Empowering youth from East and West Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is an Israeli-Palestinian music and dialogue project that has been providing a space for young people from East and West Jerusalem to grow together in song and dialogue since 2012. Through the co-creation of music and the sharing of stories, we empower youth in Jerusalem with the responsibility to speak and sing their truths, as they become leaders in their communities and inspire singers and listeners around the world to work for peace, justice, inclusion, and equality.

Our Vision

We envision a Jerusalem—and a broader Israel-Palestine—defined not by hatred, division and injustice, not by occupation, terror, and violence, but by acknowledgement of a shared connection to place, celebration of individual and collective belonging to that place, and systems that allow that belonging to be equally realized by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis alike. We reject attempts to pit Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, against one another in service of systemic violence that robs all of their agency to even imagine, let alone choose, a different way. Instead, as we create a home for all in the chorus, we seek to show what Jerusalem could be - and use our songs and stories, within a broad ecosystem of change, as a catalyst to bring that future about.