“Tree of Life” Project- Background
The village of Maghar is situated on the slopes of Mount Hazon in the Galilee, and has a mixed population of Druze, Christians and Muslims. In cooperation with the department for women’s services at the local Community Centers, the Raz-Ram Fund has created a special artistic project for widowed women and their children. Within the context of this project, the widowed women are able, for the first time, to meet with other women who share their experience of loss, in a supportive, artistic and creative environment. It also provides their children with an excellent opportunity to examine and process their feelings of loss through a creative artistic process, together, and with the Raz-Ram staff.
To the children artworks
As part of the project, the participants identify a special tree that has traditional or historical significance within the village. Working with clay, they create their own wind chimes. The finished wind chimes are then strung among the branches of this Tree of Life, transforming it into a site that connects art and memory, life and death, pain and hope, quiet and music.
The Love and Peace Theater- Background
“House of Love and Peace” is a boarding school located in Kfar Ramah, a village in the Western Galilee. The school, which was founded by a local minister and his wife, provides a warm and supportive environment for about forty children and youth who are either orphaned or have been removed from dysfunctional homes.
Raz-Ram Fund invited the children from the Love and Peace school to participate in several Raz-Ram events at sites around the country: a one-day Creative Happening in Jerusalem which included a visit to the President’s Residence, and an evening of artistic performances by Raz-Ram artists at the Enav Center in Tel Aviv. From the start, both the school management and the students expressed a strong interest in developing their own creative program with the Raz-Ram Fund. During the Enav Center event, one of the students from the school announced that, by next year, he wanted to be performing on the stage too.
Today, through the Raz-Ram Fund, the Love and Peace Theater program is underway. Achmed Dohan, a talented theater professional from Nazareth, who recently returned from a long stay in France, has begun work with the school’s students on a theater production entitled “A Story of Love and Peace”, which will be performed during the summer. The production, which addresses the problems of children around the world, uses techniques of movement to emphasize the issues of freedom, growth and love.
This is the first stage in a program that the Raz-Ram Fund is developing for boarding schools, which emphasizes the promotion of an integrated, creative outlet which will answer many of the needs of its students. It is hoped that this theatrical program, now being developed at the House of Love and Peace, will also serve as a role model which can be adopted by the many institutions of this kind in the country.
Making Peace in the Heights
The Making Peace in the Heights project is a special community arts project which is intended to operate in the thirty two communities that make up the Golan Heights Regional Council. At its center is the desire to integrate the area’s breathtaking landscapes, artworks related to the history of the area, and artworks that address the transformation of difficult war memories which were created by resident artists, together with bereaved families. The creative group, led by an artist from the design field, will design and create environmental sculptures and public spaces, using local materials, that will be integrated into the Golan landscape. In one of the communities, an Arts and Sculpture Center is planned which will coordinate the entire program.
Yifat Cohen is a musician who plays the flute, a vocalist, and a performance artist. She graduated with honors from Thelma Yellin High School, where she learned the flute.
During the years 1990-1995 she was a student at the Utrecht Academy of Music, specialized in flute music and graduated with honors. She has an MA from the faculty of Ancient Music.
Within the Creation Project of the Raz-Ram Foundation Yifat worked with artists from the dance world and together they developed an interdisciplinary creation. The experience led Yifat to take part in a Physical Theatre and Live Art Workshop in Seminar Hakibutzim. Yifat performed in Seminar Hakibutzim, in Tamar Raban’s Bimat Meizag, on Open Stage Evnings in Temuna Theatre and in Beit Lessin, and in “Jinga” events.
Recently she accompanied the Butoh artist Jun Wakabayashi and the group of Contact dancers with Arie Borstein and Sandra Amsalem. The Raz-Ram Foundation helped Yifat producing the disc of “Kol-Kulley,” an original and unique musical solo performance created by Yifat.
(MP3) LISTEN 
Raz lives in Raanana and is a specialist in tap dancing. Shirly, whose father was one of the athletes who was killed at the Munich Olympics, tutored Raz. The connection between the two, which began with their tutoring, grew, and Raz recently participated in the annual memorial ceremony for Amizur Shapira, Shirly’s father. Raz continues to study tap dancing and his dream is to make it to Hollywood. The Raz-Ram Foundation will be with him on his artistic journey.
