The First Arab Waldorf School in Israel: El Zeitoun

El Zeitoun, The Olive Tree, was established in 2004 by a group of parents, educators and entrepreneurs, both Arab and Jewish, who believed that Waldorf education, with its emphasis on universal human values and healing orientation for children, could become a unifying force in a society torn by a century of bloodshed and mistrust.  
Previous to this,  if Arab parents wanted a Waldorf education for their child, they would have to send them to a Jewish Waldorf school where their children would be taught in Hebrew and celebrate Jewish seasonal festivals.  The founders of El Zeitoun thought that it was important for the Arab children in Israel to have their own identity firmly grounded in the Arab culture and Arab language.
Fulfilling a dream for many Arab families in Israel, El Zeitoun is the beginning of a parallel school system offering the Arab equivalent of the Waldorf educational movement that many parents in Israel’s Jewish communities have embraced for their children.  El Zeitoun is located in the lower Galilee in Shfar’am, a Arab town in Israel of over 30,000 inhabitants of mixed Arab population: Muslims (about 50%), Christians (about 35%) and Druze (about 15%).  El Zeitoun began as one kindergarten and today it consists of two kindergartens and elementary grades one through four, with an enrollment  of over 100 students. It is the only school in the city that includes Muslim, Christian and Druze in the same educational environment. The children celebrate the holidays of the three religions, and live their customs and ceremonies on an everyday basis. The children’s parents meet each other, and create a lively, warm community that is stronger than the religious differences.
There are plans for the children who finish the eighth grade at El Zeitoun to join the Jewish children of Harduf Waldorf School  to begin an integrated Waldorf high school. By the eighth grade, before transitioning them into an integrated high school, the teachers intend to combine classes in subjects such as music, English, painting, woodwork, handwork, iron work and basket weaving El Zeitoun not only contributes to creating a peaceful society within its country’s borders, it also has been instrumental in helping the Israeli Waldorf community develop a unique working relationship with a Palestinian educational community within the West Bank. The classrooms of El Zeitoun provide an educational model for visiting Palestinian educators who come to observe how Waldorf education integrates the Arab culture and the Muslim religion into its curriculum.  El Zeitoun means The Olive Tree, which is often used as a symbol for peace in the Middle East.  Oil from the olive tree has been used for cooking food and burned for light for thousands of years. 
May this little Olive Tree be the first sapling of what some day will grow into a grove large enough to nourish and light up the whole Middle East.