Cute, Patchwork Jaffa Dolls Empower Israeli Arab and Jewish Women

If they were just adorable and cuddly, dayenu.

But huggable little Jaffa Dolls also embody big ambitions: interreligious bridge-building, social justice, and women’s economic development. These brightly colored, smiling patchwork creations are the product of a non-governmental organization called Arous Elhabar (“Bride of the Sea” in Arabic), a women’s center in the Israeli coastal town of Jaffa. Arous Elhabar was established “to empower Arab women in Jaffa both personally and economically, while promoting their status and their active involvement in the job market and the community.” Most of the women’s center’s offerings—career development and mentoring programs, community leadership, and computer skills workshops, Hebrew language courses, finance and business management classes—are aimed at Jaffa’s Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens. (Palestinian Arabs constitute around 30% of Jaffa’s population.) The dolls, though, are a joint project of Muslim Arab and Jewish women. Women make the dolls on their own time, on their own schedules; the snuggly creations are sold in boutiques and museum shops throughout Israel, and the proceeds help support both the women who make them and the work of the organization.

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