THIS WEEK IN JERUSALEM

Peace now

Who says we have lost the sense of brotherhood and the urge to do great things for peace? Not in Jerusalem. To celebrate the traditional annual week of prayers for "world peace and brotherhood" - held this year in the Greek Orthodox Church in the Old City - an impressive amount of goodwill was required. Jerusalem Capital Studios, in collaboration with a high-ranking professional delegation from France Television, managed to bring - with the full logistic support of the Jerusalem Police - a huge mobile TV van through the narrowest alleys of the Old City, to record and broadcast to millions of French faithful the special mass of this week. For this endeavor, the 350 different churches in the world, most of which are represented in the Holy City, set aside their disagreements and made it happen.

Power to the youth

For the first time, local youth who are cared for by the municipality's Division for the Advancement of Youth completed a special professional training course. Three hundred and fifty people aged 14 to 18 were sent to various professional training courses sponsored by the municipality, to acquire the tools necessary to become independent and self-supporting. Makbetz, the center which launched and supervised the project, provided the participants with a large variety of courses: gardening, painting, manufacturing scented candles, Judaica art and so on. In addition, the youths learned basic values of the work ethic - like arriving on time to work and perseverance. The students received also a full psychological consultation and workshops to complete their preparation for the "real thing" - to work "out there."

East side

The David Yellin Academic College of Education and the Hebrew University have launched two new programs in the Arab education system in the eastern part of the city, both sponsored by the Jerusalem Education Authority at the municipality. The Hebrew University Department of Mathematics is giving advanced courses to the teachers, while the David Yellin College is helping the principals reach complete budget and administrative autonomy in their schools. The municipal education department hopes, that way, to enhance the autonomy of the schools and to enhance the chances of the students achieving better results in their studies.

New-old guy

Former Tourism Ministry director-general Rafi Praver has just been reelected (for the third time) as deputy manager of the Israel Hotels Association. Praver, 62, is the representative of two hotels in the capital: Olive Tree and Lev Yerushalayim. He will be second to the recently elected president of the association, Ami Federman, and has already announced his agenda: obtaining generous funding for renovations and overhauls of hotels, refunding from the ministry and tax reductions. Meanwhile, there is at least one hotel in this city that tries to pamper its clients before trying to reduce its expenses: The Inbal offers its guests full Internet connection for free and a few more bonuses for those who cannot stop being connected even when they are so close to the holy sites.(c) Copyright Jerusalem Post. All rights reserved.