President Herzog: Your efforts to reach beyond the divides, and heal rifts, are not only moving, but also very much necessary for our society... Please be assured of my regard for the work of your organization, which I was pleased to be able to express in awarding the Interfaith Encounter Association with the Presidential Award for Voluntarism
The IEA invites people from different traditional and cultural backgrounds and faiths, from across the Holy Land and beyond, to join our groups.
Within the groups participants have meaningful encounters which bring them closer to each other and build the bridges.
Prejudice, hostility and suspicion are transformed into direct acquaintance, mutual respect and friendship.
Our groups are both a model for inter-communal relations of appreciation and care, and vehicles to promote them.
Meet our participants
Interfaith Encounter Association and its groups are constantly attracting researchers from various universities and disciplines. Below are some published papers about our work.
"This study used ethnographic methods to examine the efficacy of the Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA) in promoting peace in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… interfaith encounters do not negate or ignore the complexities inherent... between the Jewish and Arab people... rather, these challenges remind participants of the political background and the hostility among people that this organization seeks to overcome… the IEA’s endeavors in peacemaking demonstrate the efficacy of religion in establishing a common ground for peaceful interactions between Jewish and Arab communities"
"…results of a pioneering course in Jewish-Arab Interreligious Dialogue involving both Jewish and Arab students undertaken at Bar-Ilan University… Based on qualitative and quantitative results, in two course cycles, the efficacy of the intercultural approach for promoting perception change, and relationship building and transformation between Jews and Arabs was affirmed"
"Based on qualitative and quantitative results the efficacy of the intercultural approach for promoting perception change, transformation and relationship building was affirmed... "
"It proves that the inter-religious encounter made participants more open to the “religious other” while often making the particular identity of the participants stronger and more positive... "
"The results indicate that the work of the IEA has important implications for maintaining “peace willingness”, which is not to be taken for granted nowadays... "
"The results show that for the participants, stereotypes have been broken and enemies have been re-humanized and are now perceived as people who also face the difficulties of the conflict... "
"The influence of the encounters improved the attitude towards the other in a significant way. Groups were active at the peak of the Intifada and managed to cope with suicide attacks, IDF retaliation activities etc... "
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