Key Characters/Heroes in Jerusalem 3000

Style: Multi-Media

(For participants up to 14/15 years old)

The leader gives out a famous character related to Jerusalem to each participant. The assignment is to research, using the source material, and understand the character and the role they played in Jerusalem. Then they all become their characters and receive an invitation from Ehud Olmert to a vast banquet - dressed in appropriate garb, of course - You will need elaborately inscribed invitations and time to dress up for the festive evening. For the interval of the evening, the characters intermingle playing their role within the time that they existed.

Enter the millenium banquet of the Mayor of Jerusalem dressed as your character.....

Some staged interactions between characters [hand them out on cards] could also be a source of interest (and amusement) - pitching King David in an interesting debate with Golda Meir over the importance of allowing women to serve a year less than men in the armed forces, as an example. To King David, women and war, of course, were an absurd combination.

Towards the end of the evening, all the characters are asked to place themselves, in silence (i.e. through mime), in chronological order. One by one, they go up to the podium and - in two or three sentences - fill in their part of the story. Together, they all make up Jerusalem 3000.

Example

Method #5 (b)

(For ages up to 17/18)

All sorts of variations can be adopted once every pupil has a character to research. For older participants, one idea is to have them submit or present a paper on their character or a specific issue - or present their case at a mock trial.