Social activist and Israeli Black Pantheress Ayala Sabag was born in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, in the same house where the Israeli Black Panthers got their start. (Ayala's late brother, Sa’adia Martziano, was one of the movement's founders). Sabag continues to fight on the frontlines of the Mizrahi struggle, recently reviving the Israeli Black Panther movement, placing it once again on Israel's political radar. Sabag also fights for social equality for women and worked with Eli Yishai to defeat the Wisconsin Plan. Last year, as part of her work with the homeless, she helped to house 30 families. Because of her activism, Sabag has found it hard to find employment, but she remains committed to the cause, which has become an inseparable part of her life.

Was the Black Panthers a name you chose for yourself, or was it a name that came from the outside which you then adopted as your own? What considerations went into accepting the name, and what are some of the good and bad aspects of having aligned yourselves with the militant African American struggle? Sa'adia Martziano chose the name Black Panthers. In 1971, Angela Davis, one of the American Black Panthers, came to visit Israel where she met up with my brother, who then adopted the name. The inspiration behind the American Black Panthers was Kunta Kinte – they didn't want to be slaves any more, and they had to use violence because no one was listening to them. They were fighting for their lives. They had no choice. But it was a bad scene [in the United States] in the 1970s. It was a bad scene here too. Mizrahi immigrants were separated from their families, and they weren't sent to ulpan. These are people who kissed the ground when they came to Israel, only to be abused by the government. Is this how we reward Zionists?

The movement has changed since the 1970s though. We are not violent anymore. The time has come to move beyond violence. We need to talk face to face. We do sometimes encounter problems because of our name, but we are no longer violent. We use Torah, we use respect. When the Israeli Black Panthers first began, most of the movement's members were male. Now I'm in charge of the Israeli Black Panthers, and I am fighting for women's place in the movement. Respectful treatment is not a privilege. It's a right.

What are some of your personal memories of clashes with the police from the spring of 1971? We clashed with the police from 1971 through 1973. But I remember violence even before that. I remember violence directed at my parents; my brothers were constantly being stopped by the police. When the Black Panther movement began, we would just show up at a protest and already the police would be upon us. Even Golda Meir said "The Black Panthers are not nice people." She said this before we even did anything.

When the Panthers entered the arena, immigrants from Arab lands were unfairly perceived by the Ashekenazi establishment as brutish and unruly. Would you say that you basically fought fire with fire, and did it work? There is some truth to this claim. They said we're a certain way and we turned this perception on its head. But on the other hand, the establishment used violence and force against us, and we responded in kind. I think our strategy worked. The Panther movement helped begin the process of.... (click here for the full interview).

Eetta Prince-Gibson, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report first showed up in Israel as a fresh-faced high school graduate some 30 years ago. After serving in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, Prince-Gibson made her home in Jerusalem, leaving only to pursue a Master's Degree in Social Work at Yeshiva University. A married mother of two, Prince-Gibson also holds a BSW from and is currently working on a PhD in Political Psychology at Hebrew University. She lives in Jerusalem's Abu Tor neighborhood.

Without getting into politics and various nationalist agendas too much, what do you see as the big issues facing the cultural future of Jerusalem? How can we keep the young people from moving away? How can we ensure that the city maintains at least a minimal critical mass of vibrant and creative movers and shakers? The first thing we need to do is recognize Jerusalem's diversity as an advantage, as something we celebrate and not something we fight against. This means educating our children from the beginning, from kindergarten, to appreciate this diversity. I used to take my own children shopping for the four species before Succot and to kasher our dishes for Pesach in Mea Shearim so that they had an opportunity to enjoy different parts of the city.

I don't know if this is realistic in the sense that we are in a battle as to how we want the future of the city to look. On the other hand, the reason people are leaving is not so much because of the Charedim. It's because of housing and because of jobs. But even people that don't leave feel a down factor. They aren't pleased, they aren't enjoying the city's diversity. We need to listen to what people are saying, to the reasons they are listing on surveys as to why they are leaving. We need to provide jobs, schools, reasonable housing, and we need to invest in getting people to love the city. Jerusalem is depressed, and I think that's probably our biggest problem right now (apart from our problems with the Palestinians). There's a sense that we are living in a backwater here and things are only going to get worse. People feel that they can tolerate it now, but they don't hold out much hope for the future. As a mother of teenage children who may not choose to live here when they grow up, it's depressing, and it's something we need to battle.

Both The Jerusalem Post and The Jerusalem Report have brand names with the word Jerusalem as an identifying element, but when it comes to how that word defines the jurisdiction of both publications, it's more of a symbol of all of Israel and all of the Jewish world than a specific city. You, on the other hand, came to this position following a stint as the editor of the Post's local In Jerusalem section. How does the tension between local and more cosmopolitan issues inform your work, and do you feel that it's possible to keep a global audience interested with content only focused on Jerusalem-specific cultural matters? At the same time that I am editor of The Jerusalem Report, I am also a resident of the city. As a Jerusalem resident, I think we suffer from a deficit of democracy here precisely because Jerusalem often becomes a symbol that everyone uses in terms of the conflict in Israel. People forget that we are also a functioning city that needs to deal with the prosaic needs any city faces; garbage removal, proper planning, etc. Everyone is so busy talking about Jerusalem as a symbol that they forget that it's also a real city with real people and real.... (click here for the full interview).

Descended from a long line of Christian pastors on his father's side and rabbis on his mother's (the two met while hitchhiking to a hippie commune in California), peacemaker Eliyahu McLean has been dedicated to interfaith work since he was a college student at UC Berkeley. Co-founder and Co-director of the Jerusalem Peacemakers, Eliyahu is also the interfaith coordinator at the annual Sulha gathering, coming up this week at the Latrun Monastery.

Please tell us a bit about your background and the various initiatives with which you are involved. I grew up in Hawaii, where I was involved with Young Judea, which brought me to Israel for the first time when I was 15. When I returned at 18 for Year Course, I met Rabbi Shlomo Carleabach and was influenced by his teachings. From there, I went to UC Berkeley, where I became a pro-Israel activist on campus. That got me interested in bridge-building work, and I began studying Middle Eastern Studies. I was back in Israel again for my junior year, though my program was canceled due to the Gulf War. Instead, I got involved with the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace – I traveled to Bethlehem that year and Egypt, where I studied Islam and Sufism. When I returned to Berkeley, I began leading interfaith projects but I was really drawn to doing that sort of work here in Israel.

In 2000, I helped found the Jerusalem Peacemakers, a network of independent interfaith peacemakers, and I'm the interfaith coordinator of the Sulha Peace Project [a grassroots peace initiative]. Our annual gathering is taking place this year August 26th-28th at the Latrun Monastery. I help secure permits for part of our Palestinian delegation – we ask for 700 permits, and I'm in charge of 150 of them. I'm also in charge of making sure the kitchen is kosher, the Beit Tefillah prayer space, and interfaith panels about reconciliation, ecology, conflict resolution and the concept of sulha (mediation) in religious traditions.

In the case of The Big Hug and some of the other projects you're involved with, the message seems to be less about specific issues or solutions and more about just getting together to spread loving vibes. How much of a difference can loving vibes make? These projects are about more than just loving vibes: They're about rebuilding trust. Last year, before the Big Hug, a Palestinian taxi driver was murdered by a French Jew and there was a lot of tension around the area of the Damascus Gate and only when the mother of the murderer called up the father of the victim, and went to meet with him, did it calm down the anger and the tension and we were able to hold that event, because trust had been rebuilt. There were about 2,000 people involved in that event - soldiers, settlers, Palestinians - all coming together, and the idea of it was not just positive, good vibes but specifically about finding a new way that we can all respect and honor Jerusalem, about showing our shared love for Jerusalem. I think on a small scale we succeeded, and we want to make it a more long-term type of thing.

Do you see Jerusalem primarily as a hotbed of conflict or as a model of coexistence? It has the potential to be either. If you look at the word Yerushalayim (Jerusalem in Hebrew), it breaks down into the Hebrew words yeru, you will see, and shalayim, shalom, peace. The double form of the word peace implies that there are two Jerusalems, a heavenly Jerusalem, and an earthly Jerusalem. In the earthly Jerusalem there definitely are big problems. All you need to do is open the paper on any given day and you'll see a long list of them, rampaging bulldozer drivers, housing demolitions, problems with trash and litter removal. In the heavenly Jerusalem, we have mashiach (the messiah) and peace. Right now there's a huge gap.... (click here for the full interview).

After watching too many friends pack their bags and slink off for the shimmering promise of Tel Aviv or other, more foreign, ports, Shahar Fisher decided that the time had come to do something. A fourth generation Jerusalemite and a philosophy major at the Open University, Fisher helped form Hitorerut B'yerushalayim (Wake Up Jerusalem), a political movement designed to fight for Jerusalem's future, and to keep the future in Jerusalem. When he's not busy tending to his cause through planning stunts and maintaining its website's content, Fisher works for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

Your organization is concerned with keeping Jerusalem's youth in the city Where does your passion come from, and what made you decide to stay? I think all Jerusalemites are very patriotic about their city. This passion is not mine alone. Wake Up Jerusalem started with a group of seven, and as we began to hold events and our work got publicized in the media, our organization grew, and we now we have 70 people working for us (on a volunteer basis) and 500 more who are interested. There are 5,000 people on our mailing list. This is in only two months of operation. The situation in Jerusalem - housing, jobs, culture, education - is causing the youth to leave, and no one is giving them a good enough answer to their needs. If there are no young people in Jerusalem, there is no future in Jerusalem, so a group of us decided to do something, to start a movement.

One of the factors affecting youth flight is Jerusalem's soaring housing prices, a large part of which can be attributed to foreign absentee investors. I know that London has a "ghost apartment" tax which is being batted around as a model for Jerusalem. How can Jerusalem strike a balance between measures like these and the important influx of foreign cash? I don't think anyone wants to see Jerusalem closed off to outsiders. Jerusalem is a universal city, a city for everyone - even if you're living out in Wisconsin, Jerusalem is still your city. On the other hand, the problem of "ghost apartments" is really serious. The only apartments being built here these days are luxury apartments, and it's driving prices up to ridiculous highs. We don’t want to kick the foreign owners out; we just want to create solutions where the apartments won't be empty.

There are a number of possible solutions. We can promote the rental of empty apartments to students who will live there and be responsible for the apartment's maintenance. The London tax would help do this by giving owners an incentive not to leave their apartments empty. The municipality can also help by creating affordable housing. In every new complex built, a number of apartments should be earmarked for young couples or other Jerusalemites who can't afford the soaring foreign prices. These are solutions that cities.... (click here for the full interview).

John Cusack may have raised the profile of puppeteers the world over with his groundbreaking role in 1999's Being John Malkovitch (the real Malkovtich was here this summer, as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival), but Jerusalem was way ahead of that trend. The International Festival of Puppet Theater began 17 years ago and has been uniting puppeteers and their devotees every year since.

The Train Theater, which is sponsoring the festival, is Jerusalem's puppet headquarters, sponsoring shows on Saturday mornings and Monday afternoons throughout the year, and arranging for puppeteering tours throughout the country. But every art form needs its gathering, and Jerusalem's International Festival of Puppet Theater rounds them up from across the world and brings them here for four days of strings, song and theater. "These festivals are our way of ensuring cross-fertilization and our way of sharing our experiences with others in the field. It's like scientists going to a conference and meeting other scientists," says Patricia O'Donovan, a former scientist and current puppeteer who has lived in Jerusalem since the late 1970s, when she moved here from Argentina. "And it's a chance for audiences to see puppetry from around the world."

This year, in addition to the 90 performances (of 27 distinct productions), the festival is featuring a public works project in Yemin Moshe dedicated to Israel's 60th (will the celebrations never stop?). While some of the puppet shows, particularly the European ones (of course), are as likely to attract adults as children, the Yemin Moshe affair is clearly for the kids. Tours of the neighborhood will be mixed with puppet shows and workshops. O'Donovan will be one of the stops on the tour, where she will be debuting her shadow play, Sfat Em (Mother Tongue), a story based on an ancient Acadian lullaby. (She also has a show about Louis Braille, A Touch of Light, playing at the Train Theater on Wednesday).

"Puppetry is an artistic medium that for thousands and thousands of years was not for children. It only recently came to be considered a children's art form, and even that is not universal," Patricia says, "In Europe, it’s still considered an art for adults and at the festival, you can see a lot of shows that are more appropriate for adults than for children. In Israel, in order to make a living, you need to cater shows to children, but in many other places in the world, it’s still for adults."

While a large section of those performing in the festival will be Israeli puppeteers, Patricia is most excited for the foreign shows: "I know most of my colleagues in Israel's shows, so while I am excited to see their work, I'm also excited to see something new."

Photo of A Touch of Light (top) courtesy of the Train Theater; photo of Mother Tongue courtesy of Patricia O'Donovan.

Originally from London, Jacqueline Rose made aliyah ten years ago after receiving a Master's Degree in Environmental Studies from London University. Initially a volunteer with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), Jacqueline went on to a storied career in the environmental field, including stints with the Judaism and Environment Think Tank at Machon Lev and the Ministry of Environment, before returning to SPNI as the Green Map Coordinator.

What is the story behind the Green Map? How did it come to be and how did it come to Jerusalem? The Green Map is an international concept. It began in New York - the current Green Map headquarters - around 1995 and has since expanded so that today there are nearly 450 officially recognized Green Maps throughout the world. The Green Map is an attempt to map all social, environmental and cultural sites that cannot be found on a regular tourist map.

The Jerusalem Green Map began in about 2002, after SPNI heard about the Toronto Green Map and thought the concept would work well in Israel. We began collecting data in 2003 and launched the website in 2006. The Jerusalem Green Map is the first Green Map in Israel. In fact, it’s the first Green Map in the entire Middle East. There are currently plans to create Green Maps for Rishon LeTzion and Tel Aviv, but right now we are still the only Israeli Green Map.

Who is the Green Map aimed at? What is it trying to do? The Green Map is for both residents and tourists, for people who want to learn how to enjoy the city in an environmentally friendly way and for people who come to the city often and are looking to do something a little different. There are sites on the Green Map that you won't find elsewhere. For example, the Green Map lists bicycle routes in city, cultural fairs and community gardens. We're trying to emphasize local activities that people might not be aware of. There are over 850 different sites listed on the map – and because it's an internet map, it's very dynamic and is constantly being updated by numerous volunteers. If somebody notices that a site has closed down or a new one has opened up, we can update the map without having to wait for the next printing.

This interview is being published on Tisha B'Av, a time when the Jewish people remember the past destructions of our ancient Jerusalem-based regimes. What are your thoughts about Jerusalem's sustainable and viable long-term growth in this context? I think that it's important to note, especially on Tisha B'Av, the connection between Judaism and environment, and that the historical or ancient Jewish texts that many people think are highly irrelevant in today's modern world actually hold a wealth of knowledge - information, principles, and ethics - that relate to the environment today. At this time of year, when we take the time to remember events that.... (click here for the full interview).

Israeli humor is hot these days, and Matthew Kalman, co-director (with David Blumenfeld) of Circumcise Me, a comic documentary starring Yisrael Campbell, is at the forefront of this trend. The film, which traces the life of Campbell, a Catholic boy turned Jewish comedian, is currently doing the film festival circuit, and in the near future, the directors hope to hold weekly showings at Jerusalem's Lev Smadar Cinema, which hosted the film's Israeli premier on July 3.

Can I get a brief genesis on the history of this movie ands how you got involved? I'm a reporter, and David [Blumenfeld] is a photographer, and we've been working together here in Israel for the last 10 years. A few years ago, we started doing a lot of documentary work. It was all about suicide bombers, the intifada, guys with masks, and it got grueling after a while. One day, we'd just finished interviewing a 16-year-old who wanted to blow himself up but was caught at a checkpoint before he made it to his destination. We went to interview him in jail, and on the way back, David said to me, "We've got to do something fun, something for ourselves." That night, I went to the opening of the Off the Wall Comedy Empire. I heard Yisrael Campbell perform his act, and I said to myself, "We've got our subject."

How did your past experiences in journalism influence this project? How did you find the transition from print journalist to documentary filmmaker? The thing about print journalism is that you have very little control over what actually appears in print. You don't choose the headline; you don't make the final editing decisions. There are many times where I'll focus on one thing and something else entirely will appear in the published version. Here, with this documentary, we have complete control over what actually appears on the screen. So it's much more creative. But it's also a much greater responsibility. When I write for a paper, I get up, do my work and then come home and turn on Seinfeld and it's no longer my responsibility. Here, David and I are completely responsible for how Yisrael is perceived by the world.

Yisrael Campbell's comedy is a major selling point, but his back story is also key to what you did with the movie. What kind of balance between profile and concert document were you trying to strike? This was a really easy film to make, because Yisrael is really funny, he's really talented, he already has a show, so all we really had to do was film him. What we wanted to do with this project is take his show, which has been performed to numerous audiences here in Israel, and make it accessible to people elsewhere, and not just to Jewish audiences but to a wide range of people. We had to explain the contexts in Campbell's show and take out the parts that had too much Hebrew (which meant removing some of the funniest parts of the show). We also wanted to tell as much as possible of Campbell's back-story using very elementary documentary techniques. For example, Yisrael's father only has a few lines but they are all about very transitional points in Yisrael's life and they help move the story along.

Finally, we want to show people who don't live here what this place is like, so we filmed Yisrael driving along the security wall and visiting the Hebrew University, so that people can visualize the places he refers to. At one point, you see him at the café where his friends were blown up. For me, that's the emotional.... (click here for the full interview).

Liat Margalit first began working at the Tower of David Museum 10 years ago, while still a student at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. She worked her way up through the ranks, and now, in addition to serving as the curator of the museum's new Fortress and Fantasy Exhibit, serves as the Museum's Assistant Curator, a job coveted by history buffs the world over. Jerusalemite spoke with her after the exhibit's grand opening on July 20.

What was the inspiration behind this exhibit? Who thought of it and how did it come to be? We always try to think of interesting new exhibits that are somehow connected to Jerusalem and its history. I've been here for many years and I realized that many of our visitors don't seem to realize that the museum is housed in a fortress. Or, if they do realize it, they don't pay attention to this aspect of it, but in truth, the Tower of David is not just a museum, but a fortress with its own story as well. So it seemed natural to create an exhibit that paid tribute to this aspect of the museum.

We also wanted to do something from the world of fantasy. Fortresses can be found in many fairy tales and adventure stories – it's a very evocative image. The new exhibit lets visitors walk through the Tower twice: once physically, noting the walls, the moat, the arrow slots in the walls, and one time in their minds, in their imaginations.

The Fortress and Fantasy exhibit provides them with the triggers – throughout the museum there are little stands that take the children into fantasy worlds where they can enter the world of the imagination. At one point, visitors come to what seems like a dead end, and just when they think they've reached the end, there is a hidden door which leads them into a fantasy world.... (click here for the full interview)

As Starbucks takes over America, and Hillel, Joe, Aroma and Arcaffe battle for control of Israel, small, independently owned cafés are becoming fewer and farther between. In Jerusalem, Gulindo, on Shammai St. 17, is bucking the trend, creating an intimate space with character. Jerusalemite recently spoke with founder and proprietor Reuven Wolaj, an Argentinean immigrant who runs Gulindo with his Israeli-born wife.

How did you come up with the name Gulindo? My wife, whom I work with, is called Geula, and I call her Gueli. She calls me Lindo, so when we decided to open the bistro, we combined our nicknames and came up with Gulindo.

What made you decide to open an independent café so close to the flagship branches of Aroma and Hillel? Basically, we're offering people an alternative. We're smaller and our goal is to create a personal connection with our customers. Here they are not just a number. We have regulars that come and sit at their own particular tables and I already know what they want to order before they even open their mouth. It's more intimate here. Some people prefer the anonymous vibe of chains, while others prefer our intimate atmosphere. Basically, each place speaks to different people.

Gulindo is a quiet café during the day and has a bar vibe at night. Was this the original intention, or something that just happened? Gulindo is billed as a Bistro Bar, and that's what happened. We're a bistro by day and a bar by night. We change our lighting, our music and even our food offerings at night. Our morning music is much more shanti (chilled out) than our night music, and our morning foods are breakfast foods, whereas we offer more bar-type foods at night.

Gulindo also doubles as a gallery. How do you decide what artists to feature? I have a friend from the Musrara School who serves as my curator. We change our exhibits each month. Last year we hosted music nights as well. We want to create a cultural vibe here and give a platform to Jerusalem's artists and musicians, to create a sense of community here for them.

Gulindo quickly became a favorite for locals as well as visitors to Jerusalem. What do you think it is about your cafe that makes it so popular? I'm glad to hear that it's popular. After three years of hard work, it's good to see that our efforts are being rewarded. I guess the café is popular because we're good to our customers. We don’t charge too much. We have discount cards that regulars get so that after a few meals here, they get a free meal or drink. We like to give here and not just take.

Most of Jerusalem's cafés have the same items on the menu. What stands out on yours? What can I get in Gulindo that I cannot get elsewhere? We have a lot of dishes here that aren't offered elsewhere. We use different mixes of cheeses than other places. We make everything ourselves here in the café, as opposed to some of these chain stores where they make a quiche in one place and then it's shipped to a whole chain of stores. All of our ingredients are really fresh. We have high standards for our food which we make new each day.

If you could change just one thing about Jerusalem, what would it be? I would like to influence the municipality to support new businesses and small businesses. They need to make it easier to open a business here. I had to fight very hard to open Gulindo, and if a city wants to grow, it shouldn’t be that way.

The Jerusalem International Film Festival is celebrating its 25th year under the auspices of a new general director, Ilan de-Vries, former deputy director under festival founder Lia Van Leer. Mr. de-Vries took time from his busy schedule to speak with Jerusalemite about the festival and Jerusalem's cultural scene.

Please give us some background on the festival. How did it begin and how has it developed since? The Festival began in 1982 as the brain-child of Lia Van Leer and Dina Eldor and backed by the Jerusalem Foundation, which was headed at that time by Teddy Kollek. The festival began with 50 films. It was very small. There were few guests and virtually no Israeli cinema, because there wasn't much Israeli cinema in general at that time. Since then, the Festival has grown each year, attracting more famous guests such as Jane Fonda, Roberto Benigni and Alan Arkin. In addition to films made in the past year or two, we began showing archive films as well and created a special category, "In the Spirit of Freedom," which features films dealing with issues of human rights, democracy and tolerance. There is a large prize, courtesy of the Nathan Cummings Foundation for this category.

This year we're celebrating our 25th anniversary. The festival has really grown in its 25 years. This year we have 100 films from over 30 countries, including films from some Arab countries including Jordan. We don't often get films from the Arab world because of the political situation.

How did you personally become involved in the Festival? When the Cinematheque opened in 1981, I served as Ms. Van Leer's deputy and was very involved with the Film Festival in its early years. After nine years at the Cinematheque I left to work at Channel 2 and then Mishkenot Sha'ananim before returning to the Film Festival this year.

Has your audience changed at all in the 25 years of festival operations? While the audience has changed to some degree, there is a core group of loyal viewers that come every year. These people continue to come from across the country because they see the best of cinema there and they like the festival's atmosphere. The Cinematheque currently has 7,000 members, and these members make up the core audience. Jerusalem of course has changed in the 25 years since the festival began. It no longer has the same demographic.... (click here for the full interview)