– The Jerusalem Fund Blog
Browse by category
Shubbak (meaning “window” in Arabic) is about to open in London – July 11 – 25, 2015. The city’s largest biennial festival of Arab culture was founded in 2011 by the Mayor of London. The 2013 event presented more than 55 events across 42 venues, attracting an audience of more than 50,000 people. Egypt will be … Read more
By Zeina Azzam
On Friday, 19 June, Executive Director Zeina Azzam and Gallery Al-Quds Curator Dagmar Painter organized a three-hour session with ten high school students from Gaza who had spent the academic year in the United States. They were participating in the State Department-funded Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program, living with host families in different cities throughout the U.S. and studying in local high schools.
Acclaimed Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan and the Dal`ouna Ensemble performed at Busboys and Poets during their July tour of the DC metro area. Bringing together musicians from the Arab world and the West, their music crosses many boundaries by promoting diverse intercultural exchange through fusion of Palestinian folk music, world and classical music, and jazz.
Elliott Colla, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, gave a lecture on 25 June 2015 at the Palestine Center entitled “The Poetry of Dissent.” Colla discussed the use of poetry in Egypt’s 2011 revolution and subsequent political unrest, as well as the strands of protest politics in the country.
By Palestine Center
On Friday, 5 June, Amer Zahr, Mike Easmeil, Mona Aburimshan, and Said Durrah made history at the Kennedy Center. Sponsored by The Jerusalem Fund, Zahr and his fellow comedians were the first Palestinian American comedians to perform at the world-renowned performing arts center. Zahr’s routine, entitled “Being Palestinian Makes Me Smile,” quickly sold out and attracted a crowd of Arabs and non-Arabs alike. Using anecdotes from both their childhood and adult lives, Zahr and company turned the pain and struggle of the Palestinian narrative into relatable accounts of hilarity.
The Roof presents a portrait of Aljafari’s family in Ramleh and Jaffa, “guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined. The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafari’s family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project.”
By Palestine Center Interns
This Friday, 5 June, Amer Zahr will be the first Palestinian-American comedian to perform at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Zahr stopped by The Palestine Center this past Wednesday and gave a talk entitled “Comedy and Palestine.” He discussed his experiences as a Palestinian American comedian. Although it was not a comedy routine, Zahr’s talk certainly elicited quite a few laughs from the audience.
Balconies is an experimental meditation focusing on the deteriorating and unfinished balconies of Kamal Aljafari’s home town Ramleh, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca’s Romance Sonambulo, ‘But now I am not I, nor is my house now my house…’”
Leaving the Catholic orphanage in Jerusalem where she was raised, eighteen-year-old Badia arrives at the home of her spinster aunts in Ramallah. Crossing the threshold, she finds a house, and three lives, frozen in time. The sisters are the last remnants of the bourgeois Christian minority that stayed on in the city after the war.
Through educational events, humanitarian support, and cultural preservation, the Jerusalem Fund is helping build the movement for Palestinian liberation.
Connect
The Jerusalem Fund
2425 Virginia Ave NW
Washington, DC 20037
(202) 338-1958
