Articles
Two Schools, One Purpose: Israeli Women Tout Benefits of Waldorf education in Local Visit PDF Print E-mail

 

by Stacey Palevsky (This article was originally published in j., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California)

In the city of Shefaram, located between Haifa and Nazareth, Arab children practice their spring theatre production. In Hebrew.

At a nearby school on Kibbutz Harduf, Jewish children also practice their spring play, in Arabic.

Eventually the Arab students will perform for their Jewish friends, and the Jewish students will perform for their Arab friends. The effort is one of many elements that is building a “friendship bridge” between students at two Waldorf schools – one Arab, one Jewish – in northwest Israel.

“What we are trying to create is a peace culture, which means we’re creating a new space where children are proud and accepting of their own identity, but also recognize and respect all cultures,” said Tally Zahor, a teacher at the Harduf Waldorf School. “We’re creating a place where Arab and Jewish children feel equal.”

Zahor was on a speaking tour Oct. 3 to 7 throughout California with her colleague, Lana Nasrallah, a Christian Arab woman who three years ago helped found Israel’s only Arab Waldorf School, El Zeitoun, which works with Harduf. They hoped to raise money for their efforts. The pair spoke about why the Waldorf approach to education is so valuable in Israel, and how over the past three years it has helped promote tolerance, understanding and friendship among the schools’ Arab and Jewish students. “Every year the relationship between the students gets deeper,” Nasrallah said.

The teachers visited California with help from Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation, a Los Angeles-based group that raises money and provides resources such as a conflict resolution program, for El Zeitoun and Ein Bustan, Israel’s only intercultural Jewish-Arab Waldorf school. Shepha Schneirsohn Vainstein, the co-founder of Salaam Shalom, travled and spoke with the teachers in audiences at Waldorf schools across the state. “Waldorf education is flourishing at an unprecedented rate in Israel,” Vainstein said. Twenty years ago, Israel had one Waldorf school with just 13 children. Today the country has 2,300 students in 13 elementary and high schools, additionally there are 80 kindergartens.

The Waldorf approach was developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1919. It emphasizes interdisciplinary and experiential learning and the arts. Teachers also have creative autonomy and usually govern schools democratically rather than with a hierarchal management structure.

Vainstein started her foundation to support Waldorf education in Israel after her own daughter attended a Waldorf school in Los Angeles. She believes the educational approach has the power to heal Israeli children, of whom it is estimated more than a third suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. “To live in Israel is to live in a pressure cooker,” Vainstein said. “Waldorf schools make children feel nurtured, safe and de-stressed.”

El Zeitoun, the Arabic Waldorf school, is unique in that the children are Christian, Muslim and Druze, religions that often are segregated from one another. On top of that interfaith environment, the students learn, play and celebrate holidays with their fellow students at the Jewish Waldorf school nearby. “Eventually we want to create an integrated high school,” Nasrallah said. “We also want to bring the parents together” more often.

Though El Zeitoun is thriving in Shefaram, the school does not yet have a permanent building and thus is ineligible for funding from the Ministry of Education. “This tour has really helped us,” Nasrallah said. “People listen to us, they give us a response.” Zohar and Nasrallah believe Waldorf education, and the complementary conflict resolution programs sponsored by Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation, will be the best way to bring peace to Israel.

“Politics will not give us peace,” Nasrallah said. “Jewish mothers and Arab mothers will, and we want to work for peace, not look for it.”

 

 

 
 
Lana Nasrallah: Mothers Built This School PDF Print E-mail

 

by Lana Nasrallah, founding teacher of El Zeitoun

The First Arab Waldorf Class Teacher in the State of Israel

Shafaram society is still rather patriarchal. One still won't see a woman in the city- council and it is very rare to find a woman  administrator in a school. The voice of men is usually much more respected.

 

There is a poem in Arabic that can be translated:

 

“Mother is school and if it’s good, you will have a free people.”

 

My interpretation is:

 

“Mother” is a woman.

First she must be free

so she can help her children to be free.

 

Mothers started our school. A group of us gathered together looking for alternative education for our children. In almost every case, it was the mother who chose to put her child into El Zeitoun.

 

It began with me, a teacher with ten years in the classroom. I am a mother who chose to begin this new school. At first, my husband didn’t agree, but I didn’t give up. Other women, mostly teachers, understood my ideas and joined me. Step by step we started this school. It was the Arab women who did the work while the men watched us. Many of the mothers took classes through the Harduf Arab Waldorf Teacher Training so they could have a better understanding of how we teach.

 

There is a group that administers our school. It is composed of men and women. It is essential that there are men in this group because in the Arab community, only the man’s voice is really considered serious. Unfortunately, there are mothers who had to leave the school because their husbands didn't back them. These women support our work even though they are unable to participate.

 

Our school initiative is composed of Muslim, Druze and Christian women all working together.

 

Building Bridges between the Arab and Jewish communities through the Waldorf School Movement

The idea to build the Friendship Bridge Program begin when I started teaching the first grade class. In traditional Waldorf Schools like El Zeitoun, teachers teach the same children first grade through eighth grade. Harduf Waldorf School is located quite close to us with many contacts already established. It was the best school for our project. El Zeitoun and Haduf are both Waldorf schools, quite different than the regular schools. We have the same Waldorf program, and yet, we are very different because of our different languages and cultures.

 

I initiated a meeting with the teacher from the first grade at Harduf and we made a plan for the year. Each of us shared our idea with our classes.

 

The first meeting was a field trip in the area. We hiked and had a picnic where we made our own pita bread on an open fire. We later met in the classroom in Harduf and we greeted each other with simple words and greetings in the “other’s” language. They greeted us in Arabic and we greeted them in Hebrew. We also shared a small English lesson, which is the common second language to both classes.

 

The second time, they came to visit us in Shfaram. We made a special type of Arabic bread with “Zatar” and the children played together. At the end of the school year, each class came to see the other perform their class play.

 

Each year furthers the Friendship Bridge curriculum now co-sponsored by Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation. We will be working projects together and learning the Way of Council. We will invite the Harduf class to Shafaram for the picking of the olives during this season. We are planning a meeting for all the parents of both classes together to involve them in our plan. We believe that the peace process begins with education, step by step. We want to encourage this feeling among the parents so that the children will feel this reality through their parents as well. Each year we will build stronger ties – family with family, pupils with pupils.

 

We have a long term project in mind that we would like to work towards. We believe that children in the earlier years of grade school need to develop strength in their own language and identity. By the eighth grade, before transitioning them into an integrated high school, we plan to combine classes in subjects such as Music, English, Painting, Woodwork, Handwork, Welding and Basket Weaving.

 

This Friendship Bridge will be built carefully, “one stone at a time” – an education in the acceptance of the individuality of the “other” – the foundation of Waldorf Education.

 

Lana Bahouth Nasrallah shra-amr, galil – Israel.

Class teacher grae 3, El Tamrat el Zeittun.

 
 
The Arabian Nights Travel to England PDF Print E-mail

33 Arab and Jewish High School students in our Peace Leadership Program went to England for three weeks of intensive preparation for the play, 1001 Arabian Nights, which they performed in England to a profoundly moved audience. The students’ work didn’t stop there. They returned to Israel to perform before their own community. Below is SSEF Peace Education Director Kobi Tuch’s description of what happened in the community in Israel upon seeing these performances:

“It was not obvious that we would be able to gather ourselves together for another set of performances in Israel, after the climax we reached in England. In fact, were prepared ourselves to deal with an anticlimax. But our concern turned out to be unnecessary. All our students were fully engaged and determined to make it possible again.

We had two dayst o get ready, and lots of people from the community came to give a hand. We quickly adapted ourselves to the new stage in the community center of Shefaram, and decorated it in a fantastic and imaginative style. Both the Arabic and Jewish students were excited to perform in front of their families, each for its own reasons. The Jewish students wanted the play to be at the same high standard as their families were used to watching in their Waldorf School. The Arabic students were nervous to know how their parents would react to the idea of their children acting in a play. Some of their parents had never watched a play before, and the first play they were going to watch would be in English, a language they are not familiar with. The tension in the air just before the first performance cannot be described in words. But it all faded out when the students came on stage. The life, joy, talent and charm they brought with them, together with the magic of the stories, the costumes and scenery, were much beyond any specific culture, tradition or language.

It was not just easy. We faced distractions in and between the performances. Teenagers from the neighborhood, who were curious to know what was going on, interrupted us from time to time; people who were not used to sitting quietly and watching a play for more than two hours were sometimes talking loudly and went in and out of the hall; others, who were not used to coming on time, came to watch the play half and hour; and sometimes one hour late. I experienced the tension between life and form as reflected by the Arabic and Jewish cultures. The former brought movement and warmth, sometimes fire, into the stage and hall, while the latter brought discipline and a fine quality of art. Each time those two opposite qualities complemented each other, something new, full of grace, happened.

We ended up with performances which were not only artistic but social, interfaith and spiritual events as well. We had over 1000 people who came to watch the play, most of whom were laughing and crying simultaneously. People thought that we brought something completely new to our region, and from this stage on we cannot go backwards anymore. Mahamoud Soubah, our Arabic drama tutor, shared with me his feelings and thoughts. He imagined that these events would change the destiny of Shefaram.

he Arab and Jewish students entered the drama project as two different groups, coming from two almost opposite cultures, traditions and religions. We definitely ended up as one group. We all felt that a new common ground has been founded, which enabled us to connect in a new and different way. I think it was the quality of the performing arts together with the hard work, the common target and the huge support we got from so many people, which made it happen.

This group still has two more years to work together and more projects ahead. Let us pray for such a sacred work to be continued.”

 
 
A Breakthrough Experiment PDF Print E-mail

The Goal of Salaam Shalom is to develop a generation of youth in the Middle East who can think outside the box, who are open to new ideas and experiences in order to generate new solutions to the old, entrenched problems troubling the Middle East. Ours is a cutting edge program whose purpose is to build bridges across the great chasm that lies between Arabs and Jews.

This school year has already seen an unexpected and exciting development emerge out of Salaam Shalom’s High School Peace Leadership Program. There are two additional students participating in the original jewish high school group. What makes this situation unusual is that these are two students who originally started our program enrolled through the Arab high school. These young Arab men wanted to try something new, so they enrolled into the Jewish high school involved in our program? A unique situation has developed where now they are part of the Jewish group that is meeting with their Arab high school partners in our peace leadership program.

 
 
Jewish and Arab Students Perform Grimms Fairy Tales in England PDF Print E-mail

As you read these words our tenth grade Jewish and Arab students are busy working hard – far from their home in Israel. In the bucolic Cotswalds of Gloucestershire, England our students are rehearsing scenes and practicing the lines of Grimm’s Tales written by England’s esteemed poet Carol Ann Duffy. The Asha Centre of England is co-hosting our tenth graders for an entire month with a culmination debut performance of Grimm’s Tales in London! This is a wonderful opportunity for people outside of Israel to see some of the fruits of Salaam Shalom’s work and because the performance is taking place in London, Salaam Shalom is hoping to build a community of London supporters so please pass on news about our students’ performance to friends in the London area. Here is a comment on last year’s performance, “The life, joy, talent, and charm they brought to the performance together with the magic of the stories, the costumes, and the scenery were much beyond any specific culture, tradition, or language. I experienced the tension between life and form, as reflected by the Arab and Jewish cultures. The former brought movement and warmth, sometimes fire onto the stage and hall, while the latter brought discipline and a fine quality of art. Each time those two opposite qualities complemented each other, something new, full of grace happened”
We are very pleased and excited to share that Mahmoud Subah has joined our students in England to co-teach with Alexander Gifford and Adrian Locher. Mahmound is one of the leading Arab actors in Israel…(continued) whose plays have placed first two times at the Akko Theatre Festival.

The amount of money spent on a Jewish chlld’s education in Israel is over 5 times the amount of money spent on an Arab child’s education in Israel. During this year we have become acutely aware of the need to strengthen the capacities of the Arab students so that they will be in a position to further their education after high school, become more fluent in both Hebrew and English, and become familiar with the skills of non-violent communication and group process. Helping these students “catch up” with their Jewish counterparts is a central focus of the project, so that by the time our four year program comes to its fruition, students will be able to work together in an atmosphere of mutual confidence, cooperation and appreciation for each other.

The Arab student group has been strengthened by the addition of Fais Sawaed as sponsor/advisor to the 10th and 11th grade Arab students. Fais is the nephew of the Bedouin Chief Abu Amin. He studied Waldorf educational methods and social work at Emerson College in England, and worked as a social worker in Israel. Fais is a constant presence of support and care for the Shefaram students, who haven’t the experience of group work the same way as have most of the students from the Harduf Waldorf School.

April 12th at 7:30 at Rudolf Steiner House in London For Tickets : 0159 482 2330