Goals:

• The participants will describe their feelings and express their opinions on different quotations.
• The participants will estimate the monetary value of a Jerusalem property/site according to how interesting it is/personal connection to it/how important it is for them.

Activity order:

1. Emoji Game with sentences about Jerusalem.
2. “Saving Jerusalem” Game- Auction.
3. Discussion.
4. Summary.

The objective of the game is to awaken the feelings that arise from the sentences and to understand that Jerusalem and the events surrounding it lead to different reactions that affect attitudes towards it until today.

The participants receive four emojis according to their preference. The activity leader reads out a sentence about Jerusalem. The participants need to lift up one of the emojis (they must do so even if they don’t connect to the sentence). If two participants lift the same emoji, the first one to call out “link” wins. The one who didn’t call out fast enough is out of the game until the person who beat him loses to someone else, at which point he can reenter the game. The winner is the one who succeeds in stay in the game until the end.

Discussion

The sentences about Jerusalem are scattered on the floor and each participant is asked to choose a sentence that he connects to and one that he doesn’t connect to. Whoever wants to, may explain his choices to the rest of the group. The activity leader tells the participants that these sentences were written by different people over the three-thousand years that Jerusalem exists. The leaders asks the participants why they think that there is so much interest in Jerusalem and why there are those who feel connected to the city and, on the other hand, those who hate it. Leaders who have the time can talk about a few important characters in Jerusalem’s history and to read some select quotations.

What is in the set?

Israeli banknotes, 40 property boards with pictures and descriptions

Game objective: To sort Jerusalem sites according to different categories (religion, education, history, etc.)

To rank different properties according to importance as a discussion trigger

How to play

The “story” behind the game: Jerusalem is in danger of being closed down. The way to save the city is by buying properties from categories of different values so as to safeguard the balance in the city. We will hold an “auction” of Jerusalem properties – each participant receives 1000 NIS in monopoly money.

Limitations:

Every group must buy at least one property from each category

The auction is limited, time-wise

Stage 1: We will begin with a random buying round that is for a limited time. The activity leader will show a property card that includes the name of the property, a sentence that defines it and, obviously, a picture. We’ll start auctioning to whoever offers the highest price – going once, going twice…sold!

Stage 2: After the time is up, the activity leader will present a number of cards (equal to the number of groups) for negotiation. The groups need to negotiate with each other for the properties until all the cards are gone. 

The winners- the group with the largest number of properties and categories.

Activity leader – the properties are divided into three broad categories: culture and education, Zionism and history, Judaism and heritage. It is, of course, permitted to add more properties using the empty cards.

The activity leader will ask which buildings they chose and why. Did they prefer a historic building / social buildings / international buildings? We will try to understand together what ,in your opinion, stands out the most in the history of Jerusalem, how Jerusalem became to be so important, if Jerusalem of today is like Jerusalem of the past, etc.

 In the first activity we saw that there are different opinions about Jerusalem that are reflected through the attitudes towards the city. In the auction game, we got to know different sites in Jerusalem and we understood the deep connection between the city and the Jewish people, the central role it plays and how each one of us can connect to the city from our individual place.