The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus is a choral and dialogue program for Israeli and Palestinian high school students in Jerusalem. Our mission is to provide a space for these young people from East and West Jerusalem to grow together in song and dialogue. Through the co-creation of music and the sharing of stories, the chorus seeks to empower youth of Jerusalem to become leaders in their communities and inspire singers and listeners around the world to work for peace.
The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus has been featured on the BBC, in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Haaretz, AlHurra, and many other news sources. We have recorded with multi-platinum Israeli artist and peace activist David Broza in Jerusalem and in London with Duran Duran. Our recent music video, “Home,” with YouTube superstar and Yale alumnus Sam Tsui, has amassed over 200,000 views. We have toured to Japan and the United Kingdom, and are delighted to be making our US debut at the Yale International Choral Festival.
The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus is unique in its combination of music and dialogue programming, providing a transformative experience for our singers that yields both friendship and understanding on an individual and collective level across lines of religion, nationality, language, and culture. We go beyond simply singing together, delving deeper into one another’s identities, life experiences, communal narratives, religious traditions, and national histories through dialogue, all within the safe space of the musical ensemble and the strong personal bonds and community it creates.
Musically, the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus seeks to reflect the values of equality and inclusiveness upon which we are based, truly making manifest the concept of beauty in diversity. As our members come often from vastly different musical traditions, we draw heavy influences from both East and West in our repertoire and musical style, blending Arabic mawwal (vocal improvisation) with classical harmonies, drawing out the Arabic rhythms in everything from pop songs to traditional carols, and blending lyrics in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and beyond in songs that come from all over the world. As such, we seek to innovate and challenge boundaries musically as we do in the non-musical elements of our program.
Micah Hendler, founder and director of the YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus, is a graduate of Yale College in music and international studies. A singer with the Whiffenpoofs and Duke’s Men during his time at Yale, he has founded, directed, sung with, or played with dozens of musical ensembles of varying global styles. Particularly, he studied choral conducting with Jeffrey Douma at Yale and community songleading with Ysaye Barnwell (formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock) in Washington, DC, focusing on using vocal music from many global traditions to empower people from all walks of life to join together in song, build community, and sing out for change.
In addition, Micah has spent years exploring the intersection between musical community-building and conflict transformation with Palestinian and Israeli youth, a journey that started at Seeds of Peace International Camp for Coexistence in Maine in 2004. Specifically, he has focused on how collective music-making can create community and foster shared identity, even across boundaries of conflict and inspire and empower youth musicians to make a change in their communities. His paper on the subject, “I am a Seed of Peace: Music and Israeli-Arab Peacemaking,” has been presented at several conferences and has been published, and provided the basis for his thesis on musical peacebuilding with youth in Jerusalem. The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus is the fruit of this work and research.
The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus is an official program of the Jerusalem International YMCA. One of the few places in a city divided along religious, cultural, political and linguistic lines that people of all walks of life can and do feel comfortable, the Jerusalem International YMCA was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 for its efforts in promoting peace, understanding, and the dignity of humankind. The Chorus also receives significant support from the Jerusalem Foundation.
The YMCA Jerusalem Youth Chorus is grateful to the Yale International Choral Festival and Yale Alumni Chorus Foundation for making it possible for us to participate in YICF 2015 and also spread our message of hope, understanding, equality, and peace to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC as well. For more information about the rest of our tour, check out our website: www.jerusalemyouthchorus.org.