They are Muslim and Jewish, between the ages of 30 and 60, and leaders in their professions and communities: an anthropologist interested in welfare politics and minority immigrant populations; a professor of early childhood education; an organizer in interreligious programming; a feminist who manages a women’s forum on the internet; a computer scientist who heads a college technical department; and the dean of students at a college.

For the past ten days, these eight women from Israel came together in Philadelphia to forge cross-cultural understanding and collaboration. The Women’s Intercultural Leadership Seminar brought together Arab and Jewish women leaders from a context fraught with deep divisions in order “to develop a special approach to women’s community leadership,” said Racelle Weiman, vice-president of the Dialogue Institute at Temple, which designed the seminar and hosted the group in Philadelphia. “Their approach is directed at advancing the status of women as agents of social change and female empowerment in their own communities, and also as agents of an inter-faith and cross-cultural positive interaction.”

“This seminar is not only needed but extremely relevant and urgent, given the financial challenges facing society, as well as the continuing turmoil in the region,” said Dalia Fadila, dean of students at Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education in Israel who co-directs the seminar with Weiman.

While here, the participants met with women of various ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds in civic, social or organizational leadership, including Rue Landau, executive director of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations; Patricia Giorgio Fox, deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department; Melissa Weiler Gerber, executive director of Women’s Way; Blondell Reynolds Brown, city councilwoman; Helen Cunningham, executive director of The Fels Foundation; Marcia Prager, rabbi of the Jewish Renewal Community; Tomasita Rivera of Las Parcelas community gardens, and Jane Golden, executive director of the Mural Arts Project. They also interacted with a Philadelphia women’s interfaith group that includes Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Bahá’i members.

The participants are interested in learning about and meeting successful women leaders who challenge paradigms and cause change in their communities, said Weiman. “Ultimately, they want to design replicable models of effective intercultural and interfaith projects and social initiatives.”

Throughout the year, the women will continue their work electronically and in small groups and, next summer, eight women from the U.S. and two from Europe will join the Israeli women in Israel. The project is funded in part by grants from the U.S. Department of State (through the Fulbright Scholar Program) and from Temple’s College of Liberal Arts.