The Kol Israel Haverim Conference on Education and Social Change focused on the topic "By facing the Other – you will discover yourself" (Barry Saharof). It examined progress and obstructions between self and Other, between the marginal and the mainstream, and between the periphery and the center.
Koby Oz performed at the conference and "sang the Otherness in Israeli society", as Guy Gardi, a Kol Israel Haverim director, put it. Koby spoke of his grandfather standing up and singing a piyut at his Bar Mitzvah, while guests chatted and ate, waiters served the first course, and Koby, the Bar Mitzvah boy, was busy throwing olives at his friends. "My grandfather stood there alone and sang, and probably thought to himself: "I am the last one".
At the age of 40 Koby completed the cycle, celebrated a late Bar Mitzvah and read the Haftara to the same tune that his grandfather had recorded almost 30 years prior. Today, Koby opens every performance with the piyut his grandfather sang alone at the Bar Mitzvah.
The conference was held last Thursday, on the first night of Chanukah, at the International Conference Centre in Ashkelon. Educators from different schools in which Kol Israel Haverim is involved attended, as did educational program facilitators and employees - religious, Masorati and secular people from all over Israel, sharing a clear message of togetherness despite the differences and otherness between each one of them.
The day opened with a Beit Midrash study session of Jewish texts dealing with the relationships between self and Other. Later during the day, workshops facilitated by individuals active in the educational and social fields took place, in which we held in-depth discussions on Otherness and facing its challenges.
The conference was an expression of the intense activity and expansion of Kol Israel Haverim as an educational superpower, who faces the Other – and the future.