THE ICH ISRAEL CENTER
The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Israel Center is a registered non-profit organization founded by volunteers dedicated to preserving, transmitting, and promoting Israel’s intangible cultural heritage. We aim to support communities, traditions, cultural research, educational courses, workshops, and cultural events that highlight the importance of preserving Israel's heritage. The Center aims to safeguard, transmit, and promote these traditions by supporting safeguarding projects and fostering cultural diversity through events, workshops, and educational courses. The organization operates independently and keeps its activities non-political. Its main objective is to contribute to the development of Israel's cultural sector. ICH Israel is an emerging nonprofit initiative dedicated to documenting, preserving, and transmitting Israel’s intangible cultural heritage. We are currently developing our governance, partnerships, and programs. Our work will focus on oral traditions, music, dance, languages, rituals, crafts, culinary knowledge, and other living cultural practices. We aim to work with tradition bearers, communities, educators, researchers, and cultural organizations to keep this heritage visible, respected, and accessible to future generations. ICH Israel is currently in its development phase. We are establishing the organization’s administration, building partnerships, and preparing our activities.
Our mission
ICH Israel will work to preserve and promote Israel’s intangible cultural heritage and help transmit it to future generations.
Our objectives include:
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Documenting traditions and personal testimonies
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Supporting the transmission of cultural knowledge
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Promoting communities and tradition bearers
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Developing educational and cultural activities
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Developing research and cooperation
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Making cultural resources accessible to the public
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Ensuring the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage of Israel
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Promoting the intangible cultural heritage of the different communities, groups and individuals of Israel
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Promoting traditional events, festivals and other living cultural practices
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Supporting new projects in the field of intangible cultural heritage
Preserving Israel’s Living Cultural Heritage
What does Intangible Cultural Heritage mean?
Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) includes practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills, as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces associated with them that are considered to be part of a place's cultural heritage. To be included in the Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory of Israel, communities, groups, and individuals must recognize the elements manifested in their own heritage. The intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, has been constantly recreated by the different communities in their environment and their particular history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.
Although fragile, intangible cultural heritage plays a very important role in ensuring cultural diversity in the face of increasing globalization. Getting acquainted with the traditions of different communities facilitates dialogue among communities and respect for others. Intangible cultural heritage is traditional, contemporary, and continuously changing. It is inclusive since it comprises traditions practiced by diverse communities in a new environment. Intangible cultural heritage is also representative since its significance stems from the communities that practice and transmit such traditions and not necessarily from its uniqueness. Last but not least, intangible cultural heritage is community-centered in the sense that a particular tradition is regarded as cultural heritage by the communities concerned. Through knowledge and skills transmission, intangible cultural heritage links the past with the present and the future.
The following domains are part of the intangible cultural heritage
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International reference organizations on intangible cultural heritage
The official global network comprises hundreds of NGOs accredited by UNESCO. It is the ultimate directory for contacting intangible heritage safeguarding associations in other countries to propose joint projects.
ICOMOS works to conserve and protect cultural heritage sites. It is the only global non-governmental organisation of this kind, dedicated to applying theory, methodology, and scientific techniques to the conservation of architectural and archaeological heritage.
The ICH NGO Forum is the platform for communication, networking, exchange, and cooperation for NGOs accredited by UNESCO to provide advisory services to the Intergovernmental Committee in the framework of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.