julya Rabinowich, Doron Rabinovici, Nadine Sayegh, Michael Schiemer, Emmanuel Strosser and Sergio Wagner. Many thanks also to those who helped realizing this immense international project on a rather short notice: Mona Aipperspach, Ahmad Bakri, Christiane Boesiger, Markus Bugnyar, André Cazalet, Jonas Lamprecht, Olivier Tambosi, Astrid Wein, and the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv and the Jewish Museum Hohenems, as well as the inspirational locations of Café Mano Berlin, Café Triest Jerusalem, Garage Coffee Bar Ramallah, Café Korb Vienna and the Grand Café Odeon Zurich.

Movement Sessions 

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In days of nationwide lockdowns, when everybody has to face stagnation and distance, the Willy Brandt Center wanted to invite its friends and social media followers to be more aware of their body and to trigger health activities by connecting and moving together from a distance. We therefore organized two free online movement sessions for women with no previous movement experience required, on November 25th and December 16th. Every woman was able to participate in her own home, in a space of her choice. The sessions’ program recalled the moving body and examined new areas of movement through the prism of movement and dance therapy. Both sessions were facilitated by the Dance Movement Therapists Lior Darshan and Shaked Sabag.

Online Red Lounge: ‚Images, Projections and Media’ 

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On December 12th, Willy Brandt Center’s Social Art Program invited its participants to an online Red Lounge titled “Images, Projections and Media”. We set up three different sessions with speakers from the field of media, images and photography, who shared their work, mission and vision.

The event began with a session on New Social Online Journalism. Jala Abu Arab, a young dynamic editor in chief of Dooz –a new and highly popular media institution and training center located in the West Bank – introduced the innovative social multimedia news and exchange platform that focuses mainly on local topics. Abu Arab explained about Dooz’s fight for ethical reporting and against fake news, and presented their initiatives with the aim to give a strong and courageous voice to civil society and to focus on helping people, making positive changes and developing public spaces for debates and information.
In our second session, featuring Bauhaus architecture in Palestine, we welcomed Australian architectural photographer Mikaela Burstow, who has been based in Israel/Palestine for the past 11 years but regularly presents her work internationally in Berlin, Dubai, Tel Aviv, London and Sidney, as well as at festivals in Istanbul, Rotterdam, Nuremberg and Milano. Burstow gave insights into her work in the region and her artistic participation in several exhibitions, books and other political and historical projects. During her presentation, Burstow led us to discover impressive unknown architecture of the International Style in Palestinian cities such as Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah and Tulkarem, and showed examples of contemporary architecture in Palestine that was inspired by it.

The event concluded with an online vernissage and talk with Hani Amra, an artist from the Palestinian diaspora who was born in French West Indies, grew up in Jerusalem and studied both literature and art in France. Guests of the vernissage had the chance to view pieces of his series titled “Under the Bird’s Wing”, including collages of historic and contemporary newspaper cuttings, and to learn about the philosophy and multilayered background of Amra’s artistic work.

Pop-up Exhibition: Alien Sketches in the Holy Land

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Covid-19 made us creative once again: in order to show the sketches made by Florence Plissart, a painter and traveler born in Belgium, we came up with the first Pop-Up Exhibition in Abu Tor. With the support of Holy Local Aliens, we exhibited sketches from the Holy Land for two days at the front of our center, and invited visitors to participate in a workshop and get sketched.

Florence Plissart uses her drawings and paintings as a bridge connecting with others. Encounter, discovery and travel are the common thread in her artistic projects. Here she describes herself: “I’m not a Christian, not a Jew, not a Muslim. Neither an exchange student, NGO worker, theologist or archeologist… However, I lived mostly in Jerusalem for the past 21 months. We were brought here by my husband’s work, and felt strongly attracted by the intensity of the Holy City. Finding my place here has often been a struggle, since I belonged to no community. Two things eventually helped me to find my place: sketching the beauty of the city and its people, and meeting the Holy Local Aliens, an amazing community that brings people together beyond walls.“

The first pop-up exhibition in Abu Tor showed seven sets of sketches from Jerusalem, Acre, and the activities of Holy Local Aliens. Due to the current restrictions, the drawings were displayed on the wall along the street in front of the Willy Brandt Center. Around 100 visitors passed by during the two days, many of them from the neighborhood.

During both days, Plissart also sketched children from the neighborhood and the participants of the workshop that was organized by Holy Local Aliens.

International Political Symposium: „The World after American Presidential Elections 2020

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The International Political Symposium „The World after American Presidential Elections 2020“ by our partners Seeds for Development and Culture took place on November 18th 2020 as a hybrid event. Approximately thirty participants gathered in Nablus, and over 125 additional participants joined online from all over the world. In three sessions, members of European Parliament, diplomats and academics discussed topics such as “The new US Administration and the Middle East“, “Challenges facing the international system after the elections“, and “The Palestinian question between two administrations“.

All inputs and discussions were translated to English and Arabic, thus allowing discussions between Palestinian and international participants. The second session, on challenges concerning the International System after the US Elections, that was held with Ambassador Majed Bamya, MEP Evin Incir, MEP Margrete Auken and Professor Jan Selby, was hosted and moderated by WBC’s project manager Tobias Pietsch.

Let Music Fill the Air

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Desperate times require creative measures: As we currently cannot invite artists to perform inside our center, we invited them to perform on our roof!

On October 29th, we proudly presented Sabrass, a newly founded chamber ensemble, formed by five of Israel’s leading brass musicians who are also members of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra: Itai Agmon (tuba), Tal Ben Rei (trombone), Itamar Leshem (french horn), Yigal Meltzer (trumpet) and Yuval Shapiro (trumpet). The artists proved a great sportive spirit and climbed up on our roof with their instruments to perform a unique classical music concert. Even though we weren’t able to welcome guests directly at our premises, music lovers had the chance to take a stroll while listening to the musicians on Ein Rogel Street or from one of the neighboring squares and streets surrounding our center. Our neighbors were also able to simply open their windows or take a seat on their balcony to enjoy pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Enrique Crespo, and George Gershwin, as well a selection of jazz songs. It was heartwarming for both musicians and organizers, to see children dancing on the roofs and to hear the sound of cheers and clapping that reached us from the houses and the streets around our center.

International Artists Day 

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On the occasion of the International Artists Day on October 25th, the Willy Brandt Center wanted to highlight culture’s contributions to society in challenging times, and to celebrate all the ways in which artists bring their own special view to life.

We introduced the project „Jerusalem and Europe – Visions for a World of Tomorrow“, a collection of essays and short stories by writers and scholars from Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Europe, inspired by Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. Hanno Loewy, scolar, writer and director of the Jewish Museum in Hohenems, read his text “The Tale of the ‘Christian-Jewish Occident’”, which was part of this project. He also gave insights into an exhibition that has recently opened at the Jewish Museum Hohenems, titled “The Last Europeans” which.

Israeli bassoon player Nadav Cohen presented a premier broadcast of the piece “Four Character Pieces‘ for bassoon solo, by the Jerusalem-based composer Sergiu Shapira. A prominent contributor to the local contemporary music scene, Cohen is a founding member and producer of the Tel Aviv Wind Quintet, and a member of the award-winning Meitar Ensemble, in which he also serves as a faculty member of the „Tedarim“ program for contemporary music at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Cohen spoke to the audience about the challenging situation artists are facing during the Corona pandemic, and the many creative ways artists try to cope with it and reach out to their audience.

Following Cohen’s presentation, Johanna Lonsky, an Austrian cinema and theatre actress working for the BBC and ORF, read the text “Almost Staying” by Julya Rabinowich, which was also a part of the “Jerusalem and Europe – Visions for the World of Tomorrow” project, commissioned in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum Tel Aviv. Lonsky called for solidarity among fellow artists, in order to support each other and to always be aware that we are in this situation together.

We were delighted to welcome an international audience to this event, among them the journalist Pamela Hickman who wrote on her concert critique blog: „Viewing the Willy Brandt Center’s event, one was reassured that the creative spirit is not easily repressed!“

Between Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem – Critical Reflections and Decolonization

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On Saturday, October 17th, the Social Art Project hosted an online talk with Prof. Bashir Bashir, titled ‚Between Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem: Critical Reflections and Decolonization’. The talk was originally planned to be presented at the Willy Brandt Center as part of the Jerusalem Open Forum, which was intended to focus this year on the topic of “Jerusalem and Europe”. Due to the Covid-19 regulations, the event was held online.

In his talk, Prof. Bashir argued that the Western interest in Jerusalem, which is often articulated in religious terms, tends to conceal colonial and orientalist relations that prioritize the city and its biblical sites over its Arab population, and to ignore the fact that the “Palestinian Question” of is also a European question. The talk concluded that the way forward, for Jerusalem and Israel/Palestine at large, ought to be premised on decolonization.

Prof. Bashir Bashir is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Political Science, and Communication at the Open University of Israel, and a senior research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He teaches political theory, and his research interests include democratic theory, liberalism, citizenship and nationalism studies, deliberative democracy, historical injustice and reconciliation, memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba, decolonization, Palestinian nationalism and political thought, and alternatives to partition in Palestine/Israel. His most recent book was co-edited with Prof. Leila Farsakh, and titled The Arab and Jewish Questions (Columbia University Press, 2020).

 

Online Book Launch with Nadine Sayeg

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On 16 October 2020, Willy Brandt Center was proud to present the author Nadine Sayegh and her debut book Jaffa Oranges, which recounts her father’s life story from a perspective of 70 years later. The Willy Brandt Center had the opportunity to witness the development of the book over the past months, so it was a special moment to have the chance to present the writer and her work to our audience.

Jaffa Oranges is a family history, a novel against oblivion. The book presents the coming of age story of Nicolas Sayegh, a Palestinian Tom-Sawyer-type, who, together with his friends, roams the sun-drenched neighborhood streets of Jaffa in 1947 – an ancient Arab city, the commercial capital of Palestine at the time, fragrant with the smell of orange blossoms. Nicolas is always up to childhood adventures and mischief, exploring his parents’ magical orange groves, parading through his neighborhood like a cowboy on a donkey’s back, or sneaking out with his best friend Suhail to the local Alhambra cinema. The story poetically portrays the daily life of a well-to-do Christian Palestinian family and the people of Jaffa as a whole, giving insights into the local Palestinian culture that was prevalent at the time. However, Nicolas’ carefree days and boyhood ended abruptly in the spring of 1948, when the women of the neighborhood, warily observing the geopolitical events unfolding, convince the reluctant men to evacuate into safety with the families, as Jaffa surrenders to its new Jewish rulers.

In our book launch event, Nadine Sayegh presented excerpts from the book and presented historic pictures of the family’s villa in Jaffa as well as old family photographs. Fifty guests from Austria, Australia, France, Germany, UK, USA, Switzerland, Israel and Palestine joined the online event. In her introduction, Sayegh explained that she had always wanted to publish a book that tells the story of her father and the memories of his generation, because these stories and memories might vanish by the time new ones come up. Two years ago, after a visit to Jerusalem and Jaffa with her son and father, she finally realized her longtime wish to write the book in cooperation with Austrian author Thomas Köpf.

Her presentation was followed by many questions and comments of our international online guests. At the end, the author surprised and moved her audience by inviting the protagonist of the book, her father Nicolas Sayegh, as well as her son Benedict to join her in front of the camera.

In the following days we received messages thanking the author for bringing a whole age and community to life in such a vivid manner, which opened a window to the unknown Jaffa of the 1940’s, and for sharing her family’s fascinating and moving story as a contribution to understanding and peace.

The Willy Brandt Center will print a limited preview edition of the book in German and English, with a cover designed by Palestinian painter Jumana Emil Aboud.