KOLOT – Voices of Hope, Post-October 7 Series
The Jerusalem Youth Chorus: Voices of Peace in Times of War
By Micah Hendler
Dear Readers,
My name is Micah Hendler and I am the Founder and Artistic Director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus (JYC), a choral and dialogue program for Palestinian and Israeli youth in Jerusalem. Founded in 2012, and with nonprofit status in both Israel and the US, JYC’s mission is to provide a space for these young people from East and West Jerusalem to grow together in song and dialogue. Through the co-creation of music and the sharing of stories, we empower youth in Jerusalem with the responsibility to speak and sing their truths, as they become leaders in their communities and inspire singers and listeners around the world to work for peace, justice, inclusion, and equality.
We envision a Jerusalem—and a broader Israel-Palestine—defined not by hatred, division, and injustice, not by occupation, terror, and violence, but by acknowledgement of a shared connection to place, celebration of individual and collective belonging to that place, and systems that allow that belonging to be equally realized by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis alike. We reject attempts to pit Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, against one another in service of systemic violence that robs all of their agency to even imagine, let alone choose, a different way. Instead, as we create a home for all in the chorus, we seek to show what Jerusalem could be – and use our songs and stories, within a broad ecosystem of change, as a catalyst to bring that future about.
JYC’s high school program includes kids between the ages of 13 and 18 years old who meet weekly. These music and dialogue sessions are facilitated in Hebrew and Arabic by professional music and programming staff. We often refer to these weekly sessions as a “music and dialogue sandwich”: we begin with singing as a group, which is scientifically proven to release oxytocin, our trust hormone. The singers then meet for professionally structured and translated dialogue sessions, with opportunities to gather separately across Israeli and Palestinian identities and as a full group. The sessions close with songwriting, music workshops, and rehearsals.
Our recruitment efforts begin in August and consist of bilingual promotion of the program on our various social media platforms and in e-newsletters, and through partnerships with local schools and other peace-building organizations. Because many students often do not wish to graduate from JYC, we have expanded to include an alumni program for young adults through their 20s.
The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is unique in its combination of music and dialogue programming, providing a transformative experience for our singers that yields both friendship and understanding on an individual and collective level across lines of religion, nationality, language, and culture. We go beyond simply singing together, delving deeper through dialogue into one another’s identities, life experiences, communal narratives, religious traditions, and national histories, all within the safe space of the musical ensemble and the strong personal bonds and community it creates.
Our work has been even more crucial and challenging since this most recent war began over one year ago. After October 7, 2023, we thought JYC would have to cease operations, at least temporarily, and perhaps forever. How could we continue to ask that these young people continue to meet and discuss their experiences in a world that wants them to be enemies? How could we ask their families to keep sending their kids to rehearsal after they had lost friends and family members? After a unanimous vote from our singers as well as their parents, we decided to keep meeting every week without pause. We were told that JYC’s music and dialogue sessions were, for many, the only space where these youth felt completely safe to have the tough conversations, and that we provide a catharsis and action steps against the fear and violence of their daily lives.
JYC has received a lot of international attention in recent months, from auditioning for America’s Got Talent, to giving a talk and performance at the annual TED conference in Vancouver. One of the most common questions we hear is: “is this for real? There’s no way these kids from across dividing lines are actually friends.” But the true beauty of our work is that they really are. Many of JYC’s singers are tightly bonded and consider themselves to be as close as family. During a tour of the US in April 2024, our singers landed in Boston and turned on their phones to headlines of Iran carrying out direct strikes against targets in Israel. The next day, two friends, one Israeli and one Palestinian, shared this at a performance:
“We were never supposed to be friends. We were always told to hate the other side and that they wanted to harm us. Yesterday was not an easy day. We felt really unsafe and our families were unsafe. Even choosing to continue to sing was a hard decision. Last night, I called my parents and I was so worried about them that I started crying. Then [my friend] came to help me, and she didn’t leave my side until she saw that I was okay. I am so grateful for her, and I don’t know what I would do without her.”
And so we continue to sing, talk, and share our stories. We don’t all share the same opinions—and we have hard conversations about them every week—but we do share the same future, no matter what the politicians say. In JYC we have a rare chance to truly hear each other, and that’s what makes the chorus a home for all of us. Every kid deserves to grow up with that same safety and dignity. We know we don’t have the power to single-handedly stop war, but we also know that the reason war continues is because people think there is no alternative. We are the alternative.
View the Jerusalem Youth Chorus in action:
To learn more about the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, please visit our website, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and YouTube.
Micah Hendler is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus.
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