Goodies
The New York Times and International Herald Tribune (bought and swallowed by the Times) announces its new global edition. Friends, who’ve set the Times as their home page, change it here.
If you’re wondering about innovative strategies for Arab and Jewish coexistence, check out Hand in Hand. It’s an NGO started in 1997 that has successfully launched mixed K-12 schools in Jerusalem, the Galilee, and the south. This is a huge step for Israel where segregation, most notably in Jerusalem, is analogous to Alabama in the fifties.
I recently asked to visit Hand in Hand, either as a volunteer or short-term observer. Despite the right-wing extremists, its Jerusalem school is extremely popular and often has a long wait list of students. That fact, in and of itself, is so inspiring.
I’m thinking of visiting the Jerusalem school in the next few weeks to meet the administrators. It’s running an English day camp in July, and I may stay in Israel to teach at it. I know “teaching English abroad” becomes cliché by the third summer of college (and it’s too bad that it does become cliché). But I’m not driven by hopeful zeal. Despite the good intentions of most NGOs and peace projects, they’re generally inefficient, ineffective, or vague. Integrated education, however, is a real concrete product.
I’m very curious about alumni of the Hand in Hand schools. Unfortunately, there are no Arab universities within the borders of Israel because they’re considered security risks. The few that have been opened in the last decade were quickly shut down. Birzeit University, in the West Bank, is still active but it’s suffering major funding problems and its academic quality is dwindling. The main problem is that Arab students who grew up attending Arab primary and secondary schools often have a hard time at the university level. As my housemate Laila, who’s a fourth-year architecture undergraduate, explained, she was scared — frozen — when she first had to deliver a presentation in Hebrew. These are fears and shortcomings Arab students must overcome if they want a university education in Israel. What often happens is that Arab students leave for Jordan or other Arab countries, which is an unfortunate brain and money drain.
This isn’t to suggest that Palestinian students are isolated. Hebrew is compulsory at Israeli schools, and Arab students usually begin studying it in first or second grade. My housemates are all impressively multi-lingual: in addition to Arabic as their mother tongue and best language, they speak and write Hebrew fluently, English proficiently if not fluently, and sometimes another Romance language.
However, it’s still difficult to transition from using Arabic as your technical language in high school to Hebrew in university. It’d be like me suddenly trying to study anthropology, mais seulement en français.
Hand in Hand offers a unique compromise. It’s not enough to give Arab citizens full rights, if those “rights” mean they have to wholly absorb Israeli culture. Nor is it productive for Arabs to self-isolate and boycott Hebrew when it’s the national language. Of course, this debate runs far deeper: whether or not there should even be a predominantly Hebrew or Jewish presence is not a given. At this point, though, there’s no practical purpose in debating Israel’s founding. It happened, and we can’t push out the generations of Israelis born here in the last 61years. For that reason, I appreciate Hand in Hand because it’s forward-thinking rather than backwards-lamenting. It’s a solution aware of the reality today.
Before this post gets too heavy, in honor of religious pluralism, I’d like to share a favorite Christian parable. For those of you that don’t know me — why are you reading my blog? — I’m not remotely religious.
Love is patient, love is kind.
