The idea for Sesame Street being aired in Israel goes back to 1971 when black and white episodes of the show broadcast in English were briefly shown on Israeli television.
The residents who lived in the street included Avner and Hanna, who were the owners of the coffee shop near Kipi's burrow.
Salim (Salim Dau [fr; he; ar]) used to explain to the children in the neighborhood the meaning of different words in Arabic and the show also included different famous Israeli guest stars, such as the duo "HaDodaim", Haim Moshe, Gidi Gov and Rotem Abuhab [he].
The opening theme song of the original series was written by Eli Mohar and composed by Yoni Rechter which also performed it together with Gidi Gov, Mazi Cohen [he], Dafna Armoni [he; de] and a group of children from the Tzadikov choir [he].
Kippi Ben Kippod and Moishe Oofnik also made an appearance on the 1993 special Sesame Street Stays Up Late!
The curriculum goals of the show were: Mutual Respect (human diversity, mutual respect); The Child's World (body parts, child's powers, health, reasoning, problem-solving); Reading, Mathematics, and Writing (pre-reading and writing, numbers, geometric forms); and Cognitive Organization (perceptual discrimination, relational concepts, classifying).
Although messages about mutual respect were always included in the curriculum of the original US show, it was the first time this area was a major focus of any version of Sesame Street.
[4] The program Shalom Sesame was an Israeli–American co-production that combined American actors, such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Bonnie Franklin, Anne Meara, Mary Tyler Moore and Jerry Stiller, and the original Israeli cast members which participated in the original Rechov Sumsum series.
Only later it was dubbed in Hebrew for Israeli viewers (although the Shalom Sesame logo still showed up at the beginning).
In 1994, Children's Television Workshop proposed the idea of a joint Israeli-Palestinian Sesame Street co-production.
[8] Both the Israeli and Palestinian teams agreed before production that the show would not cover political issues, nor would they include imagery of soldiers, flags (or other symbols of nationalism), or religious locations and holidays.
The co-production received significant attention at the time and became the subject of articles in academic journals mainly due to ongoing tensions between Israel and Palestine.
The final promotional push for Rechov Sumsum/Shara'a Simsim was an appearance by Dafi, Hanneen, Karim, and Moishe at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 28, 2002, alongside various other characters from international versions of Sesame Street.
In 2002, the decision was made to split the Israeli-Palestinian co-production and create a project entitled Sesame Stories which would act as the banner title for three separate programs serving the Middle East.
This series was largely funded by the European Union, and much like the previous co-production, its goal was to promote messages of respect and understanding among Israeli and Arab children in the Middle East.
Channel, mixing the Sippuray Sumsum cast, new characters, and returning favorite Moishe Oofnik from the original seasons.
The new season featured the previous Muppets: Avigail, Mahboub, Sivan and Moishe Oofnik with new neighbor called Sesame Street's Elmo.
Shani Cohen, Abigail's former Puppeteer, is going back to the show as a new human character called Ayelet, tour guide at the museum.
This is an Israeli–American co-production which combines various American actors, such as Anneliese van der Pol, Jake Gyllenhaal, Christina Applegate, Greg Kinnear, Debra Messing and Cedric the Entertainer, and is geared at teaching Jewish-American children about the Jewish culture.