By GIL HOFFMAN

Twenty-one of Israel’s future Jewish, Arab, Druse and Beduin leaders 
will come to Pittsburgh on May 16 to take part in five days of 
leadership training workshops at Carnegie Mellon University and to 
speak to the Pittsburgh Jewish community.

The Israelis are fellows in the first year of GaliLead, a 
revolutionary new program intended to foster a new generation of Arab 
and Jewish leaders in the Galilee who would promote mutual 
understanding and respect. The brainchild of the late Karen Shapira, 
the project is cosponsored by CMU and the United Jewish Federation of 
Pittsburgh.

Sixty Pittsburghers who came to Israel on the UJF spring community 
mission visited GaliLead, learned about the project and met the 
fellows. Many mission participants volunteered to host the fellows in 
their homes when they come to Pittsburgh.

The fellows, aged 25-45, include 10 Jews and the rest are Muslims and 
Christians. They will visit synagogues throughout Pittsburgh and talk 
about how the program can promote social change and coexistence in the 
Galilee.

GaliLead’s chairwoman, Dr Chaya Sarid, said that Shapira envisioned 
the program after the October 2000 violence in northern Israel broke 
the trust between the Arabs and Jews living there. She said the 
GaliLead model of taking a dialogue and action-based approach could be 
replicated in other areas where Jews and Arabs live in close 
proximity, such as the Negev and Jerusalem.

“The program is small but it’s getting a lot of attention,” UJF 
President Jeffrey Finkelstein said. “We should be excited that 
Pittsburgh is involved in this. And having CMU involved brings 
credibility and professionalism to the program.”

CMU’s professors will offer the fellows their expertise to on 
leadership and will advise them on their proposals for their 
leadership project that they will develop in the second year of the 
program. CMU developed the curriculum for the program, which was 
launched at a conference on the campus.

The first year of the program is devoted to the fellows’ hearing each 
other’s stories and learning what it means to be a leader via 
leadership training activities that include everything from making 
Beduin coffee to milking a cow while knee-deep in manure.

In the second year, the fellows will do the projects in an effort to 
realize the vision of leadership that they were taught and use it to 
improve society in northern Israel. Meanwhile the second class will 
begin what will be an ongoing two-year program.

“This program is part of strengthening and rebuilding the North,” 
Finkelstein said. “A lot of people want more Jews to move to northern 
Israel, but we also have to recognize the reality of the sizeable Arab 
population there and find a way to live together peacefully. While we 
repair and prepare for bomb shelters in case there’s another war, this 
is another way of strengthening the North.”

The joint-Jewish Arab projects the fellows will work on include 
developing an after school program, an art center, a human resources 
agency and a cultural, social and employment website. In each project, 
a Jew and a non-Jew will work together.

Effi Fadida, a Jewish graphic designer and college teacher who lives 
in Misgav will work on the website with an Arab named Iman. Fadida 
told the mission that she joined the program because it inspires 
people to go into the community and improve it.

“There are lots of Arab-Jewish dialogue programs that talk, which is 
ok, but there’s no call to action,” Fadida said. “Here they said we 
could be leaders and they gave us the tools. The call for action is 
very important to me.”

Muhamed Sawaid, a fellow from the Beduin community of Kewara, told the 
mission that he believes in coexistence between Arab and Jews and that 
he always looks for educational frameworks that encourage togetherness.

Miri Mordechai, a fellow from the Israeli agricultural town of Yesod 
Hamala, will work on the after school program with Diana, a fellow 
from the Arab town of Rama. Diana writes children’s books and she is 
studying for her master’s degree.

“We lived together but I never had Jewish friends and now I have a 
lot,” Diana said.

Mordechai runs groups of religious and non-religious Jewish women who 
study together. She said she joined GaliLead, because she was curious 
about her neighbors and she wondered what it would be like to learn 
together with them.

“I decided that living side-by-side with no communication makes it 
hard to achieve a better life,” Mordechai said. “We learn how to 
listen to each other and speak to each other without judging one 
another. We talk to each other about our dreams and hopes. It makes us 
respect each other.”

Finkelstein said the lesson of the program is that the way you make a 
difference in a community is with leadership. He said he was sad that 
Shapira will not get to see the success of the program.

“She was looking over my shoulder this past year making sure the 
program got going,” Finkelstein said.

Sarid called Shapira the visionary behind GaliLead and said that 
without her it would never have gotten started. She predicted that the 
program would make an immediate impact on social change in education, 
health and the environment in Israel.

“Our project is unique,” Sarid said. “There has been a lot of forward 
momentum and it makes us very happy. We have received a lot of warmth 
from the people from Pittsburgh who have come to visit us and we are 
looking forward to going to Pittsburgh and seeing them there.”