Mosaica, Program for Developing Inter-Religious Educational ...

In 2004, Mosaica's Center for Inter-Religious Cooperation established a new program for developing inter-religious educational leadership in Jerusalem, with the support of the Rothschild Caesarea Foundation.

The main purpose of the program was to create a generation of Jewish and Muslim educational leaders, all committed to their religious identities, that would work together to expose school faculties and students to narratives from both sides of the religious divide, along with increasing mutual familiarity, understanding, and communication within schools and communities.
 

The goal of the program was derived from the "Alexandria Declaration" which called to create a positive climate for inter-religious discourse through education on an ongoing and continuous basis, in light of the great divide between Jews in Western Jerusalem and Muslims in Eastern Jerusalem, in all walks of life, including economy, society, welfare, culture, and education. 
 

As education is the primary arena in which religious, cultural, and social conceptions are forged, the Mosaica Center has chosen to train educational professionals to work as agents of change at schools, by exposing students to the culture, values, and historic narratives of the "other side". The program aims to provide the knowledge and tools necessary for a mutual understanding of cultural and religious backgrounds, based on the multi-dimensional model developed by the center, and for coping with negative brainwashing and education towards hatred.

The Jerusalem Program for inter-religious educational leadership is an unprecedented framework offering an opportunity for an ongoing structured discourse between the national-religious Jewish public and the Muslim public in Jerusalem, and creating encounters between principals and schoolteachers from both areas of the city – an extraordinary activity in itself.