Micah Hendler

Micah Hendler is an American musical changemaker and founder of the Israeli-Palestinian Jerusalem Youth Chorus. He is continuously building a community of peace through music and has been involved in dialogue work for more than 15 years.

Micah has also recently founded Raise Your Voice Labs, which is a creative culture
transformation company that helps companies and communities realign and re-engage around a shared vision in turbulent times. In addition to the many different roles that Micah is currently active in, he also writes for Forbes.com about music, society, and social change in a global context.

We are happy to steal some of his time today to talk about where all his ideas sparked from and what he has learnt so far from the journey that he has been on.

We tend to label people according to traditional professions and
jobs, but how would you define yourself?

I would define myself as a musical changemaker who is working towards effecting change of different kinds in the world. There are numerous ways to do this, but I have found that the power of singing together in groups – in many different contexts – as a way of bringing people together is not tapped into as much as it could be. Singing together is such a powerful tool. It allows us to connect beyond our normal boundaries to transcend conflicts and address injustice, among many other things.

©Hurunnessa Fariad

“Singing allows us to connect beyond our normal boundaries to transcend conflicts and address injustice, among many other things.”

How did you come up with such an idea?

I could not say this was my original idea, as many people have experienced and practised the power of singing to unite and empower groups over the millennia of human history. But for me, the idea of combining musical community-building with social change and conflict resolution work was a natural evolution of two different streams of powerful experiences that began interweaving in my life. The first one involved singing communities and that feeling of inclusion and empowerment I felt whenever I was part of a group of people who were singing together. The other one was an experience I had in high school at ‘Seeds of peace’, a summer programme for teens from conflict regions and the USA. This programme allowed young people to meet their peers and enter into a dialogue with one another. It transformed my perspective of the world, which I had been educated to see in a particular way, and opened my eyes to the fact that there are many more perspectives than just the ones that we have access to in our limited education systems.

The experience at ‘Seeds of peace’ completely changed my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and uncovered entirely different realities and narratives that I had been oblivious to because my education had explicitly shielded me from them. The more time I spent involved in this programme, the more I noticed that music, and singing in particular, could play a critical community-building role, even in a context where people are supposed to have nothing in common and grow up to hate each other. It became clear to me that the power of singing could create and solidify this sense of community. Of course, I am not saying that we can just have a sing-along together and it will all be fine! However, in the context of a transformative process, singing together can be a very powerful tool when used in particular ways.

I was gradually realising more and more about the power of music, particularly in combination with dialogue, how very transformative it can be and how the two processes can complement one another.

I also studied community singing and music of struggle [e.g. music of the Civil Rights Movement] with Ysaye Barnwell, who is an incredible composer and community song leader in Washington DC. I learned a great deal from her, particularly about the music of the Black experience, the civil rights movement, and spirituals [a type of music originating from slavery in the US] and gospel music, and how the tradition of Black music of struggle had also evolved as a force to empower individuals and communities to fight for justice. That was really formative for me.

Upon completion of a music and international studies double-major at Yale, I decided to move to Jerusalem and see if I could replicate my experience from the ‘Seeds of peace’ programme on the ground.

Why did you pick Jerusalem in particular?

I had been to Jerusalem a number of times and did my senior thesis research there. I also had many transformative experiences in terms of my own understanding of what is possible through music there. Since Jerusalem is the epicentre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is one of the most intractable conflicts in human history, I wanted to see what could be done in this hot spot. I felt that if I can fulfil my idea in Jerusalem, I can do it anywhere – in some way or another. I believed that from Jerusalem the impact would ripple through the rest of Israel and Palestine as well as the rest of the world.

Of course, the Israeli-Palestine conflict has now been going on for decades. How and when did you start implementing your idea?

I moved to Jerusalem in July 2012, after my graduation. I was lucky to get a fellowship from Yale, where I had studied, as well as some seed funding from Yale alumni singing organisations to explore what I could do with the chorus idea that I had in mind.

Once I arrived, though, I had to build my idea from scratch. For the first two months, I tried to have as many meetings over a coffee as I could with anyone who would talk to me – people in education, those involved in arts, activists, municipal officers, or simply folks who could share some insight into how I could situate what I was hoping to do in the realities of where Jerusalem was at in the summer of 2012.

My biggest first real challenge that I focused on was recruiting singers. For about two months, as part of the recruitment plan, I went to different schools in East and West Jerusalem where I gave pitches on how this project was going to be the coolest thing any of these kids did in high school. Some of them believed me and came to audition.

I prepared myself not to be too dispirited with how hard this was going to be. I set my expectations relatively low: if I had 10 singers by January, I would be doing fine. What was incredible to me was that by the end of September we had 80 singers audition.

What is the size of the current group?

The chorus has grown in some incredible ways since that first year. Our core group in the high school programme at the moment is still around 30 singers. It is a good size that allows us to have meaningful discussions with one another and makes it easier to maintain a feeling of community.

What was the biggest eye opener for you over those eight years?

I think the chorus has made a truly transformative impact on the lives of singers in many different ways. The very idea of having a chorus of Israelis and Palestinians together is an entirely new social context with its own rules. We have created a safe space where people can relate to one another as equals with mutual respect, are allowed to disagree, and stay open to others’ ideas when their hard-held beliefs are challenged. In the context of singing, we have empowered them to see that their voices actually matter.

“We have created a safe space where people can relate to one another as equals with mutual respect, are allowed to disagree, and stay open to others’ ideas when their hard-held beliefs are challenged.”

Most people growing up in Jerusalem think that this conflict is just part of life: it is the way things are, how they have always been and how they are always going to be. But the singers in the chorus have managed to achieve exposure on international platforms, including the UN in Geneva and features on the BBC and in the New York Times, where they were able to speak up, challenge opinions of others and sing what they believe in. The project has proved to them that there is always an opportunity to question ‘the way things are’.

What was the biggest struggle you had while realising your idea?

Something I didn’t expect was that the challenges that I had anticipated to be the most significant ones were actually fairly easy to deal with, and some of the ones I had not foreseen turned out to be a real problem!

I thought the biggest challenge doing this type of work would be swimming upstream in one of the world’s most difficult conflicts. Normally these kinds of bridge-building programmes are considered to be impossible. Israeli and Palestinian narratives and societies are designed to make no room for the other narrative. It is, essentially, a zero-sum mentality: anything involving ‘them’ must be at ‘our’ expense. Because I thought this would be the hardest thing, I really did my homework and prepared myself to tackle this. I spent time to understand the political implications of what we were trying to achieve in different communities and how to talk about what we were aiming to do in ways that addressed people’s concerns. I knew how to market it to the kids and how to talk about it with educators, policy-makers, journalists, donors and others. Since, from the very beginning we had come up with a model that worked, this was not the hardest part at all!

©Gili Getz

“Israeli and Palestinian narratives and societies are designed to make no room for the other narrative. It is, essentially, a zero-sum mentality: anything involving ‘them’ must be at ‘our’ expense.”

What has consistently been a real challenge was starting an organisation from scratch, including dealing with fiscal sponsors, learning institutional management, dealing with contract disputes and so on. All of this was new to me. I was only 22 and had no prior knowledge or experience of doing anything like this. I must say, I did make a lot of mistakes and learned things the hard way – through the process of doing it – in very high-stakes situations. Being an American, I had to learn how to manage and create systems of accountability in the Middle East, in a totally different set of cultures.

How were you perceived there and what were people’s attitudes at first? You were, after all, an outsider in Jerusalem.

I think, generally, people were both confused and intrigued by me at the same time, because I did not fit into any of their boxes – which I was pleased about. I also had the benefit of being able to communicate in their native languages, as I had studied both Hebrew and Arabic. I went out of my way to speak Arabic as much as possible, because, in a way, it immediately disarms people and prevents them from making assumptions about me and thinking I am politically driven, white Jewish American who must be against them.

Since I am Jewish, people could jump to the conclusion that I had moved to Jerusalem out of Israeli patriotism – which was not the case. I came there to start the chorus and to be a builder of bridges. That was at the core of my mission and that was what I believed in.

Are you still fully involved in the chorus now?

Over the last couple of years we have been able to build an amazing local team that now runs day-to-day operations of the chorus and it has become self-sustainable.

I am still very involved in a lot of the overall programme, focusing on the artistic direction, special projects, tours and fundraising, but the whole thing no longer rests on my shoulders, which was the case for so many years. This has allowed me to expand my focus beyond just Jerusalem and take the lessons we learned there to other contexts.

I am now in the process of setting up a company called ‘Raise Your Voice Labs’, which aims to bring dialogue processes into different contexts in order to help groups of people that are dealing with difficult transformation. For example, what America is undergoing with race, which is a huge national reckoning. People are finally realising they have to deal with issues of race but they do not know how to talk about it in a way that can actually make a change. We can bring the dialogue and musical techniques we use in the chorus groups to undergo cultural transformation in any number of ways. We are working on issues like race, de-polarisation, refugees, urban-rural dichotomies and mental health. The Jerusalem Youth Chorus is our flagship in that regard, and the company can amplify that.

Do you expect to expand your work elsewhere beyond the USA and Jerusalem?

I think we will focus on the USA as most of our team live there, but it definitely will not be exclusively USA-centred. We would love to be involved in projects in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, because members of our team have worked in all those places on different issues. We would like to partner with local groups that have been doing the ground work for years but think our approach could be helpful to them.

What are the most important values to you in your life?

One of my core values is respecting and celebrating difference. A lot of people are afraid of differences, but the question is how you deal with them. The idea of difference is what I view as an opportunity for growth, creativity and newness as opposed to fear. I think it is important to realise this, as our world is becoming more and more diverse, which may lead to new conflicts. Just to clarify here: conflict is not inherently negative; it just means that there are two opinions or two different needs. The question is how we manage to resolve and transform conflicts into something positive and generative. That is the type of work we are trying to do with Raise Your Voice Labs.

“A lot of people are afraid of differences, but the question is how you deal with them. The idea of difference is what I view as an opportunity for growth, creativity and newness as opposed to fear.”

How do you think conflicts could be addressed? When there is a conflict of two opposing opinions in society, it often feels that we are only celebrating the one that fits the current trends.

I think you need to give people tools to manage a conflict that can be generative instead of zero-sum. Part of it is helping people see that just because we disagree on one level, it does not mean we disagree on all levels. Even if we cannot agree on something, it may be that our disagreement is not as profound as we think and it could be the case that our talking points are designed to be mutually exclusive.

We need to feel safe and respected and get opportunities to achieve our full potential – these are just basic human needs that everyone is after. Even if someone else is expressing a position that is directly contradictory to yours, it could be coming from the same need. The question then becomes not ‘How can I defeat your position?’ but ‘How can we create a new scenario where we can all have our needs met?’. That is a different question. It’s still a difficult one but it becomes less definitionally impossible.

What has been your biggest struggle in life?

Often our greatest strength is a corollary of our greatest weakness. One of the reasons why I found singing communities to be so powerful and important as an inclusive space, was that growing up I was bullied and teased, and the only places I really felt included were in singing groups. Those were the places I felt valued and part of a community, which ultimately inspired me to create those spaces for others. Initially, though, a lot of the work I was doing came from a place of scarcity rather than a place of abundance. I felt that I had to do all these things to show I was worth it as a person, because I did not myself inherently believe that was the case.

“I felt that I had to do all these things to show I was worth it as a person, because I did not myself inherently believe that was the case.”

I pushed myself so hard with the chorus for the first couple of years and then, half way through year four, my body collapsed. After the biggest concert of the year, I went home and could not get out of bed for ten days. For me it was a wake-up call that the way I was doing things was fundamentally unsustainable and I needed to find a new way of looking at myself and my relationship to work, life and goals. This realisation came from a place of self-love. I started realising that it does not matter if other people appreciate what I am doing, as long as I know that what I am doing is enough – I am the one who decides what is enough for me. That was a fundamental shift but it took a long time to actually live into and it is something I still struggle with.

I would say that transformation was really key. I know a lot of people have similar stories. In Western culture, or one that emulates it, unless you are constantly producing something or achieving something, you are worthless – there is no value in just existing. So, unlearning that is important. It doesn’t mean that I am oblivious to the reality that people have to work and survive. However, you should not let it impact your sense of who you are. This is the external reality and you might not be able to change it, but there is also your internal reality, which is under your control and the very least you can do is move in the world from a place of self-love. It may be harder to love yourself because of situations that have happened to you when growing up, various traumas that you might have gone through. But stories that I hear from other people who have overcome those situations resonate with the idea that, at the end of the day, you need to find a way to seize that control of your sense of self. I think that is critical if you want to do any work sustainably.

©Yale International Choral Festival

“I made a huge spreadsheet of all the different things that were going on in my life. Turns out I was trying
to do 48 hours’ worth of tasks per day! This was very liberating for me because I realised that what I was trying to achieve is simply impossible.”

“Conflict is not inherently negative; it just means that there are two opinions or two different needs. The question is how we manage to resolve and transform conflicts into something positive and generative.”

Speaking about your recovery from overworking, what helped you to stand up on your feet?

I approached it in a unique, crazy way that most people would probably not choose, but it was something that I found really helpful. I was so overworked and there were so many things flying around, but I knew one thing: if I did not actually see all of them in one place, I would not be able to make any decisions about how to manage them. I made a huge spreadsheet of all the different things that were going on in my life. Everything that I thought was important in terms of that year – what was happening and what I wanted to happen – I put into numbers. How many hours a day, week, month or year am I going to spend on everything from brushing my teeth to international chorus tours?

I estimated how many hours per year each activity would take and then calculated how many hours a day that would be. Turns out I was trying to do 48 hours’ worth of tasks per day! I saw it in a bar graph and laughed. This was very liberating for me because I realised that what I was trying to achieve is simply impossible. I do not need to berate myself for not succeeding, because no one could do all these things. I also realised that I need to make some new decisions. It became clear that lack of self-worth prevented me from saying no to some of these things. I would think, ‘If I disappoint this person, then who am I?’ or ‘If I don’t do this thing, how do I know if I am worth anything?’. I had to fix this in order to make decisions that were actually going to let me live in a realistic way.

What would your advice be to others contemplating similar careers or thinking about starting something new for themselves?

Do the internal work and take the time to build a relationship with yourself, so that the engine of your work can come from a place of abundance rather than scarcity (i.e. so you can feel happy with whatever it is you do rather than trying to prove someone your worth). That is key for anyone doing anything. If you are constantly running on fumes, desperately gasping for air and just hurtling yourself to the next step, you may well accomplish things, but you cannot actually make sustainable change that way. At least not a change that is good for both you and your mission.