Galilee Circus breaks down barriers

OPINION:

In July, in kibbutzim and Arab villages from northern to southern Israel, audiences were applauding a phenomenon they’d never seen before — a circus featuring young jugglers, trapeze artists and tightrope walkers who were Arab, Israeli and American. The creator of this soaring, multicultural show was Rabbi Marc Rosenstein, head of the Galilee Circus in Israel. For years, that circus has featured youthful Arab and Israeli performers.

The Israeli rabbi wanted to show his troupe that “they are part of a worldwide community.” He said his performers had already learned that because a “circus is based on mutual trust and support, it transcends language barriers.” To deepen that experience, he invited the St. Louis-based Circus Day Foundation Circus — a multiracial, multicultural ensemble directed by my daughter, Jessica Hentoff — to join his youngsters in Israel.

Jessica, herself a juggler, clown and aerialist, has long believed and taught many American kids that “circus skills become life skills: perseverance, focus and teamwork that create trust and leap over social barriers all at the same time.” During the tour of Arab villages and Israeli cities, Jessica kept a daily photo blog of this soaring transcendence of language and other barriers. Among the Circus Day performers she brought to Israel are the widely renowned multiracial acrobats, the St. Louis Arches.

At one point, Jessica reported, “One of the Arches notes that he doesn’t know which kids are Arabs and which kids are Jewish. It doesn’t matter. We are all circus performers, and we are creating something together which is inspirational in ways the kids don’t even think about. After only one day of practice, all of us perform a show. It is beautiful, and it is only the beginning.”

And in the troupe, my granddaughter, 15-year-old Elliana Hentoff-Killian, said: “I thought the kids would be different. They weren’t. I haven’t been able to tell them apart. They aren’t different from us. They just speak a different language.” Also part of that two-week tour of 10 Arab and Israeli venues before audiences of more than 2,500 were my other multiple-skilled circus grandchildren, Keaton and Kellin. During the trip, Jessica wrote: “Many of the kids in the Jewish-Arab Galilee Circus have never stood on others’ shoulders in a performance, but they do so now without trepidation. What I notice the most is the total trust between the groups. A Galilee youngster gets right up on Keaton’s shoulders to do a high roll. No question. You say, ’You will hold me’ and I believe you.”

After the end of the tour, on an Israeli Web site (www.israel21c.com), Mr. Rosenstein said: “I hoped that by creating a combined troupe of Americans, Jews and Arabs, the local identity distinction would be submerged, and we would all just be members of the Galilee Arches Circus — not Jews, not Arabs — even if only for a few days.”

And that’s what happened: “They learned to be open to new experiences and new people, overcome their fears and pull together with the ’other’ for a common goal. One audience member told me that we have created an island of happiness. I think many who saw the shows felt the same tears in their eyes maybe out of the feeling one is seeing a vision of something that we all long for… the total obliteration of barriers, whether social, economic or gravitational.” Or, as Jessica puts it, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it matters what you do.”

That reminded me of what my friend Malcolm X told me after he left the very xenophobic Nation of Islam and came to realize that in the new organization he was forming, he could also work with whites to bring equality of opportunity to blacks. “What counts,” Malcolm X said, “is what whites are actually willing to do.” I think Malcolm would have enjoyed the Galilee Arches Circus.

Jessica tells me: “We are hoping to bring the Galilee Circus youth performers to America next summer to continue our international collaboration and to commemorate Israel’s 60th birthday.”

With enough financial support, she intends to mount performances in St. Louis, New York and Washington. (To see her illustrated blog of this year’s journey, go to www.circusday.org/blog.)

Three years ago, when she brought her troupe to perform for children at St. Louis’s black Muslim Clara Muhammad School, together with kids from the Jewish Central Reform Congregation, a black Muslim youngster said, “It was the first time I’d seen a Jewish kid.” Jessica doesn’t have a Ph.D., but she speaks accurately when she says, “We teach the art of life through circus education.”