There was an article published recently about the city in which I live. It referred to Ramat Eshkol, a mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood in Lod, as the sanest place in Israel right now. To anyone who knows anything about Lod, this may seem nonsensical, or even satirical. Lod is one of the few cities in the country where Jews and Arabs live together in the same neighborhoods. Its ethnic composition mirrors almost exactly that of Israel—approximately 70% Jewish, 30% Arab — but still, much of the ethnic violence that permeates through the rest of the country evades Lod.
This evasion is made yet more improbable by the realities of Lod’s economic situation. The city recently emerged from decades of corruption and mismanagement by the city government. Twelve years ago, an emergency manager was appointed to balance the budget. This position was only replaced two years ago by a democratically elected mayor. Lod still faces terrible poverty and crime, specifically drug-related crime, and although it is geographically located in the center of Israel it remains one of those communities perpetually referred to as Israel’s “periphery;” in other words, the political, economic, and social outsiders of Israeli society.
This second installment of my coexistence project is about an organization called ReLod that is on a mission to make a different. ReLod was started by man named Yuval, who moved to Lod to make a difference. He built ReLod as a student volunteer group, and now the organization offers scholarships (funded partially by the Detroit Jewish Federation!!) for Israeli university students to live and serve in Lod. Students come from all backgrounds and walks of life—Jewish, Arab, Ethiopian, northerners, southerners, natives of Lod—and come together not only for volunteer projects, but for holidays, shared meals, and social life. These are the individuals that inspire my work, and this post is about them.
As Yuval puts it, the biggest challenge of Israel today is not external, but internal. Ties continue to degrade between those with power and those without—those on the inside and those on the so-called “periphery.” Such divisions include: geography—cities like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva are centers of power and privilege; religiosity— ultra-Orthodox Jews retain tremendous political priority; and of course, ethnicity— as a Jewish state, Israel is obliged to defer to the interests of its Jewish majority. As power becomes concentrated around these hubs, those on the periphery are forgotten. This is dangerous, as it allows injustice, prejudice, and resentment to fester and eventually feeds violent conflict.
So, four years ago, Yuval set out to change that. He left a stable job in Tel Aviv and moved to Lod, hoping to attract passionate young people to the periphery. Their mission would not only be to serve, but to build relations between the center and the outside, and maybe even blur these distinctions altogether. As Yuval puts it, Lod contains every duality we face in the state of Israel: geographic, economic, ethnic, religious. Our mission now is to leverage this diversity for social justice and equality.
As I said to Yuval during our conversation, it is not intuitive that this would work. Bringing young people to serve three years in a struggling city is hard enough; the fact that Lod is a mixed city puts social change almost beyond reach. Many Jewish students who come to Lod have had few, if any, meaningful interactions with an Arab Israeli in their lives, and vice versa. Now, they are expected to live work alongside each other. But, as Yuval explained, the power of a common goal outweighs prejudice. Right now, young people all over the world (so-called “Millennials”) are looking to do work that makes an impact on the world. ReLod offers them an opportunity to build this identity with others in a community of people that feel the same way. They unite along these lines, and things like religion and ethnicity and race become a little less important - a little less divisive. ReLod works because, in doing things that contribute meaningfully to the world, they diminish the importance of things that don’t, i.e. hate, prejudice, violence, and fear.
ReLod is already making a difference. Not only with the projects they do, although these are impactful. For example, two friends of mine work at a dog shelter with at-risk youth, and another collaborates with my program to run an English club for high schoolers. One student is even our program advisor! They also bring a new social and cultural vitality to a city that has endured decades without much of either. ReLod recently held a social action film festival, hosted a night market in the Old City (pictured above!), and is in the process of opening the city’s first real bar (this time, not out of a dorm room). Their presence breaks up the status quo in a city that has become numb to hardship. They expect more of the municipality because they have not yet been conditioned to ignore the potholes in the street, or the empty shop windows around the corner. They are here not only to give to the community, but demand that it improves.
And this was exactly the answer when, at the end of our conversation, I asked Yuval what he would like the world to know about ReLod. He expressed a belief that there are young people that still believe in Lod, and in Israel. They believe that Israel is a place where people can—and should—live together to make this the most moral, just, and inclusive country in the world. And, like true Israelis, they will not take defeat lying down. They will demand the best of their country, and expect that of themselves as well. Lod is already miraculous proof that coexistence can happen, even in the midst of dire straits. Why not in cities that are already thriving? We must keep asking that question. And beyond that, we must keep working towards the answer.
If you would like to learn more about reLod (and speak a bit of Hebrew), visit their...
website: http://www.relod.org.il
or facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/lodstudents
stay tuned for the next installment in my coexistence project: a profile of Linoy, my Yahel advisor and close friend who is also a ReLod participant!