Looking for a sacred connection in Jerusalem summer season
The annual ‘Mekudeshet’ celebration of the city’s people and their diversity, through music and ceremonies, walks and talks
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
It’s nearly Mekudeshet season, the celebration of the city of Jerusalem over three weeks in August and September, with concerts at dawn and unusual tours around town, revealing Jerusalem’s hidden and unique corners.
This year, the festival is looking at the city from its rooftops, showing off its views with art installations and alternative theater performances, with spots for listening to DJs playing nighttime sounds and the opportunity to try some urban ceremonies.
There will be journeys on foot or minibus, crossing the city’s east and west boundaries as well as religious and secular divides, and Palestinian and Israeli neighborhoods. Visitors will be heading toward off-the-beaten paths of religious shrines and archaeological digs, checking out Zionist monuments as well as meeting extraordinary Jerusalemites.
There’s the Sacred Music Festival as well, a festival within a festival, from September 7-15 at the Tower of David, hosting local and international musicians for a series of outdoor concerts. There’s Andalusian music and Jamaican reggae, singers Ester Rada and Yael Deckelbaum with her Prayer of the Mothers Ensemble, as well as Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, Eviatar Banai at sunset, and others.
“The things we do can only happen in Jerusalem,” said Itay Mautner, who has headed Mekudeshet since its inception as the Jerusalem Season of Culture. “It’s city specific. Jerusalem charges our work in a way that wouldn’t happen elsewhere.”
“It’s amazing how much we don’t know about Jerusalem,” Mautner added. “This year’s tours were all new for us, and that’s the thing about Jerusalem. There are communities within communities. You get used to your own community, but when you open it to others, you see a world unto itself.”
It’s a bittersweet season for Mautner, who will be leaving Mekudeshet after nine years of working on the project.
Mautner grew up in Jerusalem, but has been living for years in Tel Aviv. It was Karen Brunwasser, his deputy at Mekudeshet, and an adopted Jerusalemite who hails originally from Philadelphia, who initially hired Mautner to work as a consultant on the Jerusalem Season.
“I love culture and Jerusalem,” he said. “All these people said you can’t do culture in Jerusalem, and I said, ‘Of course you can, that’s exactly the point.’”
At first, it was just Mautner and Brunwasser producing the first year of the Season, a cultural project founded and still funded by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation. The pair worked on figuring out what is culture in Jerusalem, and how it differed from culture in Tel Aviv, Ra’anana or Haifa.
It was those first years of the Season that brought Contact Point to the Israel Museum, an all-night party that became a standard part of their summer season for several years, and other favorites like the food truck staffed by local celebrity chef Assaf Granit.
There were also standout performances, like The Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart at the Hebrew University amphitheater, or Matisyahu at the Tower of David Museum.
There have also been quieter, more pensive methods developed by Mekudeshet for seeing Jerusalem, including those meandering tours through lesser-known parts of the city that include meeting Jerusalemites of all stripes, while drinking cups of tea at a quiet corner of a public park.
“We think about the image of Jerusalem that’s out there in the world, it’s very black and white,” said Mautner. “And this city is just so complicated, and so much happens despite the terror and hate, there is a liberalism that comes out of there. The last thing you think of is Jerusalem as a capital of tolerance, people think it’s just the ultra-Orthodox and [the Arab neighborhood] of Jabel Mukaber. But beneath it all is this stream of people working together.”
The festival aims for audiences to set aside their arguments and positions in favor of changing perspectives through art, identity and sacred concepts. It’s a particularly complicated challenge this year, as the city and its residents grappled with how to mark 50 years since the Six Day War.
Mautner said he looks back on the past nine years and sees the path that Mekudeshet has taken, for both the planners and participants.
He believes that working with Jerusalem, in a project that is all about the city, has made him a better person. There’s something in the DNA of the city, because of the many opinions and ideas that are diametrically opposed.
“If you’re open to it, you can get more out of it. It’s not about spirituality and religiosity. It’s about the people,” he said.
He is also already anticipating what it will be like not to have his own daily dose of Jerusalem.
“I live in Tel Aviv, and it’s easier there, because I don’t have to confront anything,” he said. “Everyone around me dresses like me, votes like me, reads what I read. It’s like an echo chamber. But Jerusalem is like real life.”
Mekudeshet events begin on August 23 and run through September 15. Details and tickets to events are available on the Mekudeshet website.
