Opening minds in Jerusalem

The effects reach as far away as London with the opening of Palomar and The Barbary, not to mention Yotam Ottolenghi's best-selling cookbook, Jerusalem.

At first they said we were crazy

Now the organisers of the festival, entitled Mekudeshet or "sacred", have become even bolder this year taking participants on "Dissolving Boundaries" political mystery trips across the Green Line into East Jerusalem and elsewhere.

Dozens of Israelis paid for secret trips guaranteed only to surprise them and challenge their perceptions, such as a journey on the new light-rail system into Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighbourhood which saw rioting in 2014, and to the bookshop of the American Colony Hotel, where owner Mahmoud Muna, who rarely converses with Israeli Jews, explained how he is helping to bring dance, theatre and art back to a neighbourhood, which he says has been stripped of Palestinian cultural institutions by the Israeli government.

The three-week festival closes today after fielding equally controversial happenings like a literal Amen Corner of rabbis, priests and imams gathering with an observant and non-observant audience in a temporary house of worship where Jews prayed alongside Christians and Muslims, observing and discussing each other's traditions and their importance.

The Recalibrations event last week threw open the lovely, if slightly stuffy, Van Leer research institute campus to those who came to tell their life-changing stories.

Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, co-author of the first textbook in Arabic about the Holocaust, explained why he defied the Arab educational establishment - in which the Shoah is neither taught nor recognised - to bring dozens of students to the death camps to show them where the Jews were coming from when they fought to establish the state of Israel.

"I felt we could never have peace without learning to understand 'the other'," says the academic who was once a member of Fatah before making his home in Jerusalem but whose bold experiment marked the end of his tenure at Al-Quds University and propelled him into exile in the USA.

It was an eye-opening experiment, almost literally the opposite of author John Hull's notes on going blind, which formed the narrative for our VR experience of what a very different kind of uncomfortable journey looks like. By contrast, the Singing Circle which kicked off the Jerusalem Festival of Sacred Music forming the final week of this year's event came as blessed light relief.

Deep in the valley below the illuminated walls of the Old City, musicians from Israel,Turkey, Africa and beyond sat on a circular stage together and made beautiful, soul-wrenching world music, joined by an audience seated around them in concentric circles at the most uplifting and thrilling free concert imaginable.

No less magical was seeing Baba Maal make his Israeli debut against the backdrop of the 2,000-year-old stones of the Tower of David, where Yasmin Levy opened the final day of the event with a sunrise concert of Ladino and flamenco songs.

It seems hard to believe such a world-class event was born of despair, but Bloch Fortis says bluntly: "It was first conceived when Jerusalem had become a place of so much conflict and poverty you couldn't imagine anyone coming here for culture - a situation we badly wanted to change.

"At first they said we were crazy, but we persisted, creating different themes and different areas of focus every year, and now we don't even have to spell out what form our events will take - the audience just trusts us."

This year, 50,000 visitors voted with their feet, coming from all over Israel, with a smattering of international culture vultures who had got wind of the event starting to join them. It's a challenging few weeks, and it moves beyond what can be considered safe territory, both literally and metaphorically, but anyone interested in a mind-trip they'll never forget should start booking now for next September, as limited-number events quickly sell out.

www.mekudeshet.com