Worldview: A linkage of faiths at YMCA in Jerusalem

This was a bleak year for anyone who dreams of Middle East peace or Arab-Jewish coexistence.

So, on Christmas Day, I'd like to write about an institution in Jerusalem that brings Christians, Jews, and Muslims together, and about its director, who has bridged divides that seem insurmountable.

I refer to the Jerusalem International YMCA, in West Jerusalem, a landmark whose 152-foot tower looks down at the walls of the Old City. This may be the world's most unusual YMCA, where even the architecture symbolizes the linkage of three faiths. And its dynamic CEO, Forsan Hussein, has a unique ability to move between Jewish, Arab, and Western worlds.

I have stayed several times at the Y's comfortable (and moderately priced) Three Arches Hotel. Yet I only learned its full history when I sat down with Hussein under a shady umbrella at the Y's lovely outdoor cafe, across from the famed King David Hotel.

Founded in a bookstore near the Old City in 1878, the YMCA was shut down by the Turks during World War I and later reopened by the British. It moved several times before construction of the current building began in the 1920s after a $1 million Christmas donation from James Jarvie of Montclair, N.J., who was inspired by plans to make the institution a center for people of all faiths.

Designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon, architect of the Empire State Building, the neo-Byzantine-style stone complex is covered with decorative elements that represent the three monotheistic faiths. The phenomenal carillon bells in the tower are played by a Jewish Israeli professor and a Mormon American.

When the building was dedicated in 1933 by British Gen. Edmund Lord Allenby, he had these words inscribed on the front in Hebrew, Arabic, and English: "Here is a place whose atmosphere is peace, where political and religious jealousies can be forgotten . . . " (For more on the building, visit www.jerusalemymca.org.)

Fast forward to the present. As Hussein talked, parents were coaxing small children up the Y's steps to the YMCA Peace Preschool, where half the children are Muslim and Christian Arabs, and half are Jews. "We want to make the YMCA a center for reconciliation," Hussein told me. "Every Israeli and Palestinian can feel at home here.