A Haredi woman who felt she had no voice, a transgender woman conflicted when choosing a side at the Western Wall, and a man seeking a way to grant his siblings the freedom of speech were among those who spoke at the second TedxJerusalem conference which took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Themed “Inside Out,” the seminar highlighted atypical features of Jerusalem in an effort to fragment its stereotypes.
“When you look at Jerusalem,” TedxJerusalem’s organizer Beto Maya explained to The Media Line, “it’s seen as the religious place or the place where people are fighting all the time, but at the end of the day when you look at the inside, you realize there is a lot of innovation, art and ideas that are coming out of the city.”
Through Tedx events, Maya is able to help spread these ideas not only among attendees, but also globally. This year’s day-long event hosted actors, dancers, inventors and activists who shared their motivational stories with over 800 audience members and upwards of 7,500 live online viewers.
Among those who spoke was Esty Shushan, the ultra-Orthodox woman spearheading the protest campaign “No voice no vote,” which aims to improve the rights of Haredi women. One day she and her friends were sitting at a coffee shop when one by one each started to complain about the way they were being treated.
“We have no right to complain if we’re not taking action,” Shushan confidently declared. “I heard these complaints and thought, ‘let’s do something about it.'”
Since demanding a stop to the silence in 2012, Shushan has been able to bring Haredi women’s rights to the forefront of conversation by reaching out to media outlets and holding monthly group discussions.
“Before it was just a strange, weird and unbearable idea,” she continued. “But now we’ve brought public awareness, and hopefully in the future we will promote even more change.”
Change was a powerful and reoccurring theme of the day, and resonates deeply for Yiscah Smith, a tall, broad woman with brunette hair just touching her shoulders. She stood proudly, in a long and lilac skirt, stockings, dangling earrings and three rings among her large hands.
“What is isn’t, and what isn’t is,” she opened her speech without a quiver in her strong and deeply ambiguous voice.
Intrigued, audience members perked up to fully grasp what Smith was about to share.
Smith grew up in the US, confused and conflicted, and constantly struggled with her identity. When she was 20-years-old she moved to Israel to work on a kibbutz, a place where the community focuses as a collective rather than on the individual. She thought this environment would help her ignore herself. One day she went to the Western Wall to pray, a place where, like many holy sites in Israel, has gender separation. Smith knew she belonged on the women’s side, mentally and emotionally, but knew physically she wouldn’t seem like she belonged.
“I just had to touch that stone,” she reminisced.
So against her heart and her mind, Smith walked towards the Wall on the men’s side of the divider. Years later, on her 60th birthday, after 40 years of soul searching, heartache, acceptance and finally triumph, Smith returned to the Wall and properly crossed on the side she belonged.
“I approach the Wall, for the first time as Yiscah!” she exclaimed. “I realized something… If a man stands as close to the divider as he can, and a woman does the same, there are only a few centimeters between them. These few centimeters became my personal 40-year journey in my own wilderness, from slavery to freedom.”
Smith’s words prompted a standing ovation, leaving audience members stunned and intrigued.
“I was amazed by her courage and her story,” audience member Idit Nagar said in awe, “just to know everything she went through and the pain she must have had and endured all those years was very inspiring. I felt very happy for her that she was living the life she had always dreamed.”
The way Idit Nagar was able to articulate her reaction is something Rabea Ziuod hopes his siblings will one day be able to do as well. They suffer from cerebral palsy, a degenerative disease affecting movement and speech. Due to the disease, people like Ziuod’s siblings’ speech is often so impaired that only those closest to them can understand what they’re saying. This inspired a user-dependent app called TalkItt.
With TalkItt, a person teaches the app his or her vocal patterns using calibration, voice recognition and “adaptive framing,” which increases accuracy with sound waves and intonation.
Developed by Danny Weissberg in 2012, the app received 218% of its anticipated funding in 2014 through online crowdfunding
“At the end of Rabea Zioud’s speech,” audience member Orna Ref said, “when we could see how the app worked and understand what the person was trying to say, everyone was in tears.”
Sparking conversation, not just with speakers but among audience members as well, is one of Beto Maya’s primary goals with TedxJerusalem. After Jerusalem’s first Tedx event in 2012, audience engagement was a key feature Maya sought to improve. He changed the location from the YMCA to Hebrew University allowing some 300 more people to attend. He and his team also focused on crafting a diverse audience from the 1,500 applicants.
“We selected people from the periphery,” Maya told The Media Line, “people from in and out of Jerusalem, males, females, students, business people…to make people from different populations meet, hear stories, while meanwhile being able to realize that we are all human beings and be able to talk and make conversation in Jerusalem.”
In the future, Maya hopes to take this approach even further. At a Tedx organizers event a few years ago in Doha, Qatar, Maya reached out to the head of TedxRamallah hoping to coordinate a partnership. Unfortunately, until the situation in the West Bank improves, Maya was told it will not be possible. Maya also tried to get a speaker from an Arab country to participate in Jerusalem this year.
“Hopefully next year,” he said optimistically.
Until then, he encourages all of his friends, from whatever region of the world they may be, to be a part of the conversation.
“That’s the only way to make a better place – speaking, talking and sharing ideas. I encourage everyone to be a part of the movement by participating here in Israel or anywhere in the world.”